I don't understand why there is this perception that economic development is pointless or inneffective. There are some golden rules which I've now hard-coded into my game play and with them it is possible to build up to a large income. Improvements are most certainly worth building, but they have a mid-long term effect, mostly on taxable town wealth.

I would tend to seperate the economic changes (with which I am ok) from the AI changes in v1.2, although they do have some areas of transitions which I would argue are only apparent due to the AI being unable to handle these conditions adequately.

I can but agree with you though Fisherking on the flimsy campaign strategy, I however put it down to the confused AI. I interpret what you say as the feeling that the challenge in a campaign lies only in overcoming small hurdles, that do not scale as the game progresses. ETW's scope really is one hell of a lot broader than it's ancestors' and it seems to me the AI is simply underequipped to deal with the variety of options and decisions it has to make or are on offer. Discussing how the game plays is, IMO, to jump beyond the more pertinent questions of why the AI can't play the game itself.

Unfortunately, as with the end of turn pause attributed to the AI negotiating those 'tricky' land-bridges, the AI simply seems to stall when faced with the plethora of options at its disposal.

At best I have seen 1 or two factions really get an upper hand and form a significant enough land-block accross the 3 theatres (and only ever those isolated to one continent e.g. Prussia, Russia, Austria, Maratha, Mughals...) and these are those for whom the game is arguably simplest! They have more or less centralised resources, are present in only one theatre and are those least reliant on sea power or trade (beyond trade agreements) for income.

TW games have never reflected the kind of strategic AI found in anything like civ or galactic civilizations. Upping the anty with the addition of everything extra to MTW2 seems to have proved too much -so far.