Who's still playing?

[gollum]

Indeed cogre,
in the original game (STW v1.0 to v1.12) factions die for good once killed and teh AI treats his Daimyos as just another general's unit, which makes it easy for them to be killed. This was compensated to a certain extent by a less forgiving economic game as well as the AI bonuses for the harder difficulty (the AI can spend infrastructure money he does not have), especially if you play as the southern clans (Shimazu. Mori and to a certain extent Oda)and have to face any clan coming from the northern rich land. In STW/MI though (with the expansion) there are faction re-appearances just like in MTW.

The AI in STW was good, but in MTW it was slightly better - most notably in flanking with cavalry. One thing however that helped the AI in STW was the pretty strong RPS gameplay and the few, well balanced types of units, as well as teh inability to disengage engaged units, which meant that you had to be careful how you match your units. The AI is pretty good at match ups. In MTW units and most notably cavalry that is helped by virtue of its mobility can disengage which somewhat hurts the importance of match ups (you can correct bad ones).

MTW had many ups over STW too though - the campaign game is more looked after and the battle engine has many improvements. It also has more flavor and more scope for role-playing.