First suggestion : NO STEAM ! I want to own my game and not require third-party malware to run it, especially considering how intrusive, abusive and restrictive it is, thanks.
Now for the game itself...
- Work on AI and diplomacy. I know it's what you hear every game, but seriously, it's always been the weak point of the serie. It should become an actual relevant part of the game.
- More developped "conquest" part. It's always bothered me how you can conquer a province and it's immediately added to your possessions and you can churn out units quickly from it. I think a rather long "assimilation" time should be required.
- In the same vein, manpower. The idea was here in RTW (though, again, the AI was prone to fail at it), and it would be nice if it could make a comeback. I always found it weird that huge stacks of units, thousands upon thousands of men, could be slaughtered without it being a big deal as long as you have money to replace the losses (and with STW2, money comes in such large sums I can easily afford to lose one full stack every two turns or so, which means I'm pretty much immune to attritional warfare).
- Speaking of it : ATTRITION ! Logistic lines and the like. It really makes the strategy much deeper and more interesting than having some kind of immortal stack that can walk in the far-away mountains for some centuries without problem.
- Immersion. You got it right with STW2, keep it up !
- Better mélée fighting. MTW2 was ATROCIOUS in this respect, STW2 is better but not perfect. It's a bit "weak" if you know what I mean, lacking in power and energy (RTW was the best by far in this domain, even though it caused the "blob" problem). Also it's just a collection of duel. Units should fight as unit, and you should NOT have five guys standing around a foe and doing nothing but looking at a sixth fighting alone. This make close-up fighting look ridiculous. It's nice to have these neat animations, but what is the point if their principle is defeated by making the hand-to-hand fighting disjointed.
- Harder sieges. Fortress in all the TW games are either easily assaultable (walls are barely able to slow down attackers, you wonder what's the point building them) or easily starvable. In history, fortress and castle were quite a big deal. MAKE them a big deal ! (again, it would require a better AI)
As for the setting...
I'd like either a RTW2, a very ambitiout "Civilization : Total War" (I guess you can imagine the idea) or maybe a "Fantasy : Total War", as long as it's light on fantasy and doesn't make standard soldiers look like peasants.
But please, NO GUNPOWDER ERA ! I hate, hate, hate it.
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