Likes:

- the map is nicely constructed, giving a grand sense of scale
- the factions are nicely varied
- the fog of war works well

Dislikes:

- battle AI is extremely hopeless, not to mention hamstrung. For example, if you decide to sally from a besieged city, and the AI has not constructed any siege equipment, the AI will not try and take the city. So the only way the AI has of winning is if you, as the player, decide to attack all-out, and lose all your units. Which is extremely unlikely, as the AI seems to love to walk into tower range, and just stand there while towers completely whittle away all of their troops. Now I'm not asking for a genius AI, but when the AI cannot get to any of your troops, and it is standing there under fire, would it be too much to ask for it to freakin' move out of the way?
- city focus is too extreme. Almost all of my combats take place either attacking or defending a city. It's a bit of the reverse of the MTW system. A happy medium would be ideal
- unit imbalance is annoying, I find myself playing the factions with good cav or cav archers, as they win the day. As others have said, RTW should have more of a focus on infantry

Personally, I'd recommend waiting for the next patch to come out before buying the game. Although you may enjoy some of the aspects of the game now, if they can fix some of the more severe outstanding issues, it will be that much better. This game deserves to put its best foot forward, and I'm not sure it's doing that as it stands now.

Bh