You folks discussing writing a chess AI that can beat good human players are completely off the mark. It IS very hard to write good chess AI from scratch, and it took decades before they had a decent approach that could challenge decent amateur tournament players. There were many, many folks working on this and there were many grand masters assisting. (The high end players have been using chess computers to help analyze positions for decades, so a stronger computer was a help to them in tournament preparation.) If we could harness 0.01% of that time to put into RTW's AI it would be very strong.

As it is, there is enough computing power to write decent tactical AI, but there doesn't seem to be enough emphasis on it and it does take time and a lot of testing. Speaking for myself and not the .org, RTW's tactical AI is weak compared to MTW. It has phalanx units chasing archers and horse archers for crying out loud. The friendly fire stuff is bass ackwards ("fire at will" should make FF LESS likely.) But, hey, its early and I have some faith in CA's ability to add some extra instructions into the algorithms. Hopefully the suicidal cav charges into spears/pikes will be addressed.

Once I figured out how to deal with the superfast speed and a couple of units that don't behave in historic fashion, the tactical AI became unchallenging, even on VH/VH. It gets a bit monotonous dealing with the same AI stacks attacking turn, after turn, after turn while you struggle with your handicapped economy trying to build a second army to destroy the threat. The number of battles has been multiplied by 3 or 4 fold and the only time they are "decisive" is if I lose...or suffer enough tediously slow attrition that I eventually succumb to the hordes of AI armies.

I also want to echo the comment about having no idea what effect any given building will have on my overall economy. I'm just guessing when I build economic structures (except mines, I build those ASAP because I actually know that they work.)

The game has merit and could easily become the best of the series, but it needs patches to complete it. Properly patched, with decent tactical and strategic AI, it could become unbeatable on VH/VH. Right now all the challenge is in dealing with the handicaps on the strategic map. I find myself fighting most of the tactical battles only because I must. It wasn't that way with MTW.