I'm looking forward to seeing what has been accomplished with the patch. I expect that the game is going to have a much different feel on the strategic map. I also expect the unit balance and unit availability, cost, stats will be altered enough that the battlefield play will be better. I have no idea about the battlefield AI though. There are some difficult to program changes needed (appears that way at any rate), but hopefully enough will be completed to pull the AI out of its coma.

I wonder a lot about game speed and kill rates...

Looking into my crystal ball (actually it is a bowling ball, oh well--this is purely speculation) I'm going to predict the following as highly likely:

1. Friendly fire will work more like MTW, and archers will stop shooting when ordered to stop...
2. Admirals will get stars--and the non-stackable aspect will be fixed.
3. Fewer boats will be constructed by the AI, (especially in captive sea zones.)
4. Naval rules will be tightened, perhaps with more active AI naval blockades, more ships needed to transport armies, blockade, etc.
5. Decisive naval battles with ships being sunk.
6. Strategic map storms and disasters will work properly and become more common.
7. The AI will start grouping armies and attaching faction members so that it fights as combined forces rather than scattered elements.
8. The player will be able to choose which general to be when he has multiple stacks in the battle, or will at least default to the highest ranking one.
9. Anti-cav spear bonuses will be improved.
10. Cav will be toned down--or at least cost more to maintain so that cav heavy armies are discouraged.
11. Egyptian stats will be reworked to match the graphics...and some of the more odd aspects of their balance will be fixed.
12. Protectorate bug fixed.
13. Stamina and heat effects will be fixed.
14. Suicide Daimyo bug fixed.
15. Naval auto resolve decoupled from other difficulty settings.
16. Grouping problems fixed.
17. Speed toggles buttons will work better and have larger "targets."


I'm less certain about the following (but keeping my fingers crossed.)
1. Timer toggle, or more reasonable timer.
2. Elephants made a bit less formidable.
3. Archery and esp. elite archers toned down.
4. Faction maps added plus descriptions and other faction specific info added.
5. More factions unlockable.
6. Flaming arrows fixed as well as the memory leak.
7. Melee/charge kill rates reduced (would work nicely if combined with archery effectiveness reduction, and would also have an impact on cav.)
8. "Pila pause" removed when missile units are ordered to melee charge with alt-attack.
9. Carthage will be made more formidable/aggressive at least in re-acquiring lost territory.
10. Terrain effects will start to mean something (other than elevation.)
11. Unit depth effects will matter.

Unexpected goodies that I would not be surprised by:
1. Updated textures/models for many units that currently "share" among many mercs and cultures--at least updated to make sense with description and stats.
2. A few new units for factions that have not yet been "fleshed out."
3. A new campaign.

This is just speculation. I have no "sources."