CA's target group customer...

[screwtype]

"You dont get to see your towns/cities being built. You have no idea where your building strategy is going other than by looking at a paper based diagram of what the building might allow you to do. You dont have to fight a battle it can be calculated automatically - an option I ended up using most of the time otherwise the game would take years. Even with using this option the game is painfully slow and frustrating. If you do use the 3D battle scene it is cumbersome and frustrating to get those troops in the right position, especially with larger battles (forget it !) and there is no guarantee the troops you have built are fit for the job - they might just run, which is ok if you knew that was the case when you created them...Eventually I couldnt give a damn and ended up pressing the next year button repeatedly - not a lot happened...A very unclear game with a mix of battle, trade, politics (supposedly) and espionage - each element didnt seem to relate at all."

LOL. I actually agree with most of that review! MTW *was* too big and clumsy and uncoordinated to be a really good game.

I think if this reviewer had started with STW instead of MTW, he would probably have got hooked on the system just like I did. But I can see how a noob would become totally overwhelmed and frustrated by starting with MTW. Heck, not long ago one of the game's grognards on this very forum talked about the same sense of being overwhelmed when first playing it.

In fact I eventually ended up doing with MTW exactly what this reviewer did, just out of curiosity. I did nothing but click on the "end turn" button again and again, to see what would happen over a long period. Almost nothing did!

In my opinion, MTW is a monstrosity which outgrew the original game system. I forgave CA for making it because at least one "more is better" iteration is an industry staple after a great game. But it's harder to find excuses for the flaws in RTW