Re. the first post, yes, yes R:TW is really that bad. The AI is horrendous, I've given up on my game as Spain. I can't feasibly play more than about five turns at a sitting, so the save/load bug kicks in. I've watched the Julii try to take one settlement from Gaul for the last~35 turns. The gauls are down to about 60 men in there, against maybe a couple of thousand romans. But they never take it and they never will. Whats more, until they take that settlement, I know they aren't going to come for me, which is leaving me free to smack the Scipii around in N. Africa.

This talk of smacking the Scipii around in N. Africa leads me to my second point. I have taken Carthage in my game, but am surrounded on all sides by the Scipii, and their fleet is stopping me from getting reinforcements in. Every turn, they march up, siege Carthage and I go to sally out. Inevitably they have taken ~1000 men to siege my 1200 man army in Carthage, and their army again gets smacked around. I've done this for 10 turns in a row now. It always plays out the same way. You would think they would actually save up their troops, and maybe siege me one time with an overwhelming force.

When I sally out, the AI does a quick calculation and realises it's outnumbered and withdraws away from the walls. Fair enough, let me come to it. It inevitably draws up a battle line, and then as I approach said battle line, it will spontaneously decide that it needs reorganization. This means that my battle line inevitably hits the AI's when it is in the middle of a reshuffle, and it turns into chaos, where my superior numbers always win. If it could just pick a line and stick with it, it might stand a chance. As it is, the legions can't throw their pila because they are usually moving, they get moral penalties because I tend to hit them in the flank (I'm actually hitting them in the front, but since the AI has decided to run it's central troops out to the wide areas, they are running sideways to me) and within about 20 seconds the whole line collapses and I win the battle. A trained monkey could take my job. If it wasn't for Australian quarantine laws, I might get one to do so, it certainly would be more efficient than having to do it myself every time.

The AI breaks the game. It provides no challenge whatsoever.