Is RTW really that bad

[Gaius Magnus]

I don't get these people who play M:TW and say they have a harder game then R:TW, both of them are easy. I mean I was brand new to the Total War series when I started M:TW and I was kicking the AI around on hard and expert in just a couple of days. Does noone remember the vast peasant/archer/spearman armies? How easy it was to lure the enemy into traps? How dumb the AI could be at times(I remember in the Almohad PBEM I was in, I killed the Spanish king with arrow fire while he sat there, unable to figure out what to do).

It took mods to get any sort of real challenge beyond the artificially induced mass rebellion trigger. Jihads and Crusades were a joke since 90% of the time they had no good general and would become rout fests. The Mongol hordes just needed you to kill their leader, then keep up mass routs and you could kill/capture 10,000+ in a single battle. Added to all this was the ease of mass hiring mercs to scare the AI into retreating or to use as expendable troops in sieges.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying I didn't like M:TW. I loved it, as I love R:TW. But M:TW was barely and just barely harder then R:TW when it came to battles, and it was brain dead when it came to the strategy map. R:TW like M:TW is slowly getting better as the mods are worked on, mods like R:TR and hopefully EB as well as Senjoku Jidai(sp?) and Zhao Total War in the future. I win a good portion of my battles in R:TR with the same ratios I did in M:TW mods, and often times the battles are harder(fighting phalanx civs with barbarians or such).

Oh and Simon, you should check out the MedMod for M:TW. Although it does focus alot on balancing things it also changes the lineups to be more historical as well as the factions. WesW and the people who have contributed to the mod have done an amazing job on it.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I played STW and MTW before playing RTW.

I vividly remember the problems of the AI in MTW, such as reshuffling their stack right as I approached, or sitting just out of their range with Pavise Arbalesters, causing them to run back and forth in a small area until they were exhaused. I remember defeating the Mongols with a fraction of their strength even though they just showed up one turn with multiple stacks in each of my Eastern provinces. Oh, and the ever popular 'MTW Parade' where the AI would send units in a long string one-at-a-time.

Oh yes, and I also remember the Peasant Armies. Wow, those were challenging.

I just don't understand the desire to return to the boardgame style map. That's what Risk and checkers are for.

I think RTW is a great game and I will continue to play it. (I also enjoyed STW and MTW) I have now begun playing RTR 6.0 and it is a great mod.

I really don't understand why some people spend so much time on an RTW forum complaining about a game that they don't like.