Quote Originally Posted by screwtype
And the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In MTW/STW you will lose some battles, and even when you win, you usually take significant losses. In RTW you almost never lose, and your losses are usually negligible. Of course, this is also due in part to the slower combat and routing of the earlier games but it also has to do with the AI.
This I entirely agree with. I have played since STW, and the easier battles in Rome is the major reason why I put this down mid-campaign several months ago and have not played since. (Waiting to see what the consensus on BI is like )

I felt that it was always possible that I could (and did) lose the occasional important battle in the early to mid stages of STW/MTW campaigns, but have yet to lose a significant RTW battle. (The only losses have been the lone units/small stacks I have forgotten about that subsequently get attacked by large AI stacks). The seeming inevitability of the campaign in RTW, for me, makes it more boring to play.