So ...

[Terry]

If it helps, I see that Best Buy has BI on sale for $24.99...........

[Pode]

I bought BI and have yet to play it, spending all my time with RTW 1.3. I flattened the tech trees to make good units available earlier and set training times to zero, adding a pop growth bonus to small towns to help make up for the larger armies that allows. My observations:

-Load-save has been addressed. I'm not sure if it was truly fixed or if probability of AI lifting a siege was just set to zero, but the net effect is that 10 turns in, there are only a handful of rebel territories left.

-Tactical AI (unmodded, haven't tried the DarthFormations yet) is improved to the level of minimally competent. Doesn't sit still under archer fire, tough to bait out of defensive positions, passable at picking spots to defend, devotes a a fair effort to flanking when it has the chance, etc. It has satisifed my expectations of an AI opponent. I don't think it's as challenging as STW's, but I suspect that it's just that I'm not as green as I was when I played STW.

-Cavalry need to fear spearmen (as they should). I've lost my faction leader to green Gaul warband (green warband!) three times already. I'm unlearning my bad habits of generals bulling through most anything.

Summary: RTW 1.3 is what I thought I was buying a year ago when I got RTW 1.0. I'm not pleased with having to wait another year for it, but I am quite pleased with it now that it's here. I expect I'll enjoy the new features of BI as well, so I would recommend that it occupy some space on the froggy hard drive.

Edit: Frog, you posted while I was at lunch, and I left this post in mid creation. Oops.