I agree, the woods are a must, especially when fighting the golden horde . I remember using the woods extensively when fighting the horde in MTW. However it felt a little like exploiting, as the horde could technically have waited outside the forest area all until you starved to death... So IMO the woods should be more powerful than in RTW, but it should mostly be smaller forest areas and not all-map-covering forests, so that always part of your line will have to be outside the forest. The funniest battles in MTW were the ones where there were many smaller forests on the map, which allowed for loads of ambush possibilities and made proper scouting, when going after the enemy, essential.

Would be great if the enemy also did fake retreats and stuff, only to make you rush after them to avoid one of those annoying withdrawals without a fight you often see in RTW, and then when you follow them you discover - too late - that they had an ambushed prepared for you. But for that to work there should be less information about the enemy strength - both in number of units and unit types - than there is in RTW. I'd like it if the info was restricted to number of men in total, or maybe if you had a spy some knowledge which could be about 15% off from the real about how big percentage is cav, missile and infantry. Because otherwise you'd just see there were too few enemy unit retreating and not fall for the trap for such an IMO ridiculous game engine exploit reason...