Lets keep the economists out of this!

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One thing that might be good would be to have resources and improvements actually appear on the map and be interactive. So for example you might have grain fields, and when an enemy army occupies that field it can burn it to starve the peasants, or use the food there for its own troops. Or by occupying a mine hex you cut off that particular resource from the enemy and instead get its benefits yourself.

I mean basically I'm arguing for a map that you can really interact with. The problem I have with the RTW map is there's not enough you can do with it, there's a lot of it but most of it is uninteresting and it doesn't act like a living, breathing world.

Like, instead of just having "resources" in a province that you automatically receive when you conquer it, wouldn't it be better if you actually had to develop that resource, build a road to it, and then possibly have to try and defend your improvement from a marauding army? That sort of thing could bring the map and the strategic campaign alive in a way it just isn't now. It doesn't have to be an incredibly complicated system, there are surely ways to do this that are elegant and intuitive.

I'd also like to see food play a more important role in the game, like the need to stock your cities and castles with surpluses in order to hold out during sieges, and the need to have a supply train for your troops in the field - which in turn would make an overall faction food surplus a necessity. That way your armies are closely tied to your economy and the topography of the map. You might then find yourself with an urgent need to defeat a marauding army before it disrupts your economy and leaves your peasants or armies starving.

There are heaps of ways to add depth to the campaign portion of this game, without unduly adding to the complexity or the micromanagement. It wouldn't be that hard to do. I can't understand why CA want to give us a Mickey Mouse economy, when every other aspect of the game is just begging for an economic/strategic model with more depth.