One of the things I loved about MTW was that the map would look different 50-100 turns in on every campaign, as the AI factions didn't always do the same things. Variously, I saw the Egyptians in Russia, I saw Sicily carve out an empire in the Balkans (and take Constantinople!), I saw the Spanish\Almohad, English\French and Byzantine\Turk\Egyptian wars all go various ways in various campaigns. I saw the Polish dominate the centre of the map, I saw the Danes seize Britain and I saw the Almohads conquer half the world.

In RTW, I see Carthage dying every time. I see the Romans expanding, with very little variation, every game. I see Egypt crush the Seleucids every game. The biggest surprise was when Macedonia expanded north, and became notably powerful. That was once, out of many games. The Parthians, Numidians, Scythians, Spanish - nothing. It's almost always the same, every time (depending, of course, on where I am). This has been one of my biggest gripes with RTW, given what MTW managed.

I really, really hope that M2TW goes back to MTW's much more dynamic geopolitical map. I think faction re-emerges helped to shake things up at lot, but the AI just conducted wars so much more efficiently on the simpler risk-style map than it does on the more open map.

Fingers crossed.