Quote Originally Posted by Doug-Thompson
Tactically, M:TW was much better but the relatively slow pace of the battles must have been frustrating to many players.
There was always the slider bar to fix that though (at least in SP). Implementing realistic speeds, but giving the option of a slider bar would have made everyone so much happier in RTW.

The gameplay was just better in MTW. The AI was better on the combat map, and the risk-style campaign map made it easier for the AI to cope. The RTW campaign map is a nice idea, but gives the AI too many options and the gameplay breaks down into lots of annoying skirmishes. The sequential turn mechanism allowed the player to exploit the AI weakness on the campaign map, this was not possible with MTW's move-at-once scheme (aside from a save/reload "cheat"). Empire management was slow and tedious (a better GUI would have helped here).

Rome just had a half-finished feel to it. There were lots of bugs and inconsistencies in the release version, and it just felt like another 6 months development would have created a much better game. I have higher hopes for M2TW, since this isn't a from-scratch effort.