Quote Originally Posted by Stig
No don't go for BI
BI=
broken skins
incorrect general speeches
no freedom
clone units
need I continue?
I don't know why people are so down on BI - it's a great expansion. The strategic situation is totally different from RTW, with lots of variety - from besieged Roman empires to marauding hordes. Only the Sassanids have a set-up anything like a standard RTW faction. Out of the box, I think the WRE campaign is as interesting as any vanilla TW campaign - especially with some houserules.

The skins are not so hot, I agree, but that is easily solved with mods such as Goth's all factions mod or IBFD. Skins such as those of Attila Reloaded and other modders are rather sweet:



I never noticed a problem with the general's speeches, although you get to a point where you just click past them.

Strategically, there is quite a lot of freedom for most factions. For example, in our WRE PBM in the Throne Room, we imposed a houserule that WRE should conquer ERE but leave the barbarians alone. Alternatively, you could spend your time conquering neighbouring factions. Some of the hordes have a lot of freedom how they carry out their objectives - for example, the Vandals have to go from the east to Spain, Carthage and Rome; quite the grand tour.

I haven't noticed a problem of clone units - the armies are quite varied. Saxons are almost all infantry; Huns almost all cavalry; Sassanids and Romans have varied and powerful line ups etc.

A big selling point of BI is that several excellent mods are designed for it - notably the forthcoming RTR 7.0.