Let me just join in and say that ATW is brilliant. I've been playing as the Ui Niell (The Red Hand of Ulster) and having a great time, although since I'm from the south of Ireland and a die-hard republican my attachment to Ulster is a little weird. I'm playing on H/VH with Large (not Huge) armies, because the battle turn lag was too much for me on huge settings.

I wish that I had set my campaign to VH as the devs suggested because so far I've had a pretty easy time of it. It's the year 500 (19 years in), I have conquered all of Ireland (ni siochain gan saoirse!), and I have €200,000 in the bank with three full stacks of elite troops ready to invade Scotland. Of course I haven't faced any of the advanced troops of Dumnonia and the Saxons yet- maybe that'll be more of a challenge.

But actually I'm only posting because I think some of ATW's stuff could apply to EB, in particular I have noticed that large battles (for the first time ever in RTW, as far as I know) can be truly decisive, due to the overall low populations. I had one great (four full stacks in total! epic!) pitched battle against the Munster faction from southwest Ireland, won the battle, and that was it: just had to mop up the cities (which all had only one unit of levies in them). Sorry, I don't know how to do screenshots.

In comparison I am currently playing IBFD6 as well, which visually is equally as impressive as ATW, but with high populations and zero recruitment times for most units, it doesn't matter how many damn Roman stacks I wipe out (I'm the Sassanids), the next turn there's always three or four more. ATW has a definite edge, campaign wise, over IBFD (sorry, Ramon).

For me a decisive strategic result to a great battle makes it all the more worth while. If you just have to repeat your epic battle over again it does get a little boring.

SO for EB- it'd be nice to see, somehow, the possibility of decisive strategic results to your epic battle- maybe ATW has shown the way?

One last comment- ATW is known on its own forums for laggy performance on the battlefield. They don't have sprites activated yet and the units are so detailed that large battles can turn into slideshows.
There is, I have found, a massive silver lining in that somewhat dark cloud: the worst lag occurs when you have zoomed out and have more units onscreen. For my epic four stack battle against the Men of Munster (how ironic for the GAA), i had to zoom in to ground level and then everything ran fine, no lag at all. As a result, I fought the entire battle from the general's pov, never had a clear idea of what was going on, and was actually surprised when a bunch of armoured swordsmen burst out of the trees at me. The best battle of my life!!! I know that you can do this all voluntarily, but really, who does? If the possibility is there to zoom out and see exactly where all the enemies troops are, most people I think would tend to use it. SO can anybody tell me how to restrict the camera?