M2TW Round Two.

[Morindin]

After playing through my first campaign treating the game more like Rome I found it so-so.

However, I started a new campaign as the English on M/VH and I am now enjoying the game 10x more.

This time I am looking after my relations with the pope, looking after my relations with other factions, being careful who I sack, being careful what I build.

And all I can say is that I am now stuck in that 'One more turn mode'.

The campaign map AI shows some signs of being suicidal, but they attack me MUCH less. I also find that nuturing relationships with factions from the start makes the AI behave far less random.
I keep my relations with the Pope at 9-10 all the time, I never have problems with inquisitors. I have won a few crusades and have an impressive army.

The campaign map AI not only respects me, but is very reluctant to go to war with me. It's very hard trying to expand without being excommunicated because the AI just doesn't want to attack me, and when I do get into a war they rush for peace with me.

The battlemap AI is reasonable on VH also. I've had some pretty fun and nerve wracking battles. You can see it make logical decisions but it is still too easy to flank and the passive AI bug makes life as the English rather easy.
Charging seems to work as intended most of the time. However in the chaos of battle it can sometimes be difficult getting a decent charge. When you do though, wow.
If the AI managed to piece together a decent army with a mix of missiles, infantry, and cavalry it works well, but if it is severly outnumbered,lacks cavalry, or lacks missiles, it tends to not know what to do.

One other thing I've noticed is that autoresolving sieges generally goes in your favour - big time. Sieging the AI however is totally awesome. No longer is there the ridiculously frustrating pathfinding that RTW had, units generally go where ordered, and the AI acts intelligently. It won't just sit its units on a wall and let in collapse, it falls back when breaches are made, and tries to take out your siege engines with cavalry sallies.
The AI however isn't as smart when it is on the offensive.

There are a few other oddities also. I think there may be something wrong with the agent percentage chances to succeed. Quite often high percentages (95+) will fail or very low percentages (5%+) will succeed. Im not sure if it is a problem with the 'random' function of the code or what, but you tend to get failures and successes in streaks rather than based on the percentage chance. I've managed to assassinate kings and very powerful merchants (5%) with ease yet I struggle to burn a lowly heritic with my powerful cardinal (95%) turn after turn.

All in all the game can come together very well, if you play within its bounds. You have to treat it differently to Rome and MTW, and it has a lot of potential when a few bugs are cleaned up.