Quote Originally Posted by Wardo
Shogun and Medieval 1 dealt admirably with this problem.

Sort of. Since it had a "risk province map" going into war meant potentially facing the entire armed forces of your opponent, or a great part of it. So you didn't attack or declared war if you couldn't take the counter-attack, sea-invasions or the multiple stacks.

Since RTW, with the change to the 3D map, it doesn't work like this anymore. The Armies are spread all over the territory and you usually face no more than 2 stacks at a time. Sometimes, later in the game or in the case of the Mongols/Timurids, more stacks roam around together, but it's never a win-or-loose situation. You can beat the enemy and take a town, no matter, he will rebuild granted there is still something left. You can also loose your men, you will have time to rebuild aswell and re-capture any lost territory.

I consider the move to the new map very stupid. As beautiful as it is and as cool as it is to move around with the stacks, the strategic element was destroyed and it became a loooooooong game of attrition. Note well, the point here is not about the game lasting long, but that the game becomes reduced to a prolonged battle of attrition where strategy is irrelevant as long as you can win the tactical battles (diplomacy, what for? Decision, what for?). Since you are guaranteed to win most tactical battles, unless you fight severely outnumbered on purpose, only the initial years offer any strategic gameplay value where your decisions matter. To attack or not to attack later on is meaningless.

We seriously need to rethink the strategic map. The strategic element of the old map needs to return. When you declare war on somebody, you must face consequences.
I agree 100% with that post. The AI is simply too easy in too many ways, for this reason: The game was made too complicated for the AI to handle as well as the player. Giving the AI piles of money each turn seems to get them to recruit stacks of town militia, and I can't think of any way to fix this, Ive tried doubling the cost of the cheap militia units and making their recruitment pools slow to replenish and not very big, but they just ended up having LESS stacks then before, but the existing stacks were made up of town militia primarily.

I think I will be going back to SPQR TW again until a mod comes that solidly fixes the difficulty problem and makes the game interesting.

I think the City/castle system was poorly implemented especially as the AI is concerned.