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.
Totally agree, when i play RTW and M2TW i feel that something is different like theres something missing, i didnt get the totalwar feeling when playing RTW and M2TW as when i played Shogun and MTW, and now i think i know why.
But to deal with the elite army issue, something ive been against from day one, maybe a simple limit to how many you can have in an army? Because having a limit similar to the one with the merchants wont eliminate elite armies simple make it so you can only have one elite army, which is one too many. Units like the scots guard should have a limit of one unit per army, etc.