STW/MTW or M2TW/RTW style campaign map?

[grinningman]

You're thinking so... narrow you missed the point entirely chaos. You don't judge a feature by how well the AI uses it. Any feature. Would you say we shouldn't have buildings because the AI doesn't know the right thing to build? We shouldn't have army stacks cause the AI doesn't know how to balance them? We shouldn't have flaming/exploding artillery shots because the AI has no idea how to use them right? We shouldn't have merchants because the AI has no clue what to do with them?

Yes to all those questions.

It's a single player game. Every time the developers think up a new feature, they should ask the questions (1) Can we make the AI use this feature effectively, and (2) will this feature give a huge advantage to the player over he AI? If the answer to (1) is no and (2) is yes, then they shouldn't put it in.

There are always some things that you can put in that add flavour or are just fun, like traits and ancillaries. But in a single player game, the actual game should take precedence over everything else. Don't get me wrong, I love eye candy just as much as the next guy, and I think that it counts for a lot more than some crotchety old TW veterans give it credit for ;-) But my reason for playing TW games is ultimately to make interesting strategic and tactical decisions in order to defeat the computer players.