I moved from age of empires 3 to RTW a few months ago and I was astonished by it's tactical depth(you don't know what crappy gameplay is if you haven't seen cuirassiers surviving direct hits from artillery, or never missing musketeers).

I was in doubt whether M2TW was worth buying it or not, when a friend of mine told me that if I wanted to play real strategy I should get MTW. The no further patching policy of M2TW/Kingdoms is just another motivation to search Ebay for a copy of MTW.