What Total War do you think is the best and why?

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

M:TW, although I must confess that Shogun was a classic also.

Graphics in a game a relatively irrelevant factor in enjoyment I can get out of it. In my opinion, they are only really needed to show the player the essentials of what's going on. Yes, it may be nice to have a photo-realistic experience, but when it comes down to it other factors are much more critical.

On that note, M:TW/S:TW style graphics actually serve the purpose of showing the player what is going on better than Rome and it's successors. Units are easier to define when zoomed out - in Rome everything transforms to a blur of sprites. This is essential for players such as myself, who prefer to watch a battle from overhead rather than from down on the soldier's level of things.

Moving away from the eye-candy perspective, M:TW and S:TW has much better AI both on the field and on the campaign map. R:TW has the major issue of an AI that lacks power and tactical ability. This was effected by the campaign map's change from "risk" style map to a more RTS style map and the complete rewrite for the battle field AI. The AI seems incompetent at flanking and skirmishing. It also doesn't deal with many player tactics correctly, often leaving it vulnerable to exploits which the player can use. This cam make battles unchallenging for a more experienced player.

Another key issue is battle speed. R:TW runs like a Charlie Chaplin movie on fast forward - in other words, painfully fast. Although I could tolerate it when I first entered the TW series, when moving back to it from M:TW, I was forced to tediously modify the files to give units more hitpoints. This speed also leaves less room for both the player and the AI to use any tactical abilities that it may want to.

M:TW is feature filled with epic civil revolts, treason, plot and political intrigue. When it comes to this sort of thing, R:TW is, well, fairly empty. Although it does have some nice new features, such as the "improved" diplomacy, these are often completely broken or the AI simply doesn't know how to use them. There isn't the depth that M:TW has in pretty much every respect.

R:TW is also too easy. I've managed to build up a small Empire (all of Spain and part of Italy to a thin strip of upper Greece) in M:TW, but it took me from the start of the early period to 1453 to actually complete. I was also not the most powerful faction - the English were a lot more successful that me, and the Byzantines were battering me on the Greek front. Building up this empire took me many attempts. Several times I failed in my take over bids and had to start again. Also several times I foolishly declared war on the English, and had them landing in all my coastal provinces within a matter of a few short turns.

In R:TW I've only lost a campaign once and, regardless of who I play as, I always seem to end up controlling a large mass of land very quickly. This isn't helped by the ease of fund raising - in my largest M:TW empire I've never earnt more than 2,000 florins per turn (after costs have been subtracted). In R:TW a similar sized empire would be granting me infinite funds of about 50,000 denarii+ per turn.