Quote Originally Posted by Poor Bloody Infantry View Post
Hopefully it looks like ETW will have something similar to glorious achievements. I agree, I really don't know why they got rid of them.

Don't understand the lack of different starting periods either, the whole point of the different eras was that you got to sample combat at the different levels of technology more or less equally. In M2TW, you always have to plod through the tedious early period battles of massed spear militia to get to the more diverse unit types, and even then you still had to hope against hope that the AI will have managed to keep up technologically so that the late battles won't be a total mismatch.

Incidentally, if you want to try a late period start, I would recommend the Stainless Steel mod; it features the option to start in the 1200s.
The irony is that in MTW, even if you started @ the early period (which I almost always did), the AI factions tech'd up better than they do in M2TW.

That said, including the time periods in M2TW would almost entirely alleviate the problem of AI factions not tech'ing up to an appropriate level to provide the user with a realistic challenge.

Now with Empire, 1) The AI better be solid gold...so tech'ing up should not even be something we have to discuss once when dealing with the AI...it just needs to work. 2) We're focusing on a different era of warfare and a smaller period of time - with more activity during that period of time. I don't think starting periods should be necessary.