Quote Originally Posted by Gregoshi View Post
I can't comment on M2TW or ETW, but in RTW (at least the way I played it) there was rarely a reason to leave the roads. This often meant the battles were fought on boring flat maps with little in the way of terrain. With the Risk style map of STW/MTW, you were forced to fight on a variety of terrain: hills/mountains/valleys, forests, rivers.
The roads in RTW were more designed along Roman ideas. Only build them on nice flat open land. M2TW had roads that went into more winding and hilly areas. One of the first battles I fought in M2TW was on a road. Holding off a Crusader army heading for Jerusalem. In the foothills of the Lebanese mountains/highlands. The actual battle map had mountains to my right and a cliff to my left. My army was blocking the road. My generals bodyguard was standing right on the cobblestones. And since I only got ETW a few months ago I haven't a road battle yet. But using the roads isn't necessarily the best way to get around. For example getting to Tbilisi from the capital of Chechnya/Dagestan is fastest using the roadless pass through the Caucasus north east of Tbilisi. Rather than the roads which go the long way around the mountains.

Quote Originally Posted by Gregoshi View Post
The map looks gorgeous, but I was a little disappointed that it was a RTW style map as well. However, I will reserve judgement until later. I like the return of the videos and the increase in possible outcomes. The family tree is a cool idea, but as I recall from RTW, it started getting too unwieldy trying to keep track of all your faction relatives and generals. Again, I will reserve judgement until later. I hope the geshia is toned down. They were an agent I would have loved to use more but they had such a powerful impact on the game. It was not fun when your daimyo had to play tag with an enemy geshia knowing that if she tagged you, you were almost guaranteed dead.

Overall, it was nice to see some more of the game, but I wish the reviewer was someone with experience playing STW and idealy all the TW games.
The RTW style map is better in all respects. I had serious problems with that risk style map. If CA had stuck with it I'd have dropped TW years ago. It kills the campaign game's immersion factor.

One way also would be to dramatically increase the range armies could move in the strat map, so your castles wouldnt be safe from attack from any province in vicinity. One thing bothering me ever since RTW has been that the short distance army can move per turn gives away them way too easily and gives the player all the time in the world to prepare his defences, or even counter march the enemy from longer distance, because the AI armies tend to wonder around bit and not move directly towards target.
They already have done that. In M2TW they increased movement speeds a bit. In ETW they increased them a lot. Land movement was doubled compared to RTW/M2TW. And sea movement was I think tripled. Example: In RTW to move a fleet across the Med (from the Dardanelles to Gibraltar) would take ~10 turns. In ETW it takes 4 turns.