I played a little bit of MTW not long ago for the first time in years, and I think it took away the rose-tinted specs a bit. I have to say, navagating the battlemep was a bit of a nightmare, the camera is a lot more awkward than in M2TW.

Although when I played MTW in the past, I never really took it seriously enough to maybe appreciate the AI like others here. Although I still remember the AI being a lot smarter than in M2TW. With M2TW I could practically play battles on auto-pilot, the AI never did anything interesting.

On the other hand, M2TW looks and handles much nicer. Plus Kingdoms was a great expansion pack, I loved the atmosphere of the Americas campaign.

So I'm not voting, I'm just going to say they are different.