Ok, so game has been out for 2 years now...

[TheLastPrivate]

Just like many other games these days mods keep it alive. RC and SS are completing the game by doing what CA should have done before the game was released.

[Gaiseric]

If you find the AI to be to much of a push over, you should use ironman rules for yourself to make the game more challenging and rewarding.

Most of the battles I fight involve flanking the enemy and hiting them from the sides and rear resulting in mass rout. I spend more time in every battle chasing routers than I do fighting the enemy. Recently I have limited my use of flanking and it has made the battles last much longer and much more enjoyable. You will get higher casualties, but the battles will be more fun.

The Broken Cresent Mod adds to the difficulty by adding an area of recruitment system where you can only recruit tough and elite units around your home provices. Not being able to retrain and reinforce your armies without marching armies from your homelands can be a great challenge.

There are also other mods that add alot of cool features to keep the game interesting. Lands to Conquer gives enormous amounts of money to the AI to make it field some tough stacks. Deus Lo Vult adds an RPG element that makes it more fun to develop your generals. Stainless Steel adds a huge map with many playable factions and with a good AI.

MTW2 will remain a great game so long as it remains challenging and rewarding for the player. The more experianced player may find some bugs here and there, but none of them should be gamebreakers for the casual player. Although I would love to see another patch, I think that CA has done a good job of providing support for their product. Whats really awsome is that CA allows people to mod the game as much as they do. If your a more experianced player and are looking for a greater challenge try some mods.

[DisruptorX]

Just like many other games these days mods keep it alive. RC and SS are completing the game by doing what CA should have done before the game was released.

SS makes the campaign level AI brutal. They just keep sending stack after stack after you, as it should be.

The battle level AI is slightly better, in that it'll do things such as seek out your general. Still pretty easy, but an improvement.

Only problem I've had with it is it makes the Khwarezmian Empire so powerful that it just straight outright crushes the mongol invasion. In my current game, I had one of my Cuman generals (now Khan) send a raiding party out to sack and destroy every building in most of their cities so that they'd be weakened. Mongols haven't struck yet, so we'll see how it works out.

[PBI]

Only problem I've had with it is it makes the Khwarezmian Empire so powerful that it just straight outright crushes the mongol invasion. In my current game, I had one of my Cuman generals (now Khan) send a raiding party out to sack and destroy every building in most of their cities so that they'd be weakened. Mongols haven't struck yet, so we'll see how it works out.

Yes, I find this too; especially in the late starting period, the Khwarezm not only consistently beat the Mongols, but utterly crush them. TBH though I find it's a relief, I much prefer the fighting the well-balanced stacks the normal factions generally field in SS to the uber-powerful Mongol stacks which I find can only be beaten by either using cheap exploits or tedious attrition.

I guess it's because of the drip-drip-drip approach the AI takes to offensives, sending a single stack at a single city and making very slow progress and only sending a second wave once the first has either failed or achieved its objective. The Mongols start with a massive advantage in numbers, but have no way of replacing their losses while the Khwarezmians have the income to continually raise troops. What is needed for the Mongols to capitalise on their initial advantage is to attack relentlessly with all their forces, which is exactly what the AI is bad at doing.

In all honesty, I think that M2TW in its current incarnation with the patches installed and with any of the major mods (though SS is my personal favourite) is not at all deserving of still having the bad reputation the game had at release. Virtually all of the major bugs are gone (shield bug, 2h animations, pike bug etc), the combat model is well balanced and enjoyable, and meanwhile it does have all the fancy features and graphics not present in earlier titles which all in all adds up to an excellent game. The only real remaining weakness I can think of is the battlefield AI which, although much improved, still shows flaws from time to time.