I haven't played ETW since the new patches came out and at the moment I can't see any good reason to go back. This has been quite disappointing to me because the game in its 1.0 state still had great potential, some of which I think has been diminished by the recent patches. I do find it fascinating though how the changes have so polarized opinion. Generally the two camps either say the game is perfect or its an abomination, with very little in between. Personally I don't like the direction the AI is going, that is incredible stupidity mixed with dizzying levels of aggression. Therefore I've put the game aside in the hopes that someday patches or mods can fix things. It's a forlorn hope, but it's more than nothing.

What I'm wondering is how dumb is the ETW AI? Is it a step BACK from RTW/M2TW? If comparing the release 1.0 versions of all three, was ETW ahead of the game? I don't really remember all that much from the past releases other than RTW was called Rome: Total Bribery for a time, and M2TW had the passive AI bug/no naval invasions problem. I guess I want to make sure I'm not unfairly judging this new title, or looking at the past iterations through rose colored glasses. Last thing I want to do is give the game LESS credit than what it currently deserves.