M2TW, does anyone like the original better

[King Kurt]

TREACHERY AND PERFIDY! Well I'm glad to see you're liking the newer games King Kurt. Personally I could never get into RTW or M2TW - though I prefer even RTW to the latter. In my case the battles are the big game breaker.

About the movement issue; that's a valid point but I believe that a balance between the two would have been better. In MTW this was one of the big flaws along with the 1 year per turn system, which meant that some armies could jump from Scotland to Egypt in a single turn - literally this is fine as 1 year = 1 turn but in gameplay terms it's bad. Though with RTW it was painful walking your agents/army stacks bit by bit from i.e. western Anatolia to southern Egypt.

Treachery and Perfidy from Caravel - I'm honoured!!!

To be honest I haven't played that many battles under MTW2 yet, but they seem less challenging than under MTW. However I used to find that I didn't play many battles under MTW. For the first few years battles would be close and I would play every one, but once a campaign had got going the battles I felt the need to play drastically deminished as I would have stacks of good quality troops under 5/6/or 7 star generals and the results were always a foregone conclusion. The odd problem would crop up, but I did feel that within MTW, once your empire reached a critical mass, there was an inevitability in your winning/ conquering the world. I always dropped out at the 60% mark or there abouts, only once going all the way to a 100% victory. In contrast I have probably played, in proportion, more battles in RTW. In particular I remember a small Egyptian force defending a river line who held off a sucession of attacks from superior Selucid forces, enabling me to sucessfully beseige Antioch. Now you could say that the AI was a bit dumb by trying to do the same thing 5 or 6 times, but each battle was a close run thing with my small force holding off the larger. Moreover, you could not really set up a similar situation in MTW.

So I suppose what I am saying is that on a strategic level I am enjoying the newer games more than MTW as there is more to do, more to go wrong and more challenge. The shorter campaign gives you an option to face similar problems to history. Of the 2 I prefer MTW2 over RTW. RTW has far too much city micromanagement for me and I spend more time sorting revolting cities than I do conquering the world. As for MTW vs MTW2 - well the jury is still out. MTW was a game that really gripped me - I wanted to play it whenever I could. I feel a similar passion for MTW2 but not to the same intensity yet, but it is early days.