STW vs MTW

[O'Hea]

This is as you say countered to a certain extent by the MTW rosters that are very unbalanced, VI campaign included.

In my opinion, VI's balance was far worse than Shogun or vanilla Medieval, and may have even been a little worse than Rome roster-wise. Huscarles were just too good, only the Picts and Irish had decent missile troops, and everyone's cavalry was lousy. And life was just way too easy for the Vikings.

[Puzz3D]

In my opinion, VI's balance was far worse than Shogun or vanilla Medieval, and may have even been a little worse than Rome roster-wise. Huscarles were just too good, only the Picts and Irish had decent missile troops, and everyone's cavalry was lousy. And life was just way too easy for the Vikings.

The average armor is much higher in MTW than in STW, but the bow weapon (except for longbow) is unchanged so the archers are much less effective. Guns are also much less effective, and the xbows take too long to reload. The result is less playbalance in the RPS system of MTW than in STW.

[O'Hea]

The average armor is much higher in MTW than in STW, but the bow weapon (except for longbow) is unchanged so the archers are much less effective. Guns are also much less effective, and the xbows take too long to reload. The result is less playbalance in the RPS system of MTW than in STW.

Guns were the only thing I really found disappointing, but I think in a way it's justified by the timeframe. If the game ran into the 16th century like Medieval II, then the lack of effective guns would be inexcusable, but by cutting it off at the fall of Constantinople they really end it just before guns became a major part of tactics (same can be said of pikes).

[gollum]

Indeed, however what Puzz3D rightly says is that bow units are worthless more or less in MTW and all the more in the VI campaign that only the Picts get crossbows. This makes it very easy to win on the autocalc by simply overproducing high armor units like armored spears.

In effect, in MTW there is no stopping a melee oriented army. In STW on the other hand spears can suffer heavily from SAs, and although the AI is not very adept to use this, it makes a world of difference in playbalance, particularly in mp.

The VI campaign sounds like a good idea in terms of balance on paper but in actuality is very unbalanced as you say, perhaps indeed even slightly more unbalanced than RTW.