Although I may hold some negative views about this game at the present, nevertheless I want my criticism to be known as constructive, rather than desultory. I wouldn't want people from CA to feel exasperated every time they chance upon this board and come across nothing but non-stop criticism. Therefore I will balance out the outspoken view of myself and some other people, with words of encouragement and praise of what CA's done with W:TW, and the parts of it that it has made to work well.
So without much further ado, here's what I genuinely liked about the game:
-The BAI. It has improved immensely. Cavalry is now smart about where it goes, and enemy unit formations launch attacks at points where the AI "senses" it will hurt the most. They avoid getting pulled in by ranged fire (a common exploit in M2TW) and in general I haven't come across ways in which I could exploit it. Most importantly it challenges the player without the feel of cheap or artificial stat advantages.
-The battle line and unit micromanagement. This is where I believe CA deserves the most praise. Unit pathing for the most part is flawless, control over either individual units or groups feels organic and responds to both player input and battlefield situations. Units keep logical, sensible formations and don't mosh together or break up, they maintain their facing against the opponent without awkwardly jerking back and forth like in Rome II. In my opinion, the game engine was finally made to potentially deliver the battle experience the way it was meant to be. I would in go so far as saying that W:TW's combat engine renders the best, most stable and fluent battles to date in a TW game. Although of course there's a long way to go in terms of unit balancing affecting tactical flow of combat. I detailed my criticism the combat model and dearth of tactical options available to the player,
here.
-Monster units strike that tender balance between being actually useful in combat, especially at tying up large formations, yet not so overpowered as to warrant fielding entire stacks of them.
-I had an overall enjoyable time with the campaign, especially the orcs.
So in summary, as long as CA listens to its user base and continues to update the game with DLC's and patches which will improve and broaden the campaign side, add features such as formations, more tactical options in combat, and more battle types (river battle, encampment battle, mountainous/difficult terrain battle, magical area battle) and most importantly, releases map edit and modding tools, then I'd be quite satisfied with the state of the franchise.