Dominions: Total War

[Agema]

Mm...

TW are making great strides in some areas - diplomacy particularly (bar a few glitches) is much improved. However, in many ways I think the TW system is going downhill. I don't think they are really considering how best to advance with their engine. I would suggest they would be best looking more at the Europa Universalis system for the strategy map: instead I feel they are trying to develop their old engine with new ideas and the two don't mix well. To make a grossly counter-intuitive design decision along the lines that the whole of France (except Alsace Lorraine) is one province means something has gone badly wrong somewhere.

Funnily enough, part of what I'd like to see in TW in a more modern era is actually more restrictions on conquering. Some provinces should be virtually ungovernable due to nationalist sentiment, and there should be a system to make trying to control them essentially impossible, either by inducing everyone else to put diplomatic pressure on you and eventually declaring war, or by there being so much dissent, hatred of your rule and rebellions that it becomes more trouble than it's worth, and there's virtually nothing you can do to ever reduce it.

Added to that, in previous TW games the AI was unexceptional but still seemed to have a sense of purpose. In E:TW, I don't see what it's even trying to achieve half the time.