So far, these are my two cents on the battle system. I've only two complaints about it, which I'll get out of the way first.
The first - cavalry. They seem to be a bit more difficult to control and less obedient, esspecially when it comes to charging, though that's partly my fault since I realize that they charge better if you get them to stop completely before the charge, though they should at least charge a little even if you order them right into an enemy unit.
The other HUGE gripe I have is with gunners. Handgunners, Arquebusiers, and Musketeers are horrible units. No, their guns are, indeed, excellent weapons, however, they themselves are horribly done. The whole line rotation is terrible. It means that after firing once they lines rotate and they spend the greater part of a minute changing their formation then about another 15 seconds standing there before they raise their guns and take 10 more seconds to fire. I've fought whole battles in Custom Battles and online where I've had gunners fire only once or twice the entire time. It makes them kind of worthless. I really hope CA revises this terrible situations. I mean, I thought that in Medieval, they were annoying because their reload time was long, but here, it's not even about the reload time, it's about them doing such unnecessary things, like having to be in a perfect line in order to fire.
Apart from those two things, my opinion of the battle system is solid. Sieges are appropriately more difficult. The AI isn't HUGELY improved, but it's certainly better than Rome's AI to the point where I've actually get Narrow Victories or Average Victories when I play Custom Battles as opposed to winning Clear Victories. Of course it's always annoying that the reason they're tougher on Hard and Very Hard is less because the AI's legitimately better, but because your men rout more easily.
The period system is more fun as it allows more fun battles, IMO as is the system of Florins per team as per Medieval Total War. It's excellent as you can balance it for sieges and lopsided maps. Hopefully people online take advantage of the excellent possibilities of money balancing.
The graphics - infintely better. They're simply excellent. They might not actually be too far ahead of Rome's but they're far enough. This, coupled with the fact that men in the units are fairly unique, makes the grapics extremely impressive.
It also seems that certain units have been balanced differently. Light units are no longer worthless against heavy units. I've had Sword and Buckler Men who are registered as light infantry hold off far heavier infantry and Almughavars have done similar things, being able to hold off fairly heavy cavalry.
Over all, it seems that balance is far better from what I've played. Factions are better balanced with their units even though they have diverse units with different roles as opposed to being lopsided or being balanced by being generic.
I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. ~George Carlin[This message has been edited by Ace Cataphract (edited 11-16-2006 @ 06:51 PM).]