Gormongous

It's much more useful in the east and north, where it connects every other province and cuts down on the long marching times/circuitous boat rides. Of course, the less technologically savvy clans start in that area, so the end result is almost the same. Edit: I'm honestly trying to keep my glowing first impression of this game in the limelight, rather than the thousand different things that still seem to be wrong with the Total War series, especially ones that I don't really recall in the base campaign. More than anything, the self-destructive tendency of the AI to dogpile the player is back in full force. As the Saga, I've received two boatloads each from the Obama and Odawara on the other side of the map, packed full of green troops. On the one hand, hooray that the AI is attempting amphibious invasions properly now! On the other, both these clans are badly losing wars at home, to the tune of around one province every other turn, and surely those forces would be put to better use defending their home turf. Somehow I doubt they're mistaking the largest faction with the most experienced military for easy pickings. I'm complaining here because I get called a baby when I point out the suicidal AI on the CA forums. I'm not a baby! I mean, I don't think I am. I'm winning the campaign full of amphibious landings handily. It's just annoying and immersion-breaking to watch the AI willfully lose the game in order to give me more of a challenge, something I remember cropping up as far back as Rome: Total War. I guess it's something that Creative Assembly fans share with a lot of Paradox fans. Most of them come for the historical verisimilitude, but a vocal minority just wants to have the crap kicked out of them, which definitely doesn't interest me.

I enjoyed Barbarian Invasion a lot, but think a game built around those concepts of decay and making do, rather than bolted on top of a system designed to conquer the world, would be even more satisfying. Crusader Kings II also isn't quite there, since it's dealing in formalized political conventions, when the heart of the game I love would be focused on creating them, perhaps in a system like the government-building of Alpha Centauri, where individual policies can combine for divergent strategies, or the conquest model of Europa Barbarorum, where the type of local response chosen can set off event chains shaping a region's development. Still, those games comes closer than just about anything else out there to offering an alternative to positivist strategy games predicated on total conquest. Also, I was thinking more that Byzantium would be an intimidating and unplayable outside power that the player would choose to either flatter or antagonize, with appropriate gameplay benefits. There's no need to go into the medievalism of Byzantium here, especially since their history from Theodosius up to 1204 could be a game all its own.

They claimed it was fixed in the latest patch, is this more Creative Assembly optimism?

I'd probably stick to my hobbyhorse. I'd like a strategy game that recreates the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of the post-Roman kingdoms, culminating in Carolingian dominance. Being a historian and not a game designer, I couldn't speak to the mechanics, but I think there are some very interesting tensions there that would play quite well. The integrity of the frontier must be maintained, though too strict would isolate Rome and too lax would leave nothing to defend. This decision could be nuanced by orders from the emperor and requests from Germanic chieftains, often with the intent of presenting a no-win situation, forcing a general to either rebel for his own good or accept a fail state. Likewise, if we move into the fifth century, the currency becomes continuity with Rome. For a newly minted king, to consolidate power is to distance himself from the Roman government he replaced, often with disastrous results. The challenge would be to derive enough legitimacy from diplomatic contacts, military victories, and cultural fusion to transform a society from toady for Byzantium or the Huns to world power, probably much in the vein of current Total War games, but with medievalization instead of modernization. Whenever new scholarship comes out about the Lombard Wars or something like that, all I can think of is how many permutations of strategy game would serve this period in history so well, from King of Dragon Pass to Europa Universalis III. Just the rise of Christianity and the fluidity of ethnicities alone are entire game mechanics in themselves, but as a misunderstood and unglamorous period in history, it's just about as likely as a game about African tribal politics. Actually, reading over this thread, Jaraknarn's game would work just fine in my case too.

I had a fantastic game as Satsuma and then three terrible games as the Aizu. Barreling headlong towards modernization works great as a strategy, but remaining traditional has limited returns. Sooner or later, your technology and income will stagnate, at which point you'll have to modernize. Your choice is merely to do it now and reap the rewards, or do it later and play catch-up. That may be thematic, but it's not a very interesting decision for the average gamer. I could kvetch all day about little things, like that there's not much differentiation between most of the factions except for position, but the atmosphere of the game is really top notch, to the point that I'm uncharacteristically willing to give it a pass on the rough spots. The feeling of sending into battle Imperial Guard Infantry trained at a settlement with a Firing Range and a Gunsmith is a terrifying comment on the brutality and power of modernization, as well as being more or less an "I win" button. Since Crusader Kings II has crapped the bed with the 1.05 release, I've contented myself to another playthrough as the Saga to see how attainable the "republic" win condition actually is, at least until the inevitable DLC fleshes out the traditionalist side of things. Honestly, at this point, I'd have a hard time deciding whether to recommend Fall of the Samurai or the base game itself to a Total War newcomer. The latter has a lot more longevity, but most of that is due to the DLC unit and faction options, in addition to the fairly enjoyable DLC campaign. Fall of the Samurai is a much more concise and poignant love letter to the Japan that was.