I must disagree with your review (but I love the screenshot, I didnt know you could look at your units with that much detail). I have played the game many times, its one of the few I often fall back on to play. I will admit, sometimes the computer will be rather stupid and let itself be picked apart by archers, but those times are few. Often it does a decent enough job of moving its troops that you actually have to think and react properly to combat it. I am nearly always a better general than the computer, but I have to work hard at it and I like that,
My main reason for loving the game is the realism built into it - and if you read gamespot reviews it definately gets the 'Oh, Snap!" award - when something happens where it just stuns you. My favorite two occurences are thus...
1: Im up on a hill defending and the enemy king is leading his army against me. I have a few capatpults defending against his 800 or so guys. Ive maybe killed the first 8 and I decide to watch a catapult boulder during its flight. It lands square in the middle of the royal knights leading the charge against me and I get the message "The enemy king has been slain in battle!" I laughed my ass off - and its great that you have a chance, albiet small, to pick off a certain guy in the middle of a unit.
2: I was the english and the french were my main target as I had to get through them to gain more land. I was constantly excomminicated for attacking a fellow christian faction. So I got pissed off at being excomminicated and my happiness going down that I landed a huge army on the papal states and took them over - and got the message that I removed the pope and put a puppet pope on the throne. That was just awesome and let me get away with a ton of stuff - but I had to guard against them trying to take it back every few turns.
Other great stuff is the moral value - troops run when flanked or losing too badly and it really makes you have to plan and think a lot more. I was seriously out-numbered in a battle and even though I was winning my troops ran because the enemy kept on coming in more and more waves. Morale and troops fleeing overwhelming numbers was a serious concern back in the day, and even in mordern warfare, so adding that to game does really increase the realism. Their goal in making the game seems to have been realism, and they hit it head on.
