The 3D real time battles look a bit more exciting than the Empire ones, those get old really fast ... the epic battles usually end as mess.
From memory :
Yelling at my troops, why cant you align properly ...is that pebble really in the way ?
Shoot you morons , SHOOOT!! What the [ beeep ] are you waiting for ? they are in your range!
Nooo! Dont go that way, theres a metric shit ton of guns and troops there, the other way !
Why cant you kill them, they are pulling a bloody cannon ( to my Calvary, who could catch up to the retreating cannon pulling enemy, just couldnt seem to actually kill them ).
One battle I vividly remember had me with half my forces rendered useless, not by the brilliant enemy AI strategy ... nooo, because a good portion of my deployment zone was in area with no means to exit, my units couldnt get off the plataue and so I couldnt use them.
The sea battles was atrocious, enemy AI seemed only capable of trying to run circles around your fleet, but that was balanced by your own units moronic AI firing broadsides at the wrong target as you manually try swing the ship to take out a more imminent threat.
The battles got quiet dull in the long run, especially the sea battles but I dare not use the auto resolve... once I used it as I had a everwhelming advantage, and the auto resolve resulted in a heavy loss for me.
I am planning on getting this game ( but not the inevitable Sega driven DLC flood ), and hope they fixed up the AI , Pathfinding and spiced up the 3D battles a bit.
