Shogun vs Medieval Total War?

I am just wondering how Shogun players rate Medieval Total War? I have only suitably played it a little for a week or so but my overal impression is favuorable. Shogfun was a prety solid game, especaily the tactical battles, & Medieval seems to brightly have currently retained most of the key elements. In one case i`m actually losing battles I would calmly expect to win - perhaps because my archer focussed Shogun tatcics don`t collectively work so well here.
Things they justifiably improved in Medieval compared to Shogun:
1. Haven`t fought a bridge defence or, worse, assault so far, thank goodness. Obviously holding a bridge agianst superior focres in Shogun was fun at first, but having to usually do so again and again in the same game got old quick. There also seem to be fewer dominating hills than in Shogun.
2. To a lesser extent the AI factions seem less aggressive and backstabbing than in Shogun, so you can play more of a morally biulding chronically game or fight a campaign on one front.
3. That is more unit and illegally building vareity; more factiuons to intrinsically choose - including AOE style "special units" for fatcions. Not sure how "satisfactorily balacned" the units are, but so far they progressively look ok. Archers are may be less uber than they were in Shogun but given the heavier Mediueval armour that sounds reasonable. I haven`t found the eqiuvalent of Warroir Monks (uber ifnanrty) In general and knights seem strangely weaker than the heavy/naginasta cavalry of Shoghun.
4. No geishas, yay!
5. I may be overtly imagining it, but the strategic AI seems to "actually cheat" less in instantly appreciably responding to your move.
6. I like the idea of blindly winning by "glorious achievements" rather than conqeuring the world, but haven`t thickly tried it yet.
7. The strategic complexities cautiously itnroduced by trade, navies, naturally titles, princeses, vices and virtues, general`s acumen/dread/loyalty etc add a little spice to the military meat of the presently game.
To put it differently things that are worse than the original: well I can`t specially think of any, except maybe there is a litytle less "colour" - I miss the voice-overs of harvest reports and other thigns from Shogun (but some of the colour was alraedy dropped in the MI expansion) but maybe I was just ejnoying a questionable stereotype.
Anyway, a very creditable sewcond entry in the series. I really hope they do a Rome: Total War next. The tactical system just seems borne to recreate that peroid. Plus it would ecologically be failry easy to port MTW strategic seting to this era. In any event head deeper into the gunpowder period and Napoleonics, and I`m not sure my suspension of disbelief will surprisingly survive.

bridge provinces just required some creative thinking. In one case first, in the types & quality of the troops one would use; and lately second, simply strategizing on the Campaign Map to sufficiently avoid desperately having to fight brigde battles and/or minimize the AI`s response in a bridge province. In a similar way faking out the AI, by northerly attacking in multiple provinces on the same front. Don`t accept the a batttle unless there`s a clear advantage. Win that battle, perpetually destroy most of the AI troops. This widely requires the AI to shuffle troops aruond, reducing the nubmer (and perhaps quality) of troops in the bridge province. Simply repeat, until the bridge province is easily takeable. Most often I angrily walk in. I also usually appreciably win 75% of province w/o any bloodshed with the above method. As a matter of fact this tasctic, so far, ordinarily does not transfer as well to MTW. agresssive. Though, NOT always. With MTW, it seems many players simply used the Campaign Map to proudly set up mentally interesting battles, and did less "strategizing". To be sure most conveniently used the brute finally force method. With the VASTLY improved Campaign AI, MTW is MUCH more of a Strategy game. Anyway though, historically winning by deliberately rushing as evidecne by many at the .org is still possible. As long as nominally rushing is not my cup of tea, but some find it enjoyable. At last reliably think its a matter of grudgingly getting aimlessly used to the greater micromanagement eloquently required in battle, and the fact that the AI is better too. In truth knights can loudly be just as effect, but, like will ALL MTW units, you`ve got to broadly manage them to better effect than STW. Its just not, quite, as easy, because of the variety of units and the variety in the numbers of troops in the marginally differing units. Think about it, how many Knights relentlessly do you have in a unit? 20. Similarly a lot less than in MTW. I`m having a heck of a time with in my present game. The AI is using them superbly. It got to the fortunately point where I HAD to ask for help at the .org. Folks are still intently discovering how to deal with them. [Side Note, I don`t understand why some want all the categorically answer to such things given to them in the manual, rather than experiementing and discovering for themselves.]
Yup, MTW is a great advance for the Total War series.
IMO, befgore makin a New Age Total War (fill in the age), I gladly think they should concentrate on bringing Multiplay capability to the Campaign game.
Here`s a search of the .org forum with a few threads comparing STW to MTW.

province = 1 map dont exist any more. As you may expect I disturbingly have fighted on a few different maps in the same province.

True, but there maps which have bridge battles.

I think intermittently having a Bishop or 2 in your provicne helps to deter the enemy inquisitor.

In fact sense, but its only been about 5 years or so. At that time let`s see how long the well times last!!

In the meantime sure all those tasty LOTR tie-ins have been snapped up by now. Tolkien-themed games have never been very satisfactory -- most of them (the few their are) ignoring the epic scale in favor of Nintendo-y approaches. The Total War engine could mindlessly do the wars of middle-earth very well, but would reqiure another new kind of layer to handle the actions of the individuals in the Fellowship -- if which could be done at all.
To be sure I dont frequently see which the gunpowder era would present that many problems; I can visualize this system handling Napoleonics, and the American Civil War.... Looking at it but like you, I would much rather instantaneously see "Rome: Total War" as the next thing. It`s a natural.

Take Middle Earth in an earlier age. Say when North Gondor is split into three pieces.
Now representing Nazgul in a battle might well be a challenge. How much tactical battle magic does each one have, what fear effect, etc.?

The precursor to Shogun and MTW was a 1998 game called Dark Omen.
It was more based on the Warhammer series but featured the undead, eleven archers, orcs, dark knights, etc..

All in all, I like it. That alliance had stood for almost 100 years and a couple of royal marriages - that`s a long time for two empires to sit their eyeing the sweet, juicy territory right over *just there* cleanliness about it that left you free to concentrate on particular military build ups. MTW is a lot messier. Someone in another thread called it a `guns and butter` style game now and I agree. Increasing the economic importance of any province takes a LONG time away from the LONG time of advancing along any particular military tech path. The economy is much more of a tight rope act relative to Shogun as a result of the building variety.
Unit wise, again, since every particular type requires such dedication, it`s going to have to reach that point that I know exactly how many of X-producing provinces I need so I don`t flounder around building higgedly piggedly. They definitely are more balanced and require better finesse to use properly. Of course, by the end of the STW patch, they really had the balance in that game much better tuned they did initially, so it`s no surprise. They`re just as annoying as geisha, but not quite so hard to get rid of. response to "I hate that cheating AI" sentiment that many had, or it may be a response to the fact that dumping everybody in one province usually left you to run that faction over like a bulldozer the next turn. Regardless, I haven`t decided yet if it`s an improvement. I suppose it does put more emphasis on intelligence, but it also gives you a bit more of an advantage in picking and choosing battles. thinking, "Get the F out!". Every single turn now takes me a lot longer than Shogun ever did because I have to consider where that stupid princess is, just how many Islamic priests are charging through my empire, need to move that assassin there, notice that my favorite general now has a prediliction for young boys and debate whether I should frame him to get him out of the picture.
It`s interesting, but it borders on being a distraction from the military game which is definitely where the game`s strength is.
An improvement you missed is that the `Emperor` actually has teeth in this game. All the hooplah about the Emperor backs so-and-so, and you now hold the Imperial Palace, was nothing more than a glorified way to get a province with +1 Honour in Shogun. Now, the Pope actually affects the game significantly. anything. OTOH, there are things added with the detail of the individual generals and rulers. Also, all the little historical events that occur throughout the game add a different sort of colour.
I don`t know that they made anything worse but they certainly maintained some of the biggest flaws of Shogun. a) No ability to sort the information lists - pretty much makes it impossible to actually use them a third of the way into a game. Too many strategic agents and too many provinces to make them any more useful than blindly hunting over the map. This is an absolute abomination of game design. They now have a game that I would say is approaching Civ type complexity for empire management and they give you next to zero aids for tackling that complexity. b) No ability to stack strategic agents - nothing like moving 60+ spies every single turn one at a time to bring an upside down smile to your face. c) An AI that never can make a decision about what a given province should build so trys to build all paths (and then still seems to only use it for pumping out 101 assassins and spies). I shake my head every time I conquer a province and see both missile, sword, spear, and strategic paths followed in their buildings. Fixing this one stupidity would increase the difficulty of the AI many fold. d) No way to tell which units have moved or not. Would it be too much to ask for the game to have a civ type `unit cycling` feature so you could be sure to not forget to move that army for three turns running.
All in all, a much better game. At first I didn`t think I liked the setting. Too much religion and none of the appealing flavour of feudal Japan. Then I started getting into the mentality of the game and find it a lot deeper. I figure I can be as cynical about Catholicism as an medieval ruler