Still a good game but very inconsistent in places. Performance HOG! Sea Battles? Meh... Battle Map
Bugs and poor performance optimization - You need a very good ($$$) computer to play this game.
AI is dumb - I was attacked like 3 times on normal difficulty in the grand campaign. Had to do all the attacking my self and Fort/Starfort AI is just plain annoying. Hides inside fort and only comes out to attack either if you have a Rocket squad harassing them or if you bait them by leaving your artillery temporarily vulnerable.
When you fight armies on an open field, they might attack once, retreat, and then just stand there while your artillery slowly picks them off. You would think that they just copypasta'd the AI system from their previous games. I mean you can't fault them for bad AI back then, but they are supposed to make improvements over time.
Battle Maps, btw, are a big disappointment. They are empty and uninspired. After the big and detailed cities/ castles of Medieval 2, these cities look like small little villages composed of some arbitrarily place buildings and some farm land. IF im attacking, London, or Moscow or Istanbul i don't want to see some little farm village represent these cities! I know that battles for cities were not fought inside the cities themselves but the dev's could have at least put silhouettes of the city you are conquering in the background or something. Could have at least modleld a couple of complete city replicas for the bigger world capitals or something. As you can tell, this was my biggest letdown. Really takes away from the immersion.
The much hyped and advertised sea battles - A nice addition but not completely necessary. Again, the AI is dumb and lacks the competence to form any strategy. Also, and i don't know if this would have changed if i played battles at a harder difficulty but, by the time i had 3rd 2nd and f1st rate ships (The best huge size ships) i was still fighting enemy fleets consisting of Sloops or Indiamen (beginner ships) which tend to just retreat right away which gives you a "Victory!" right away. So, after a while you just auto-resolve naval battles just like you would in Medieval 2 Total War.
Overall, its still playable and i have finished the Grand Campaign plus the American Independence levels but feels rushed and could have been better.