Stainless Steel really ‘fixed’ those issues without going overboard imo. It had been simplified in some weird ways (e.g., I think England only had 2-3 towns and Scotland 1-2, so the geography and strategic maneuvering for an England campaign was very limited/boring at the start).

The mod The best Total War: Rome 2 mods Rome 2 still holds a special place in. Having been a fan of the original Shogun and Medieval I, I was sorely disappointed when I finally got around to Medieval II. That means many tutorials covering all aspects are floating around cyberspace. That said, it had a nice customization system (on install and/or game launch I think) so you could enjoy some of its most fundamental improvements (like a bigger/denser map with more regions and some balance/AI/bug fixes) without necessarily going for the advanced realism stuff that can be more hit or miss (IIRC there were some options that added/changed army attrition and other stuff that might add a bit too much hidden logistics to the game). A new trailer just came out for Amazon: Total War, an overhaul mod for Rome: Total War that adds a new campaign map. It took a bit of reading for me to get into Stainless Steel (it’s one of these massive mod projects with tons of sub-forums for sub-mods and fairly significant changes between releases so you can find people advocating for previous versions of the mod).

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