The Total War game players can be devided in several categories.
1st Those that play almost any new kind of game. Remember that Age of Empires was already in market. Those players wont bother us in this matter.
2nd Those that interest in :
a) Ancient Battle Simulation. Remember that Shogun I was the 1st game world wide (exept a forgoten game William Wallace or something like that) that could "bring the player in the middle of an actuall battle to the ground level and determine its results by HIS/HERS desisions.
b) Those that were interesting to "repeat" or learn about history but they could also find historical titles with no active action at all.
Shogun I was a brake through and Rome I was a real revolution in battle simulation (as realistic in a game's limitation allows such a feature).
Those can we certainly say that they were the HARDCORE of Total War players.
In the time process 2 more player kinds added.
Those that wanted better automatic battle and campaign results.
Those that focused ONLY in the visual aspect of the game.
These two kinds of players became more in the last years simply because the older kind of players either stoped playing or simply they could not intefear in the game's engine to make it smarter (a basic demand of all HARDCORE old fasioned TW games players).
History is a motive for all those players never the less.
Even that feature/desire though separated the TW players into two major categories.
Those that wished their "nation" to be always victorius.
Those that wished to use the games engines to simulate HISTORY itself inorder to understand better what they read in history books.