Playing as a minor faction in Total War games?

[Agamaran]

It's always bothered me that in ETW, NTW, and S2TW:FotS that you cannot play as a minor nation. Is there a trick to playing as one? I personally think it's really boring to play these games on multiple play throughs, as your choices are limited (especially in NTW and S2TW:FotS). So, for example, if I wanted to play an ETW grand campaign as perhaps America or the pirates or as Greece or something like that. Is there a way to do that?

[Hoplite of Ilis]

In Empire, you can play as Greece only as a mod - there are a couple. I don't think Greece was included in the vanila.

[Agamaran]

Yep, just found DarthMod, and he's made one for each game as well, sheesh. That certainly brings up the replay value to games with otherwise very limited faction choices. What exactly was CA's beef with limiting factions so much? In M2TW, you could play as the factions you beat.

[Hoplite of Ilis]

True. Well, let CA do what it wants - as long as they leave the modding doors open!