so I know many say that it was pretty easy to beat shogun 2 but imo it was much more difficult.
for one your neighbors looked very closely at what you did, if you sacked too many cities or declared too many wars too fast then most of your neighbors would declare war on you (and sometimes they did it for the hell of it) so in order to keep a nice balance between war and peace the player had to be very careful.

although I admit that this feature was a little too much when it came to the entire map/factions always knowing what you do and did which caused factions from the other side of the map to hate your guts.
this feature seems to have been removed from Rome 2 and thats alright but the careful decisions of Shogun 2 seem to be completely gone in Rome 2.

also the huge balancing issues where desert settlements make as much as money as Rome or Alexandria is disturbing at best of times... not mention the huge balancing problems when it comes to some of the units in the game and their diversity compared to other factions (Parthia being completely useless for example).

is there a mod that fixes the above that I mentioned? I understand that mush pits and terrible AI are things that CA will fix eventually but what I mentioned above would most likely take very long... if ever be fixed.

I played some of Radious' mod but I have to say that I did not see much difference graphically or otherwise besides that somehow levies from the deserts will not flee when they got pikes at the front and elephant/cavalry charge combo at their back.