I don't know, I think it's a matter of tastes
I like brunettes much more than blondes, ie
I understand that small armies things. yeah, and you're right about that.
But you have to understand that new games engine codes are much much more complicated.
You may consider rome 2 and attila as first trials for building a more complex AI behaviour.
It's quite clear that CA failed with rome2 and attila.
But you're talking with a guy who has never found any real difference while doing battles in any TW game
They really always seemed the same to me, from m2tw vanilla till modded wh2...
let's say that i'm a campaign guy.
returning on tastes... I've modded extensively both old engine (m2tw only) and new engine games.
While I abandoned old engine games because the apex of moddability was reached quite soon (not talking about lua injector and other engine overhauls)... I now know that I could keep modding new engine games for virtually decades, before start saturating the modding potentialities