Conquering Empire Total War World as United Provinces - Part 2

So back to my World Conquest adventure! First part was here.

I started assassinating and duelling, mostly for achievement's sake, as both activities are fairly pointless. If you kill someone, they respawn new agent of same type next turn anyway most of the time.

More Indian and Italian Wars

For a while I was just fighting rebels, and the only settlement I got was Northwest Territory on exactly that part of New World map.

My Italian and Indian unrest got dealt with about the same time, so I started fresh wars with Indians and with Spain same turn.

Indian war was one stack on Mysore, the other on Goa, and then giving Marathas 5 techs to peace them out. I do this nonsense mainly to avoid naval combat. Indians still outnumber my armies there, but I'm not terribly worried about that.

By the way it looks like the game is keeping track how many times tech was trades, so that explain why AI is so unwilling to take a seemingly reasonable deal.

Same turn, attack Spanish holding in Italy. I took Milan and Sardinia with one stack. Then Naples and Tunis with the other.

By the way here's the trick for same turn naval invasions:

• have one unit in army have less movement - artillery does it for free, but you can also move your unit a bit
• do naval landing, that's supposed to reset all units' movement points to 0
• but it actually just subtracts however much the lowest one how
• so everyone can move and attack!
• and those units with 0 move - they're still close enough to be reinforcements

I guess it's technically exploit, same as jumping from ship to another mid-ocean, but I've always been playing with it.

Then I gave Spain 3 techs for peace. Same reason, I really don't want any naval combat.

I was technically at war with Poland and Bavaria as well - Bavaria took a peace deal where they'd take 3 techs for peace, but give me some money. Works for me. Poland was too far to matter anyway.

Persian Wars

I took Morocco as it was basically defenseless. In New World Spain defeated army of natives in Texas, so I moved in to take it over.

Marathas had 3 nearly full stacks, but they spread them around their last province, so I attacked them, and in one final battle conquered India.

Marathas literally asking to be conquered by moving their stacks away from their capital

This was extremely important, as my Indian army can finally move to another theater - this theater being conquering my way from India through Persia into Ottoman lands. Persia was doing extremely well and conquered its way all the way to Anatolia, so I could attack them from three sides - Italian army landing in Anatolia, Indian army landing in Persia, and a few freshly recruited spare units walking into undefended Afghanistan and Baluchistan.

While losing to me Persians managed to conquer Syria, so I dropped my Moroccan troops there.

By 1727 Persia was destroyed and I had 63 regions. Still very far to go.

This is a fairly standard formation, I kept changing my mind between placing inf 3/2/2/3 or 2/3/3/2

Secular Humanism

A lot of minors have been taken out by other powers. I took Georgia, taking the list to just 8 major and 8 minor powers other than me.

I finally got my first achievement this campaign - Assassin! for assassinating 20 characters. It's fairly pointless other than achievement for achievement's sake.

The next important event was invention of Secular Humanism, which cuts religious unrest by half. In a fully Muslim province that meant going from -10 to just -5, which means 5 fewer turns of babysitting a province, for every such province. Reduction is much less for other religions, like Catholic provinces go from -2 to -1, but it's still a turn saved.

My New World armies started another one with Iroquois and their ally Quebec. Quebec itself was already taken by Britain, but they took two British settlements instead. Iroquois stacks showed up really far from their homelands, and were about to take 2 of my undefended settlements, so I ended up bribing them with 4 techs as recompense for taking 2/3 of their provinces. I think it's fair.

This freed my armies all over, and my Indian armies were finally coming to European theater, landing in Mesopotamia and walking from there. So I started a big war with Russia, whose allies were Poland (already at war) and Denmark (exiled to Iceland). Denmark decided to value its life and didn't come to Russia's defence, first such case this campaign.

Invasion of Russia

With this out of the way, I moved most of my armies from Europe and India to Russia, and they were slowly walking North. There really wasn't much risk to it - Russia had only 5 ships in the Mediterranean which I sunk, and Poland had none. And fortunately winter attrition has not been intended until the next Total War game.

I try to have artillery superiority, but when I don't (4 Russian vs 3 mine) cavalry charge from one or both sides can often fix it.

I'm using Horde Grenadiers from Additional Units Mod, they're like early Light Dragoons but you can only have 8 and they're a bit heavier and pricier.

Russia decided to interfere with my plans by selling Kazan to the Ottomans. I got up to Moscow itself, then peaced them out taking 5000 gold from them. I then bought Kazan from the Ottomans for ridiculous number of 12 or so technologies. Ridiculously they decided to sell me Jerusalem for alliance and 1 more tech. Sure, we can be allies. Nice thing about bought settlements is that they are completely undamaged and with zero resistance to occupation.

Then I remembered Iroquois I was about to attack are allied to Poland and Russian. Oh well, turns out Russia did not honor that anyway. Funny thing is that I captured native university equivalent, that gives 20 research points and +2 happiness, normal universities outside capital give just 17 and -6 happiness.

Diplomatic Interlude

I was sort of wondering if countries will align in competing blocks, but nothing like that happened, and there's alliance chain covering almost everyone.

Denmark, Prussia, and Plains Indians are all separate. Everyone else is in one big alliance block, where countries at war also have shared allies.

Here's how I'm connected with everyone:

• Netherlands - Britain
• Netherlands - Ottomans
• Netherlands - Ottomans - Sweden
• Netherlands - Hannover
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Bavaria
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Bavaria - Spain
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Wurttemberg
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Wurttemberg - Austria
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Wurttemberg - Austria - Venice
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Poland
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Poland - Courland
• Netherlands - Hannover - Westphalia - Poland - Russia

There's also 17 ongoing wars, 12 of them between countries in the big cluster.

For other events, Hannover, Bavaria, and Courland all disappeared for a while and were brought back to life by rebels. As did some other countries which have since ceased to exist. I've only seen one of such events - Sweden and Prussians kept fighting over Hannover, while leftovers of rebels just swoope into the city, and that made Hannover reemerge, hilariously at peace with both of them.

Strangely I haven't seen any revolutions yet, and I remember a lot of countries flipping to republics by late game in my old campaigns years ago.

Invasion of Poland

With Russian campaign temporarily halted, I invaded Poland instead. Poland was conveniently also at war with Prussia, Austria, Sweden, and somehow Spain.

Prussia attacked my ally Hannover and for the first time this campaign I decided to honor my obligations, and entered war on Hannover's side. This was risky as Hannover's tiny army was all that stood between Prussian and my capital.

After getting to East Prussia as my 80th region of 137, I sold Poland a peace treaty for 10k. Poland did not appreciate my generosity, and when I went back to fight Russia a turn later, they rejoined Russia's war.

Fighting Russia, Poland, and Prussia at the same time was a bit awkward - Prussia and Poland had between them 8 stacks (and some Polish rebels) to my 1 stack Warsaw and 1 in Ukraine. Fortunately AI is rather passive, separates stacks from each other a lot, and typical result of 1 full stack vs 1 full stack battle is a total destruction with losses of 10%-20%.

A baffling thing happened and Polish protectorate of Courland declared war on me. In an even more baffling move, Poland sold its second last region of Riga to Spain. Like that wasn't enough, Russia became Swedish protectorate, but that doesn't drag their protector into any preexistent wars, and at that point it was far too late for them anyway.

Poland fell in winter 1734. In summer 1735 I destroyed three countries - Plains Nations (which is so far in map of America and not worth it except for achievement), Courland, and Russia, getting me to 90/137 regions.

Invasion of Prussia

Even after I destroyed one of their stacks on holidays in Silesia, Prussia had over 2 full stacks in Brandenburg and Saxony, and any attack on one would make the other one reinforce.

There are fun tricks around that, but Prussia decided to just take their Brandenburg troops, only 15 of max 20, without general (since I assassinated one, and they never replaced him), and walked to fight me on a bridge battle. Well, if you want to lose, I can provide that.

That didn't go anywhere as well as I expected. Empire does ridiculous thing with bridge maps and gives them two crossings, making them far less fun, so it much less effective than it should be. And I discovered some fun bugs as well - when you tell cavalry to cross a bridge, it will ignore all your orders until the last soldier finishes crossing. So my units of attacking unprotected enemy artillery they went head first into some pikes.

Prussia sold Saxony to Sweden, and had just one province with 2 nearly-full stacks in it.

Well, I can't always have easy fights - so I took my two stacks against them, and even consolidated a lot of units between first and second battle as they were heavily battered.

And so ended Prussia in winter 1735. That leaves just 5 major and 6 minor powers competing with me. And I'm at peace with all of them.

With all that region trading I tried to see if I can buy some region, but nobody was interested. The best thing about Total War Three Kingdoms is that CA finally figured out that showing AI weights make diplomacy ten times better, sadly not a single game before then had this feature, so I have no idea why they're not doing some deal and if some other deal would be possible instead.

Armies which conquered 2/3 of the world

I took a few turns to move my scattered armies back to frontlines, and deal with widespread unrest. I abolished slavery, which made very little difference.

I had very small army at this point - 126 units, basically 5 stacks and some rebel suppression units:

• 5x General
• 57x Line Infantry (8x Swiss Grenadiers, 17x European, 16x Colonial, 14x VOC, 2x Sepoys)
• 28x 12lber artillery
• 5x Native American Mounted Auxiliary (low level missile cavalry)
• 8x Horse Grenadier Guards (elite missile cavalry)
• 5x Melee Cavalry (1x Regiment of Horse, 1x Hussars, 3x VOC Cavalry)
• 18x Dragoon (not meant for fighting, just policing bonus)

By comparison, rest of the world had this for armies, 478 units:

• 14x Gerenal
• 184x Line Infantry and similar missile infantry
• 21x Light Infantry
• 53x Pikemen and other Melee Infantry
• 57x Artillery
• 139x Melee Cavalry
• 2x Dragoons
• 8x Missile Cavalry

And for ships I have crazy much 294, but it's almost all trade ships and light transports:

• 274x trade ships
• 14x Sloop
• 2x Brig
• 2x 6th Rate
• 2x 5th Rate

Rest of the world invests very heavily in war navies, 223 ships:

• 1x 2nd Rate
• 2x 3rd Rate
• 9x 4rd Rate
• 17x 5th Rate
• 11x 6th Rate
• 3x Bomb Ketch
• 59x Brig
• 45x Sloop
• 16x Privateer
• 23x Galleon
• 24x Indianman
• 9x Galley
• 2x Xebec
• 2x Dhow

I think AI overuses cavalry like crazy, gets absolutely no value from them, and it would be far better off buying more artillery. Its light infantry and melee infantry are actually not too bad.

My typical stack

My stack is typically 10 infantry, 6 artillery, 1 general, and 3 other cav (missile if possible; melee otherwise), deployed like this left to right:

• cav cav
• inf inf inf
• art art
• inf inf
• art art
• inf inf
• art art
• inf inf inf
• cav cav

Cavalry usually stays a bit behind - it might only go into action to chase routing enemies, or it could get deployed to reinforce melee on a flank, or go on a charge against enemy artillery.

This formation obliterates enemy melee cavalry, and it's very good against enemy line infantry. It's actually somewhat weak to melee infantry as they charge into me, and artillery can't shoot them without friendly fire. It's also fairly weak to light infantry, as they have higher range than line infantry, and forcing my line infantry forward obstructs nearby artillery from shooting in same direction.

My economy in 1737

My income was 86k from taxes, 64k from trade, 3k from base income, 153k total.

Of that trade, 25k comes from trade ships, 19k from plantations (not sure why European fur isn't listed there), and the rest from various bonuses from having multiple trade partners (7 right now).

My spending is 34k army upkeep, 15k navy upkeep (mostly trade ships), 2k town watch, 52k total, so 101k net income.

Blitzkrieg of Venice and Austria

None of the possible targets were particularly easy, but I picked Venice and their ally Austria as next target. Venice expanded from 2 to 4 provinces - Venice, Morea, Algiers, and Tripoli. Austria had 5 of its starting 6 as it lost Silesia already.

It was annoying that once again I had a lot fewer units than my opponents (not counting units in New World, on garrison duty, or still walking back from Siberia), so I expanded my army a bit. The problem wasn't beating their armies in fair fight, it was Venice walking on Tunis or Morocco or Rome or Genoa or whatever and all my stacks being in the wrong place.

Two new stacks I raised in Italy had some Light Cavalry Sharpshooters, Horse Artillery, and other newer troops, but mostly followed similar build.

With 5 stacks moving in at once, it was really not much of a challenge.

Venice performed really well, and my attack on Tripoli killed half the soldiers in my army, mostly because it turned into an total mess really early.

In one turn I had two small battles with border stacks from Austria, then each attacked a city - Tripoli, Venice, Prague, Pressburg, and Vienna.

This meant I finally had unbrocked land route all the way from Amsterdam to India! It was a bit roundabout, going through France, Italy, Vienna, Poland, Ukraine, Caucasus, and Persia, but it works.

The Vienna stack also left its artillery behind and marched on new Austrian capital of Zagreb.

I wasn't done. I let Austrians peace out keeping their last province of Transylvania to kick surprisingly big Austrian navy out of it. That let me move my Venice stack to Morea. 1 turn, 7 provinces taken. That's alse 3 provinces with -30 unrest, but I just recruit Dragoons to babysit that these days.

Venice's last holding of Tripoli fell next turn.

Blitzkrieg of Spain

Finally it was time to destroy Spain - they had 3 settlements in Iberia (Madrid, Lisbon, Gibraltar), 3 in New World (Mexico, New Mexico, and Guatemala), and Riga they bought from Poland.

It was the blitzkriegest blitzkrieg yet. Their ally Bavaria abandoned them - too bad as I had a stack waiting there.

One stack landed next to Lisbon and it surrendered without a fight. Half-stack babysitting Courland took Riga without a fight. Army returning from conquest of Plains Indians took New Mexico, also without a fight.

I had 3 stack landings that had to fight - Cadiz into Gibraltar, @@@ into Mexico, and @@@ into Madrid. Somehow Spain didn't bother protecting any of these ports, and the only blockade I needed to do took me 1 whole Sloop.

In this battle I finally had a chance to use howitzers with quicklime - instead of 6 regular artillery I had just 4 artillery and 2 howitzers. They were fairly nice as they can shoot from behind my lines, but I think going all howitzers might limit my firepower a bit too much, and their range is hard.

Of all the battles of the war battle of Gibraltar was the hardest. Mexico and Madrid were both poorly defended.

For all that effort I got three new -30 unrest provinces - Madrid, Lisbon (former capital of Portugal), and Mexico (former capital of New Spain). It is quite annoying how capturing even a former capital of a minor country can get me -30, but these days with no religious unrest, decent ministers, and big budget for hiring dragoons it's not a huge deal.

That destroyed a 7-province country in just 1 turn and 3 battles. Their last New World province of Guatemala turned into a native rebels' den.

And thanks to the famous Gibraltar-Morocco bridge, my African holdings were now connected to my mainland.

Battle of Gibraltar

Artillery sandbags is a stupid feature that not only immobilizes artillery, but won't even let them turn, so I can do silly stuff like this.

War with Sweden

That was 105/137 regions conquered, and the only remaining powers were some minors, Sweden, and my allies Britain and Ottomans.

I didn't go to war with Sweden earlier, as they were allied with Ottomans, and that would be awkward multifront war if Ottomans honored that. Except almost nobody's honoring any alliances anymore, and Ottomans are severely battered, and even managed to lose Bulgaria atd Moldova to Austrian remnants somehow.

So war with Sweden it is!

I didn't really prepare for it much, I just still had a lot of troops stuck in Austria, Brandenburg, Poland, and Courland on rebel duty, so they might go North now that these lands are at least somewhat pacified for a while. Troops which conquered Spain and Venice will take their time pacifying those lands.

I landed Portuguesue stack in Norway by jumping from ship to ship. Austrian stack took Saxony (which Prussia sold to Sweden before dying). Courland stack did even better - they landed in port next to St Petersburg, took it, then got back on another ship, landed in Finlantd, and took that as well. 3 stacks, 4 regions of their 6, 0 battles. At this point I asked them if they had enough and would like to peace out, but they did not.

Interestingly taking settlements by demanding surrender doesn't generate any war exhaustion, while making them lose battles and lose regions in fights does, so maybe I made it too difficult for myself here.

I wasn't worried about Sweden's troops - 2 full stacks in Denmark, and a bit over half stack in Sweden and Finland each. The real problem were their 49 ships mostly around Denmark, which cannot be reached by land from any direction.

There was no helping it. My only solutions were either spending exhausting and tedious half a day fighting those ships "legitimately" (with chainshot zigzag), or blockading every Swedish port by 1 Sloop and letting 20 minute timer sink them while I watch some youtube on another screen.

Sadly I had to do a lot of such boring timer battles. In 2 battles the timer sunk only 3 ships.

At least Swedes had decency to attack my stack that landed in mainland parts of Denmark.

A much less good battle was one my Courland stack had to fight. It was actually 1 General, 3 Artillery, 2 Missile Cavalry, 4 Line infantry, and 7 Dragoons for policing. I sort of didn't notice just how unprepared that was for a real fight. On the other hand, normal AI stacks have just as trashy composition as this anyway.

Trash vs Trash battle

It was all fine though, Swedish fleets weren't sunk, but they couldn't leave ports before timers ran out, so I blockaded all their ports, and that unblocked bridge to Denmark. Meanwhile my Norway stack walked to Stockholm. So I just needed 3 battles to destroy them - one to clear my way to Copenhagen, then just take both cities.

War with Britain

That left very little to conquer:

• Britain with 3 European and 9 American provinces
• Ottomans with 5
• Austria with 3 (recently conquered its way back to a major status)
• 5 OPMs - Hannover, Westphalia, Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Denmark

So without waiting for anything, I destroyed Britain in one turn. Troops that took New Spain landed in Carolinas and Jamaica, taking both undefended. Two highly battered stacks took Ireland and Scotland, also undefended. My fully recovered Portuguese stack now walked on London.

I thought the remaining 7 English colonies would turn into random rebels, but instead they became Pirates in Bahamas, Quebec in Quebec, United States in 4 provinces, and only Rupert's Land became generic rebels.

Well, Pirates cannot possibly stand, so I took that province as well same turn.

War with United States

It was 1741, and I started destroying my existing universities, to be replaced by industry. There was still research that needed to be done, but it was small number of expensive technologies, and I can't assign more than one university to same research, so many were idle.

The next target just had to be the United States - they just started and barely had any troops, but they'd be spamming them like crazy if I let them live.

Hilariously I got "Campaign Won" only in 1742 by taking New Amsterdam (game has no localized names so still just "New York"), but I won't get achievements unless I keep it until 1799. It was my 119th province, of 137 on the map.

Battle of New York, which let me "win" the campaign goals

I really like Native Mounted Auxiliaries, it's a trashy mounted cavalry

This fog is with a mod that massively reduces bad weather effects, vanilla sometimes has weather so awful it's impossible to see anything without pausing every minute.

My colonial army still had Quebec and Rupert's Land to conquer, but there was no rush with that.

War with the Ottomans

There were really only two options left - Austria or Ottomans, both with 4 provinces (Austria impressively growing that big from OPM I left them at). Now Ottomans were technically allied with me, but at this point let's be real.

The main reason to go for Ottomans first was that Austria was allied with some OPMs and they might respect that, and then it would be really awkward for everyone.

A weird thing is that even at this point, with me controlling nearly 90% of the world, my enemies' armies still outnumber mine, and (if we exclude my trade ships) their war fleets as well. OPMs just really loved to spend all their money on armies. Even silly Westphalia has 3 full stacks, I have just 10, and many of them are dragoons for policing.

For a quick detour I just needed to take over Quebec.

Then I swooped in and liberated Constantinople in summer 1743, after 290 years of occupation.

Liberation of Constantinople

War with Bavaria and Austria

That left just 10 provinces to conquer - 4 Austrian, 1 rebel, and 5 OPMs.

And most baffling thing happened - Bavaria declared war on me.

Well, first I needed to get Rupert's land from the rebels, getting me Master of the Americas achievement.

I didn't go to war with Austria because they were allied with Bavaria nad Wurttemberg, but since Bavaria already declared on me anyway, I moved London stack to Alsace in case Wurttemberg respected their alliance, and I was free to declare anytime.

As they were deep inland, and it all caught be unprepared, the whole war lasted 3 turns instead of the usual 1.

In my final battle against Austria I finally had shrapnel shot, which adds a strong medium range weapon to artillery, but my superiority is so overwhelming I didn't have a chance to test it in any sort of meaningful battle.

Separate Timelines

At this point it was pretty clear I need to diverge timelines to get all the achievements.

So I saved the game, and pressed next turn 110 times to actually get achievements for "winning the campaign" while for getting all the research.

The only thing I had to do was duelling (trying to get that achievement), choosing research, and fixing government after elections. I finally got achievement for killing 20 people in duels in 1757.

I research all technologies in 1763 - which is really late considering how much I tried to accelerate tech progress - but there was no achievement! Then it suddenly appeared in 1797. A lot of people had similar issue and speculated about it.

After far too many times pressing end turn, I got to end of 1799, and got my Victory video, first time ever, even though I won like fifty campaign for all I know. And there was no achievement, ffs.

Hilariously, after clicking a bunch of times I got achievement for winning on easy. This is on hard/hard, and I never played this game on easy in my life. Is the first victory going to unlock just easiest achievement regardless of how you play? And so you need to win 2nd and 3rd time to get achievements for normal and hard victory? I kept clicking, but no more achievements came by 1830+. Oh well, I guess I won't be getting it.

War with German minors

Well, loading back the original save, I still 4 OPMs to defeat - Hannover, Westphalia, Wurttemberg, and Denmark.

German minors had 7 full stacks between them, Denmark instead got 2 full stack of ships.

I'm not sure why, but Westphalia's 2.5 stacks were just a tiny bit too far to join the battle when I attacked their city.

Wurttemberg was a really fun battle of the Rhine bridges, where we both started on the same side, but their reinforcements were slowly coming from the other side, so I could exploit that chaos and get 10:1 casualties ratio, instead of the usual 5:1.

Battle of the Rhine. We both started on same side, but their reinforcements kept coming through both crossings, it was fun chaos. It's difficult to form defensive line against such split attack, and pivoting with inf+art line is very slow. I accidentally misplaced one of my howitzers to be in the line, the other one (on the right) stayed behind while my line advanced. I'm not really used to howitzers.

After that I got Hannover, and I didn't even use any tricks this time.

And in winter 1745 I got Emperor of Europe achievement.

Final battle of the campaign. Overall I relied so much on inf+art line as it's stupidly overpowered, and only changed tactics if that wasn't possible. I use a lot more diverse tactics in other Total War games, but Empire has this very narrow meta. I don't think there are any other tactics that allow routine 10:1 K:D ratios at even odds.

Achievement Scorecard

Before that I have only 6 achievements (conquer India, kill 100k enemies, conquer region, conquer 10 regions, conquer 100 regions, steal 5 technologies).

In the end I got 6 achievements (conquer Americas, conquer Europe, kill 20 by assassinations, kill 20 by duels, research everything, win campaign on easy).

I did not get 2 achievement I should have gotten (win campaign on normal, win campaign on hard - assuming these are inclusive).

I'm reasonably sure I killed 500k and likely also 1000k enemies by now, and I should have gotten achievements for those too, but I can't prove it for sure.

I also started a quick campaign as Austria to get achievement for backstabbing 5 allies, it takes just 1 turn if they don't join wars against you.

Most other achievements are for multiplayer, and I just don't care.

Not counting bugged ones, remaining single player achievements I could try (but won't):

• successfully use diplomatic threats 5 times (does this feature even work?)
• do 30 missions (that requires replaying tutorial it over and over, as missions didn't make it to main game, other than 1 each for a few countries)
• win independence campaign as Americans

That was too much

I rarely bother doing world conquest in any games, and I definitely don't plan to do this ever again in Empire.

I never even did one in EU4, and only once in CK2 (and back when it was super easy and map was a lot smaller, without even India). I think I might have done some in HoI4, but I'm not even completely sure.

I'm not even sure if I ever did any World Conquests in Total War, not counting short Kingdoms campaigns.

All Total War games

I went back to Empire mostly because I didn't like new Total War games much.

• I tried Rome 2, but that was terribly boring.
• Warhammer 2 seemed good on paper, but I just couldn't get into the setting, and dominant role of single entity units really kills any chance of immersion for me.
• Rome 1 doesn't work too well on new hardware anymore
• Napoleon is just Empire with smaller more boring map and somewhat better engine; I played it a few times but I'd rather play Empire
• so all I had was Medieval 2 (still amazing) and its expansions campaigns

There's a few Total War games I haven't tried yet, but I might:

• Shogun 2 - mostly because identical factions I don't know anything about seems boring as hell; and I'm really weirded out by game just deleting all diplomacy and everyone being at war with you forever as soon as you have 10 regions
• Three Kingdoms (in default mode it's fantasy game; but it has historical mode without fantasy style stupidly overpowered generals)

There's also some I'm really unlikely to:

• Thrones of Britannia - everyone hates it for some reason
• Rome 1 expansions and Rome 2 Atilla - I really don't care for those super scripted campaigns, sandboxes are what Total War should be about
• Troy - it's fantasy game, and looks a lot worse than Warhammer

How Empire could be improved with mods

Here are some simple fixes that could make Empire better. There are mods for some of them.

I already had fixes for some vanilla issues:

• 0 fps bug due to walls damaged in fort sieges is really killing the game, so either forts need to be removed (what I did), or artillery capable of damaging the walls
• removing heavy weather effects is easy improvement (using this mod); most other Total War games before and after let you reroll awful weather, Empire weirdly skips this
• diplomacy is completely broken, but it's largely fixed by just giving away military access to everyone; maybe even "fixed" too much

These seem fixable:

• I played with Additional Units Mod, but most of units it adds are pointless variations of existing units, like just another elite Line Infantry with a few points to some stats; a few new units are interesting, but overall I'm not sure this mod helps, and UI is awkward when I can recruit 30 different units but there's really only space for 15
• I was splitting stacks on campaign all the time to move faster - cavalry, infantry, and artillery have different ranges, and it's mostly just annoying - making them move same speed would save a lot of hassle (and it's very simple mod); interestingly this would also make some exploits a bit harder
• garrisons are stupidly weak; changing from 2x 80-strong Firelock Armed Citizen to like 5x 160-strong Militia would be a huge improvement. DMUC mod I used to play in the past goes a bit too far for my taste giving them free mortars with crazy range, but it might be for the better
• naval warfare is miserable, but hard to avoid as economy is so heavily reliant on trade - there are two fixes, either nerf trade, or fix naval battles
• to fix trade, trade nodes need to get nerfed (I'm not sure where that logic is) while industry needs to be massively buffed
• arguably industry was supposed to be far more powerful; it would all be 2x more profitable if the port wealth bug (see here) was fixed, as then industrial slots would grow from very poor they start on (1x multiplier) gradually to wealthy (2x multiplier); since I don't think mods can fix it, just massively increasing wealth from higher tier buildings would work (I'm not sure if it's possible to disable that town wealth system)
• and speaking of economics, after running some numbers, I believe I wasn't playing quite optimally, and optimal tax is upper class on 2, and lower on 3, not both on 3 as is default
• artillery sandbags are just pure AI nerf and it's best for AI to remove them from the game

I'm not sure if these is fixable:

• to fix naval combat I think the easiest way would be to make every ship's range the same (easy to mod), and give them far wider firing ranges (not sure how much work it is to mod this) so fighting with multiple ships isn't infinite tedium just to make your guns point at the enemy; this would also seriously reduce cheesiness
• I couldn't figure out what makes resistance to foreign occupation -30 so often. It's way too much for minors' capitals.

It's not broken as such, but I think land battles would be a lot more interesting with artillery rebalance. Canister shot is just way too powerful, while round shot is stupidly weak.

I think an interesting idea would be removing direct fire artillery from early techs, and mostly replacing it with howitzers, which are stronger at long range, much weaker short range, and mostly a lot less finicky to use, so they'd allow more dynamic battles.

Everyone's morale is also too high, especially on higher difficulty levels, so you need to focus on killing them (with cannister shot) rather than just making them rout (with like cavalry).

Cavalry units could be made a bit bigger (so 160 infantry vs 60 cavalry could be like 160 inf and 80 or 100 cav), as they just don't do enough.