That sounds so fucking awesome. I've put off Grand Tactician because I didn't like Ultimate General very much and it's never had great reviews, and neither does this DLC, but now I want to try it out anyway.
I've never played any of those games, but I know it's supposed to have things like prestige, companions. The more you win, for example, the more influence you get to try to issue orders (abstraction of cashing in your credibility to convince a superior officer of your own plan), you can quarrel with other generals over nonsense (man fails to send you support you needed because your wife offended theirs at a ball), stuff like that.
What I really want is something like that merged with something like Battle Cry of Freedom's Commander Mode, where you command forces in the first person on the battlefield. BCOF was developed off of Mount and Blade; the last few times I've logged in it's been dead. It proved, though, that you can make an engaging competitive multiplayer FPS about gunpowder warfare as long as you cast the player as a tactical officer, not a soldier.
I wish there was a Civil War mod for Total War so it had army and navy and the graphics, but as I understand no GOOD one exists because of the intentional difficulty of changing the map.
My interest in Pharaoh started to dribble away when it became clear they were only going to have it be a tiny segment of the Middle East.
I find Total War games frustrating experiences in general. Part of that is a sort of paradox of choice with mods. You've got everybody pushing some total overhaul mod that's supposed to be amazing and be like 50 games in one, and it turns out to be total garbage. I knew it was sketchy that Empire 2 claimed to have 4,000 unit types (as if that's good), and sure enough it comes down to have a small handful and then just a million different uniforms, but it still clogs my UI . Or you get these overhauls that fix the dogshit AI and add some stuff, but they apply their godawful realism to the naval campaign, ruining it.
Mods in general have an awful habit of going way too far in on quantity over quality. I saw that ruin Wars of Liberty for Age of Empires III.
It can also just be frustrating learning each one. The only ones I've really had much of a head for is Shogun 2. And I like gunpowder warfare of Empire and Napoleon, but those have the campaign problems.
Atilla's fascinating but impossible to get a handle on.