Just you hop on over to the Europa Barbarorum Forums, whence I came, and ask a few questions.

EB is sublime.

It covers the incompetence of the AI with ice-cream, oreos and fudge so that you can hardly taste the bugs.

And if you think RTW is pretty, just you play that mod!
It makes RTW look like a cheap Sunday Newspaper cartoon.
The gameplay, accuracy, factions, units, balance, and everything moddable is improved infinitely.
Only the AI remains as simple as ever.

It also requires nothing more than RTW 1.5 to play, although mini-mods are available for those with Alex. and BI. executables, which apparently give much greater benefits to the AI.

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I recommend that you play STW, MTW, RTW, EB, MTW/VI: SW, MM, NTW, P&M, HTW and XL.