The next game in the total war series?

[Tellos Athenaios]

A few points to consider w.r.t. EB 3:

1. EB II gets made largely because M2TW and RTW overlap considerably in “how things are done”. There are differences; and significant ones, too. But there are similarities which mean that a large body of engine know-how could be transferred without too much issues. You have no idea how important it is that any halfway sane person can edit a description text, or put a few unit cards into the mod; until you've made a 400 odd units mod. Like EB 1, for instance.
   
   That same major benefit was lost with later games; where if I understand things correctly, one must use a fairly complex and hairy tool (essentially a tailored hex-editor) to hope that changes actually propagate somewhere halfway the right direction. This is not conductive to building an EB 3.
2. There was relatively quickly a thorough understanding of what the M2TW (and specifically Kingdoms) engine could do that RTW can not. There was also a relatively quickly a thorough understanding of how one could apply this to the concept of EB; again something that lacks in later games. This was entirely CA's doing: they released an unpacker and a set of docs that explained some of the new scripting statements.
   
   This is much less the case, if at all, with the later games. For instance, if I understand things correctly modders work with .lua files. This suggests that the later games incorporate a Lua interpreter so that they incorporate a full programming language with support for complex scripts well beyond the realm of RTW/M2TW. But as I understand it: nobody actually knows what the API (exposed routines and data) of the engine is because unlike M2TW/Kingdoms there are no equivalents to the unpacker and docs as supplied by CA. So everyone is largely still working on a few opaque file formats rater than the much more interesting topic of maximising the engine's potential. This is not conductive to making a mod like EB 1, which almost entirely relies on there being a halfway solid body of knowledge to mold the game into something more fitting.
3. Ultimately EB depends on a few people capable of pushing the mod forward. And they are not at all interchangeable; and they are few. If they decide to put EB on hold, or if they decide to quite doing this; then that puts EB on hold, or ends part of EB. This means that if they don't want to do EB 3, it is 99% likely there will not be an EB 3.
   
   Continuing this line of thought, and assuming the team dissolves (itself) after EB 2 is deemed done; it would mean that some other talented people would have to get together and start their own EB 3 to do it. And such a thing takes motivation of the kind that usually means a person would have found and applied for EB membership long before that point. And it also takes skill/knowledge which means such a person might have well been contacted or made an EB member already.