Yes, definitely try RTR. At heart, of course, it is just RTW - so it has a much bigger campaign than BI with very different units. But it improves on it in a number of ways.

The units are the most obvious - they are more authentic and just "feel" more right to me. The stats have been adjusted to make the relative arms somewhat like BI - missiles and cavalry are much weaker than RTW (and even BI), which I think is historical. Plus morale has been pumped up to make battles last longer.

At the campaign level, unit recruitment has been altered so that it takes longer to get your own units in occupied provinces. Naval combat has been made much more decisive. The economy has been tightened up. And the map redrawn to be more historical (Rome is unified with only 3 starting provinces).

Yes, you do have to work with 1.2. I just have a dual install (actually triple - one for EB as well).

EB is also worth trying - it does similar things to RTR but I agree has more content. Unfortunately, it crashed so much on my rig that it became unplayable.