A plea...

[Ludens]

There are two types of people who play RTW. There are history fanatics who want to play RTW as historically accurate as a mod will ever get, (EB) and want a challenge whilst doing so, and there are people who want an easy ass game where you start off with tons of money, a large army and can conquer the entire Roman empire at its height by 240BC, and the game for these people is RTR.

If R:TR players are really as lazy as you suggest, they would still be playing vanilla at E/E. People prefer different kind of things. Some want accuracy, some want balance, some like a good challenge, and some just want to relax and be entertained. Also, not everyone has the same standards for challenge: what's fun for one is frustrating and unrealistic for another (Triarii-hordes anyone?). R:TR may not present as much as a challenge as EB does, but it still is more challenging than the basic game.

What I think Trithemius is trying to say is that you should stop using hyperboles when comparing EB to vanilla or R:TR. You may think that those phale in comparison to EB, but they have qualities of their own which you seem to deny.