I agree that the Total War formula needs to see some changes, but I'm not quite sure what they are. My problem is that the games lack depth when you compare them to other strategy games - as enjoyable as the battles are, they lack the complexity found in most RTS games, and the campaign lacks the detail of a traditional TBS game. Coming up with ways to improve the campaign is is easy, but it's much more difficult to come up of ways to make the battle system more involved without sacrificing the things that make it fairly unique.

Actually, I think the thing the series needs most is a major AI overhaul - against a human opponent the battle system is pretty interesting, but the AI is unable to present the player with any really interesting battles.