How would you handle the animations? S2 only caters for one type of spear, one sword, just bow and grenades (no jav/slings). Despite all the noise on the TWC and official total war forums, the average player does not conquer the world or even a quarter of it (saw this on a total war forums post by craig). As an aside I believe that the map size was in it's favour, it was possibly the smallest TW game and felt very manageable in comparison to the rest.
Shogun 2 is likely the best TW game because it was battle focused and accessible (streamlined/easy) but it didn't add all the gimmicks that R2 had. Shogun 2 AI isn't better, it just used far fewer units so there was less that can be exploited.
If you're thinking of the much advertised 'Shogun 2 Map Editor!', that's for battle maps not the campaign map. The map can be edited but it can't be completely remade, you can't easily add in extra cities or regions (though it is possible) and I think (although not sure tbf) that it's impossible to change the landmass itself (guessing because of all the naval stuff but I'm not sure). Hey dude, to start with I've put 1000+ hours into both Rome2 and Shogun2 (steam profile: Rorschach) so I'm hoping I can help you out here
