Total War

I haven't played anything later than Medieval 2 so can't make direct comparisons but one of my mates said he finds the newer games less fun than Rome because they are more 'clicky'.

The key with Roman factions in Remastered seems to be getting a city to max size as quickly as possible in order to trigger the Marian reforms (so you get the good professional Legionary units). If you really want to game the system you can go on the attack in Gaul and enslave every settlement you take. When you capture slaves they only get sent to settlements with governors, so move your governors out of every settlement except the biggest one and you'll get all the slaves in one. You can also train peasants in one settlement then move them to another and disband them to move population around.

There's a lot of really cool details in Rome, like if you shoot infantry with archers firing to their right, it does more damage because the infantry shields are on the left side. You don't need to know any of that to play but it adds depth!