I only got into the total war franchise starting at Empire total war, followed by Napoleon. I gave Shogun a pass (three games in a row would've been overkill for me
), so I guess I'll probably pick up Rome II. The beach landings look cool at least.
I hope they add in a more "sculpted" feel for a lot of the cities though. At least in Empire I only remember Quebec City feeling like it mirrored the actual ~1800's city. Everything else was just big walls around an army camp (for fortified cities), or a random collection of houses for unfortified ones. Eventually I got bored of just repeating the same strategy again and again, so I just auto-resolved most of the city battles in the grand-campaign