For me, I'd have to say Old School X-COM (UFO Defense, TFTD, X-COM Apocalypse to an extent). I love them in a way that I just do not enjoy NewCOM, but the interface was quite possibly based on the recovered works of a 13th century scribe, and is very difficult to get used to for an unfamiliar player.
I think the oldest I'm really willing to dip is like Shogun 2 these days, the Rome remake was plenty fun but reminded me of recent innovations in the formula. I kinda miss the old Shogun and Midieval classic board style though, it was fun moving the pieces one tile at a time
The Three Kingdoms one made me really not miss how your units used to be like No! Wait! Steve has to walk back to his spot! Nobody shoot until Steve gets back to his spot!!
Oh and the diplomacy, they made it so much more bearable to actually deal with people and gave some indication of how they felt and what it would take to strike the deal where in old games it was just obscured such that it doesn't make any sense.
I also really liked the retinue system changeup even if it didn't really stop me from just building clone doomstacks of Tactician w/ 2 archers, crossbows and trebuchets + Red Horse Lord w/ 6 beastly Charge Cav (the red cavalry lines were all busted as hell, the melee cav was absolute pants in comparison even the peasants because the charge attack would wipe out basically any unit you wanted to attack with cav anyways) + Green or Purple lord with the heaviest infantry I can muster.
you can fix diplomacy in rtw & m2tw by using force-diplomacy to make the ai agree to reasonable terms :garf-troll:
I couldn't afford the Rome remake and I don't think my laptop can even run it, so i'm just happy running mid-2000s software. I mostly play Rome and Medieval II, so that's what i enjoy the most.
Back in the day I installed Rome Total Realism and oh man, it's so good, way more provinces including some tiny city states and you can do way more tactics because armies don't die off and retreat faster than it takes for a unit to walk 100 yards. The original creators didn't want to force you to use fast forward. You just use fast forward for RTR and it's perfect
Oooh i never got into mods for RTW. I might give them a try.
I'm the exact opposite. Shogun 2 feels like the series' peak to me, but everything newer just has too many things that feel gimmicky. I don't like all of my units having special abilities, or my general being this super special guy. I don't want skill trees for my stack, I just want to move units around the map and stack up as needed.
RTR 7 is the best Total War experience for my time. Zoomed in map focusing on the mediterranean, your generals are also politicians so there's a constant tension between campaigning and administrating, a deep and meaningful system for conquest beyond just winning the battles. My dream strategy game is basically that mod but bigger and with better sieges.