Historylets literally don't know what they want, you give them history games and they get upset at the boring rosters. You give them games with more mechanics than previous games and they get upset at how confusing it is. The simple fact is that fantasy and sci-fi are more interesting and afford a greater variety of tactical and strategic decisions than history.
Lets look at the "best total war game" Shogun 2
>naval battles are just big squares shooting arrows at each other
>like a dozen units in the whole game
>diplomacy doesn't exist, end game everyone always teams up on you anyway
>units aren't tied to armies, so the ai just throws 1-2 units in a random grid and are easily ran over
The warhammer series is the only one where I've seen the AI form multiple armies. The only thing the history games have over warhammer is campaign mechanics, which are the most boring part of total war. It's a game about battles, and history has the most boring battles of all time.
>main lines fight
>flanks fight
>flanks win and hammer and anvil
That is every single history fight, without exception