I actually didn't like shogun 2 that much and especially didn't like FotS. I don't like guns in TW games and shoguns sieges were boring.
R1 and M2 are my top tier TW games.
R1 is the main game I played the most, followed by M2. Again before steam.

unlimited cities and factions; in base R1 you had a hard limit of 12(?) factions and 200(?) something cities. And in R1 remaster you can add as many as you want. Still, the updated UI is pretty atrocious.

Honestly, Med2 is great including the Divide and Conquer LOTR mod, and Shogun 2 is really well done probably has the best gun mechanics out of any of the TW. Otomo Gunners FTW

Yeah it is. I have 1000s of hours in R1, before steam. But I do like R2s campaign. It is the reason I joined steam in the first place. Bought shogun 2, joined steam in anticipation for R2 and was severely disappointed with how messy it was.
Recently bought a lot of TW games a sale last year, including R1 remaster (which I know is worse than OG R1 and they still didn't fix the epic siege bug) but I don't play on PC much, mainly a console player, so have not played them yet.

Rome 2 is worse than Rome 1

I hope you can enjoy it as soon as you can! It is part of our trade to gift you the game when it will be on sale!

Trust worthy trader +1rep