I guess the thing I think about is making a battle in CK2 vs Total War. So CK2 is basically two chess pieces throwing numbers at each other, TW is hundreds of individually modeled, rigged and animated units with individual weapons and armour with individual, unit and strategic AI on a modeled landscape.
I’m not saying one is better than the other, but one is 10x or 100x easier than the other.
And anyone who says “oh making TW battles is easy” then please come join the team, we’ve got a tonne of stuff you can work on.