Well I am often impressed by the depth and detail their in game encyclopedia's, and extra historical tidbits. And while the history that sets the stage is often fairly accurate, the nature of allowing you to control army movements, tactics, infantry/cavalry/naval power obviously throws historical accuracy out the window.

The combat itself I would consider an "arcadey" version of actual battle, condensed time frame, reduced army size, ect... And it does give you the ability to implement real historical tactical formations and unit composition. But the bigger killer is the AI as far as historical accuracy goes. Sluggish, dim witted A.I that makes completely irrational battle decisions. Not to mention the ability to instantaneously communicate orders to entire armies, spread across a battlefield, a usually tedious, slow very hard to accomplish task carried out by foot or horse by a commanders messengers to Officers.

So, no it's not really a very accurate picture of warfare, it's a nice arcade style overview on a compressed time frame, which is honestly fine for a game. A strict simulation would be gruelingly slow and complicated beyond measure. I always enjoy that each title I play spurs me to read about the given era's politics, military, technology and art.

They often employ a lot of "artistic license" with the wars themselves as well. Like in Shogun 2: Fall of the Samaria. The Boshin War only lasted from January 3rd 1868 to May 18th 1869, and only incurred approximately 4000 casualties. Where as the game would lead you to believe it lasted a decade and saw the death of 500 thousand or more.

The more realistic a war game is the harder it is to play and less appealing to the masses. You can either play a simulation or an arcade. The most realistic war game ive played is The Opetational Art of War and it takes days to learn and months/years to master. Its not appealing to the masses therefor not a big money maker. I think Total War is a nice middle ground between simulation and arcade, its fun and easy to pick up but still captures the historical essence of classical old world warfare/politics. I really like in Rome TW you can have generals and politicians families intermarry and produce off spring with traits with similar qualities to their parents

It really depends on the game. The most inaccurate would probably be Fall of the Samurai, which allows you to launch frontal charges with sword units on trained riflemen and expect not only to close, but to defeat the unit in question in the melee.

(thank you, whiny beta testers who valued "gameplay" over "fanatical historical accuracy.)

Empire/Napoleon mostly allow you to stick to the tactics of the era, although limitations of the engine mean that some things (forming columns, for instance,) is essentially pointless. The uniforms, though, do leave something to be desired.

Rome 2...is an abomination. Vanilla Rome 2, anyway. Units don't hold formation, so any combat turns into a giant blob. They 'sort of' fixed this in one of the recent patches, but the problem is that their 'fix' ended up affecting the performance of units which fight in formation.

Basically, units will pair off in 'duels' to allow the fancy animations they recorded to be seen. Units which hold their formation will have less 'frontage,' while units which don't hold formation will spread out and engage more of their men. If they're on a wide enough front, they'll spread around and flank the unit they're fighting, even wedging themselves between units which are on the sides of the one they're fighting to get at the guys (safely ignoring the enemy behind them.)

Mods get around this by giving a big stat buff to formation fighting units.