Did we play different games?
I'm genuinely prepared to say that yes, maybe we did. Or as I said, maybe it's just me remembering it wrong. But I know the impression was bad enough that I immediately set out to find overhaul mods.
I never remember any of my units getting tired in vanilla, and that is with all of them running everywhere because I hadn't found out how to make them walk yet.
And I remember me, and especially the enemy, since I didn't need to do it that much but the AI did it continuously, disengaging infantry units pretty easily without any horrible consequence. In fact the horrible consequence was normally in letting them stay in combat for more than 30 seconds, because
then they ended up routing.
Basically, it was all just a mad dash to get some units to block the enemy, a couple of units to outflank the enemy, and as much cavalry as you could muster to charge them from the rear. If you prolonged the engagement, it all just devolved into a pantomime.
To be fair, nothing we hadn't seen in past Total War games, but, in my opinion, much, much faster.
Different games for different people, maybe.
Kuattro do you have any link with change logs for the steel faith mod?
I remember looking for it and not really finding anything satisfying other than
incredibly vague images.
In their Steam Workshop they have an apparently pretty in depth
"Change Notes" section, but it might be a bit too much to navigate 64 pages of that.
I would make the classical recommendation, just install it and try it for a bit, see what you get from it. But as I said, don't expect it to change the game radically, because AFAIK Total War games are not
that modable any more. Just some new units, a bit of stats jiggling. But at least it became playable for me.