I don't own Rome 2 yet, but I see enough of it in previews and on U Tube, etc., to know a little about it. It looks great and should be everything the old Rome Total War was, if it can be modified as much and in the same way of the older game. There were endless modifications written for Rome Total War, which allowed everything from giving your army more power to calming down the people you conquered. You could get inside that game and do your own editing as well. I had a great set up for this one at one time, up until I became tired of playing it, everything gets old after a time, and abandoned the game. I still retained it on my computer until I had to reformat the computer after a virus hit, and start all over again. I did not reinstall Rome Total War, and have not played the game in years, but it was a great game and I wonder if its' predecessor will be as good. I haven't heard much on mods or modifications at this time, or what you can or can't do with the game. But it is too early for a lot of this yet, I think. I know it is harder to do this when STEAM is involved, but it can be done and I hope while I wait for prices to fall, all of this will happen.
I think I read this right; you're wondering what mods are possible with R2? Massive wall of text is hard to read.
Pack file manager (community modding tools) is already R2 enabled and pretty much finished besides maybe one or two areas.
PFM: www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?618353-TOOL-PFM-3-0-beta
R2 mods: www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?1990-Total-War-Rome-II-Mod-Threads
Steam doesn't have much of an effect with modding this game, besides .exe changes.
CA are planning to release modding tools and make it the most mod friendly game of the series. Shame that the release was so bad and modders are mainly fixing problems at the moment....
EDIT: as far as owning the game goes, with respect, DON'T. Not yet at least, it is a mess and will put you off. Look for Angry Joe's Review, it's the most accurate I've seen. Wait for patches.
[Edited by chikawowwow, 9/14/2013 9:11:35 AM]