Thanks for this. What about the AAR-related issues: which of the three mods can solve them (flavour and plausible evolution)?
On the issue of "historicity", maybe I can expand the concept: I'm not generally against extraordinary outcomes, break-up of big kingdoms, etc.
I suspect that as the Hohenstaufens managed to take over Norman Sicily or England was on the verge to unify English and French crowns at some point during the Hundred Years War, a game could not exclude for instance a unification of Aragon with France or a Venetian conquest of Byzantium.
What I don't like is constant fragmentation of states, the Mongols uber-power, Muslim consistently reconquering Iberia, Italy and the "Sheikdom of Prague effect" (Muslim in the middle of Northern Europe).