Not to mention the fact that such artificial "fixes" aren't really fixes at all, and create a pretty bad, inconsistent gameplay.
I'm playing with max conquerors in a game right now, the entire map was reshapen by them, they all have extreme buffs (they all have Scourge of god) so new empires keep rising up and conquering the map just like the actual mongol invasion.
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As a lowly duke I was already able to beat one of them in an offensive war by picking my fights in proper terrain when the enemy AI (bad) wasted too long moving around their own lands with huge stacks until they began to starve.
There's also an inconsistency between his actual armies vs his allies, he called in some allies, and even though I had only 4k horsemen while he had 20k soldiers with crazy bonuses, his allies had nothing, so I'd get some really tough fights sometimes (when he was leading), and sometimes I'd get some pathetic fights and stackwipe them all (when their allies were leading).
At the end of the day while this is making the game "harder" it's also making it feel like a sloppy, inconsistent, broken experience I'd expect from a poor quality mod, the map looks like pure cancer and most of the easy targets that don't have the trait are still pathetic to fight against.
I'm still in my second generation, starting as a lowly "count" level nomad learning the mechanics for the first time, mind you, so I don't really have that many bonuses or buildings finished yet, I can imagine in a generation or 2 even those enemies with ridiculous bonuses are going to get stackwiped by my own giant, boosted armies.
This also doesn't address the missing features (RtP and Khans of the Steppe do, to be fair, they are steps in the right direction), the bad systems that need overhauling like the lack of flanks, lack of tactics, the "levy" troop type, etc...
So no, I disagree, it's not a matter of doing much or little work with modding, I don't think modding can help, at all.
