I s'pose it is. I had only played the earlier release, Medieval: Total War, and there are significant changes from that. First off it is very demanding on your PC! I have most of the settings down a bit or else my battles look like a slide show.
I saw the CAS exporter (name?) as well but I doubt if I'd ever get around to building or animating anything to drop in MII:TW.
I have had the plans and raw lumber for a small trebuchet that I've been planning to build for 3 months now and haven't gotten much past that. My plans were to have this ready for the winter so i could launch some frozen water balloons at these pesky beavers that climb out of the river when it gets pretty cold and dine on my poor birch trees.
MudPuppy