For me the mod you mentioned first (I think it's RBM) is worse than vanilla. BL has the problem that armor is used in abundance visually, which does not fit the timescale (grossly 11th century). This amount of armor does not correspond to the weapons in use (if there is much effective armor on the battlefield, you see many effectice anti-armor weapons used). If the visible armor (which has no gaps) would be very effective, combat would last very long, not because of formations, maneuvering and moral effects, but because weapons bouncing off of armor (a common but problematic vision of medieval combat). But TW does not want that long battles, maybe understandeable because the later game is not much more but an endless battle grind.
RBM makes that very clear. Armor is very protective in the mod. Bigger battles are a chore, even if you don't take into account that unrealistically often all infantry is murdered before heavily armored riders fight it out forever till the last man. Swords are mostly useless against high tier units. Worse, even twohanded weapons swung with 300 skill chip away only very few hp from well armored persons. What to use are maces, seemingly a medieval super weapon (albeit not that much in use in the real world of the time). That all is not realistic, too.
There are already complaints that combat after the armor improvement TW made is too long and clumsy. I don't think so. Maybe they should tone down pierce damage still a bit. Although pierce damage of projectiles was in reality the biggest danger to armored people (that's the main reason they tested armor with such weapons), except blunt and pierce damage from big twohanded weapons. They should also change weapon's and hit box mechanics (f.e. faster thrusts, less fixation to head shots, less blunt effects to torso and limbs, such things) but that's another topic.
