Get into using the Creation Kit to customize stuff for yourself. It takes a good while to get the hang of, but once you do it's addicting to have the power to be able to make even small basic tweaks that just add up to this experience that makes everything more fun.

For a long time Skyrim for me was basically using a mod for multiple followers and a mod to add customizable random encounters to the game world and running around getting into huge dynamic fights. I pimped out all my followers with their own .esps that gave them custom classes, spells, perks, and combat styles so some would be pure mages, others would be spellblades, archers, full melee, whatever.

After getting experience with that kind of stuff I eventually fully converted my two characters into followers for each others' games. It's really cool and they compliment each other really well. My Nord character acts as a great meatshield in my Altmer character's game and my Altmer character snipes enemies with all these badass custom lightning and sun spells with 100% accuracy in my Nord character's game.

This mod is my favorite one for encounters. It has a ton of options to customize exactly what kinds of enemies will spawn with the ability to set spawn numbers for the groups of each type, then adjust the total spawn numbers with a global multiplier to quickly adapt to how many followers you have.

Combined with Deadly Dragons to beef up dragon difficulty, the end result is stumbling into insanely epic 50+ NPC battles with a diverse RPG party of anywhere from like 3-8 followers on your side. Skyrim's combat becomes more interesting the larger the battles get, and it's really cool to watch what followers end up doing in fights and the badass shit they pull off.

I seriously only recently started installing new quest mods like Falskaar and stuff. A huge part of Skyrim is its potential for radiant gameplay with the improvements to the complexity of AI and combat, and IMO this is the area where it's actually stronger than Morrowind and Oblivion. Once all is said and done in terms of quests and vanilla content, Skyrim is the one where it's most entertaining to just wander around with a posse and see what kind of shit you can get into.