New player - Which mod is for me (M2TW)?

[LordLaban]

I have been looking around for mods for M2TW that may fit me, but could use some input from you guys. I like the game very much as it is (i.e. the medieval euro setting) but would like some fixes and improvements. The mods I have found the most interesting are:

Lands to Conquer
Stainless Steel

I have done some research on both, however with very little experience of the game so far, it is somewhat difficult for me to assert what the most significant differences between the two of them are (the extra campaigns in LTC aside). (I will get the Kingdoms expansion within the next few days so will be able to get the latest mods of both versions)

So any input is much appreciated. :)

Thanks in advance!

[Pontius Pilate]

Hey welcome to the forums. Seems like no one answered you. Even though I don't play MTW2 (my computer can't handle it) I have done alot of research on MTW2 mods in my spare time. In my opinion I would say Broken Crescent is probably the one of the best. It is highly detailed, lots of new units, stats for units are good, very historically accurate, gameplay is good, and it is a complete modification of MTW2. It is very similar to Europa Barbarorum in that it is a very complete mod. The only problem with it is that it is more focused on the Medieval Middle East, so I don't know how much that conflicts with your liking of the Medieval Euro. Although it does feature the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Byzantines which are European factions and have European-like troops avaliable. If you don't want Broken Crescent than go with Stainless Steel, very similar to Broken Crescent in all that I mentioned above and it is centered in Europe. I think it would be a good first mod for MTW2. Sorry for the delay in response hopefully you'll get this message. I was just wondering if anyone would post a question like this.

[pevergreen]

I, personally, have found Stainless Steel 6 to be the best mod. The only detrimental factor is the rather large download size, but if that is not an issue, it is definately worth a look.

(keep in mind, I dislike the 'east' as a focus of gaming. I am very much in favour of heavy armoured troops against other heavy armoured troops)

[PBI]

The two mods I mostly play are SS and BC which are both very fine mods which add a lot to the gameplay and are without most of the bugs which plague vanilla. BC is quite a radical departure I think, with its emphasis on the Islamic world with the Christian nations on the fringes being an inversion of the situation in vanilla. The types of armies you will be assembling and facing will be very different in makeup to those in vanilla, especially the further east you go. SS is closer to vanilla in terms of setting, but it has quite a different feel to vanilla, I would say it is actually closer to the original MTW with its grittier, more balanced battles, and in the latest version the campaign map is enormous, so winning a long campaign will take a good deal longer than in vanilla (whilst not making expansion so hard as to suck all the fun out of campaigning).

As pevergreen points out though, they are both huge downloads. Also, if you go for one of these mods, I strongly recommend you also install the latest patches before playing (I think 6.1 for SS and 1.1 for BC), since there are a couple of quite serious bugs in the unpatched versions.

If you want something a bit closer to vanilla LTC is a good choice, but I would also like to add FactionHeir's VanillaMod to the list of mods you should consider, especially if you don't want too drastic a departure from vanilla; VanillaMod basically fixes all the annoying bugs in vanilla and improves the AI but keeps the essential content and feel of the game the same.

Another one to consider is RetroFit, which is basically the vanilla Grand Campaign redone in the Kingdoms engine, with the extra features and partial bugfixing that come with Kingdoms.

TBH, you can't go wrong with any of the mods I have suggested above, they are all very fine. It's more a question of exactly how close you want to keep the game to vanilla.