TW vet, modding noob

[Madoushi]

Hey folks!
Longtime fan here. Played all the vanilla games except Alexander.

My favorite setting-wise is easily Barbarian Invasion, but I prefer the gameplay in Medieval II, and find it hard to go back to Rome, especially since to me Rome is by far the hardest game in the series that I've played, and the sheer joy I get from the setting is always crushed in a torrent of backstabbing, bankruptcy, and blow out defeats.

Anyway, with all that said, I've actually enjoyed the vanilla games enough that I haven't really bothered with any mods (I felt like a radicalist just editing my Rome .ini to unlock all the locked factions)

So anyway, I'm wondering where to start. My friend always raves about Rome: Total Realism and Europa Barbarinum, but they both sound like they make Rome harder...


tl:dr - Hi! I'm new! Played all the games, sucked hard at Rome. What are some good mods?! (for any of the titles, not just Rome.)

[Ludens]

Hello Madoushi, welcome to the .Org. ~:wave:

I am afraid that the majority of players felt that the vanilla game was too easy once you figured out how the A.I. would react, and that the difficulty needed beefing up. I know of no project to make Rome easier. That said, there is a limit to what you can mod about the game, so mods are not radically different. What sort of modification are you looking for?

[Madoushi]

As I said, I haven't really used any mods (other than the Medieval II Retrofit mod, though how it differs from vanilla, I can't tell), so I'm not sure where to start.
Medieval II and Empire are the only ones I have installed at the moment, but I could easily reinstall Rome, Medieval or even Shogun (though I wasn't a big Shogun fan, ironic since I used to play Lord of Darkness and Nobunaga's Ambition on SNES)

As for Rome, I've simply found it to be the most difficult Total War game I've played. I've never had any success as any Roman faction; usually because whil I'm busy invading one neighbour, another suddenly backstabs me and the other Roman factions let them take my land.

I played as Carthage several times, and once managed to take Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, all of Africa west of Egypt and southern Spain... however, the Britons supplanted the Gauls in Spain and France, and of course, broke our alliance and invaded me, forcing me to pull troops out of Italy to support North Africa, causing me to lose all my Italian and Spanish holdings, and by the time I stabilized, I was sixty turns in and right back where I started.

After that, I started playing Barbarian Invasion and never looked back. I just find between the three Roman factions, the tough economy, limits on population, the campaign AI and the Greece issue, it was a bit too limiting.


tl;dr - I usually like the vanilla TW games, I don't know what mods are good, and evidently, I suck. I honestly just don't know where to start. Which mods did/do you enjoy?

[Myrddraal]

What do you feel about playing a total conversion mod or are you just looking for gameplay mods? Something that breaks completely from the original setting, like Blue Lotus?

[Madoushi]

I'm completely open to possibilities. EB seems popular, and all this talk of Rome has made me miss it and BI greatly.
Reccomend me something though, and I'll gladly try it. :)

(also, halfway through The Gathering Storm. :glee: )

[Myrddraal]

I was making a WoT mod, that's what brought me to these forums all back in the heady days of 04' (hence the username), but unfortunately it fell apart. There's some people trying to revive it, but it's early days yet. I haven't got the next book yet, I decided to re-read the series since I've forgotten a lot of the plot. I'm currently working my way through The Dragon Reborn.

My 2p.
If you want to try a historical Rome mod, I'd give EB a shot. If you want something completely different, spectacular and fantastic, try Blue Lotus.

[Madoushi]

I'll check out Blue Lotus, thanks.
And yeah, I posted in your WoT thread (I think) and would very much love to see it realized one day.

I'm about halfway through The Gathering Storm right now, though The Dragon Reborn was easily my favorite, back before the Aiel and the Aes Sedai became overexposed andlost their wonder.

It was also really magical getting that peek back to the Age of Legends.

[pevergreen]

If you want a mod for M2TW that is close to vanilla, try FactionHeir's VanillaMod.

Makes the game a lot harder, and is amongst the best mods for M2TW.