State of the mod?

So I've definitely been having some real urges to get some old-school TW in and I remember how much I loved the original EB. Is EBII at a place now where it compares?

I think so.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

Be advised, though.

There is a heavy difference in stability between EB2 mod on MTW2 that's still in the Steam folder, and the EB2 mod on MTW2 that is in its own folder.

Own folder is far far more stable, for me at least.

If you don't still have your old install disks or a copy of the game on your computer from install disks, there's instructions around on how to move MTW2 to it's own folder.

I can confirm what Grimmy is saying here. I have just returned to EB myself after a long lay off. initially I was suffering from lots of crashes and the solution was to move the M2TW to a path less stressful for the CPU. My path is currently D:/M2TW/mods/ebii. When the game had to go through the steam path I was getting quite a few CTDs, its much more stable now. And yes the game is great now. The only non bug issue I had was the Embezzler trait when your money goes over 100000. I had to nerf the penalties as it got a bit too much having 4 family members per turn causing city rebellions when I had worked so hard to get them to good character.
Goth

So I did give the mod a try. Unfortunately I only have one drive so the process to get a second drive up was hard. Ended up plugging in my portable external HD and installing to that path which honestly wasnt the best as I still got a lot of crashes. I'll try again eventually, though maybe in the meantime I'll give EB1 a whirl again.

Would it not be better to install EB2 on a fresh stand-alone M2TW copy?

As in non-Steam?

Yes you can do that easy enough but unfortunately the new computer I have just built doesnt have a cd drive so it isnt possible