Improving Vanilla RTW Gold Minimally (the ultimate vanilla RTW wishlist)

Greets,

I've looked at a few of the impressive and major mods out there, but like most mods i find in most games i play, theres alot i like but also a few things i dont like. I kinda wanna compile the best bits of them all for my personal game of RTW. Starting with the bare essentials (like the essential BUG FIXER) and working up (and in the interest of being very noob friendly - not only for myself but for others who want to fully explore vanilla rome in all its glory before getting into the more ambitious total mods).

Anyway, the question is this.

What stand alone mods are compatible with Gold Edition RTW (1.5/1.6) that:

1) Improve the AI, particularly on the battle map and specifcally improve the survival of AI generals (ie, stop them from being the first unit to charge my phalanx. .)

2) Make the AI on the campaign map a little less predictable, more naval invasion orientated (when comfortably secure and wealthy) and less 'campy' (when they have large forces standing around doing nothing).

3) Magnus Mundi - this was a big hit early on (although i missed it) and now theres alot of versions that state 'but', 'unfinished', 'possibly not compatible with Gold' and things of that type. Is there a version of Magnus Mundi that is bug free and works for Gold RTW?

4) The animations mods (i forget the authors, sorry) - sounds great, is it great and again, is it implementable in Gold RTW with no side effects?

5) de-Greening the mercenaries - sounds wonderful but the last time i checked there was a small disclaimer suggesting that for vanilla rome it requires fiddling around with various .txt files as it was designed for RTR. Is there a no fuss Vanilla 1.5/1.6 version, again, with no side effects?

6) Improve the colours of vanilla factions - taking away the lego land look of the roman factions and parthia in particular, giving them a more sublte and realistic colour palette?

And that's about it!

Anyone else, feel free to add you own vanilla wishlist and lets see if we can take the best and most revolutionary features of the mods out there (AI, Diplomacy, Improved Map) and make vanilla rome the best it can be.

To all those working on the various total mods out there - my hat is off to you, your work on those mods is what has inspired this post, no disrespect intended and i appreciate that it may require some work to get those improvments compatible with vanilla rome 1.5/1.6 in a stand alone format. I'm just fishing around for what is available for Rome Total War at the moment that doesn't radically alter the factions, units, time period or balance from the vanilla version of the game.

Thanks.

id like to know as well what mods are compatible with rome total war gold?

Every mod that´s for RTW 1.5 is compatible with RTW Gold, every mod for BI 1.6 is compatible with the BI part of RTW Gold.

Fr3nzy:
You could download Darths formation package, it works with vanilla RTW. The animations, I´ll take it you´re refering to SigniferOne´s animation package, works fine with RTW Gold.
For different unit looks, look through TWCenters Download section, there are literally tons of skins, models etc. If you don´t mind the work you could also download mods whose units you like and implement the models into your RTW (see the Scriptorium for how to do that). I don´t know about a Mundus Magnus for 1.5, but that doesn´t mean there isn´t one.

Darth's v16 formations or Sinuhet's 6.5 are very 'noob' friendly....you just drop them in your data directory and you're done. As for animations, the problem is that there must be done a lot of editing of the text file called
'descr_model_battle.txt' in order for the units to actually use the new animations. The major mods have done this for you..so if you want it, you'll have to do it yourself. In fact, most of the things you want do involve some self-help, unfortunately, unless you rely on the bigger mods where someone has done all this work for you.
Given what you are asking for, I'd recommend to you Lusted's TE5.1...it is a lot 'like' vanilla as far as the play is concerned....but with all the stuff you ask for installed.

so is it possible to install rtr platinum over rome tw gold and then add darths mod as well?