Right now I'd recommend Rome: Total Realism (RTR), but you've probably already played that, seeing as how it's an old mod. But there's a Platinum edition that ports it to the newest patch. Also, a mini-campaign of the next RTR, RTR VII, called The Iberian Conquest has just been released. I haven't tried that one out, but it looks good. I've also found the mod team very friendly and helpful.

If you haven't played RTR before, it's basically a realism mod, like its title suggests, with a bigger map, completely new units, a new faction (Bactria). Cavalry is also radically different-- they have very high charge values, but they will get massacred if you leave them to hand-to-hand combat. In other words, more realistic. It also employs Area-of-Recruitment (AoE), um, recruitment for low-level units. Meaning, for example, any faction can train a Gallic warband kind of unit in Gaul, Italian troops in Italy, etc.

Another mod that caught my eye is the relatively new Extended Greek Mod (XGM). It retains most of the vanilla game flavour, but with a bigger map and a focus on Greek factions-- they are no longer purely phalanx-based, so have more variety. The only issues I've heard of are random CTDs, but I don't think they occur very often.

If you're really really into historical immersiveness and a slow game, go for Europa Barbarorum (EB). It is supposed to be really realistic, with various army reforms and such, for example. The fully-revamped trait system also looks sexy. Though a common complaint for EB is that it has insanely long loading times, so if that puts you off, don't get it. Personally, though, it's another EB feature that bugs me the most-- all the unit names have in their "native" tongue, meaning unless you have a phD in classical studies or something, be prepared to be swamped by a whole lot of gibberish, especially the non-Roman and non-Greek factions.

I've also heard good things about SPQR: Total War and Roma Surrectum (RS). Just as the XGM elaborates on the Greek factions, the Roman faction gets an overhaul in these two mods. They feature 0-turn recruitment, and IIRC Roma Surrectum has named legions.


But these are only mods set in the rough timeframe of vanilla RTW. I'm not too sure about the rest, I only researched about these Roman-era mods. But there's a lot of variety too. There's a medieval mod, at least two Napoleonic/Renaissance mods, two LotR mods, an East Asian mod.......

Well, anyways. Welcome back, turbohacker!