vanilla vs. mods

Hi everyone, I just recently found this forum and I am glad to see people are still playing MTW. I have been playing it since the beginning, and after taking a break from it and playing civ 4, I am now ready to return to MTW. I tried RTW and didn't like it and have read enough about MTW2 that I think I'll just stick with MTW. I have always just played MTW with VI, but I have been reading alot about mods on here. I was wondering how many people prefer vanilla and how many prefer mods. If mods, which onesand why? I would have made this a poll question, but I couldn't figure out how.
Thanks

Welcome to the Org!

At this point in the game's life, most people are playing at least slightly modded. I've played the Samurai Warlords conversion, and done some minor tweaks to the vanilla MTW/VI game.

Some of the popular mods are XL, XL with Tyberius, Redux, MedMod, SW, and Pike & Musket.

I have my own modified vanilla version, it's just slightly modded and adds all of the content that has been left behind during the builds.

Shameless self advertising, but if you want just a different touch to the existing MTW, check the link.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...yz-MTW-MiniMod

Enjoy.

For a long time I was a big fan of XL. The attraction for me was the larger number of factions which allows more variety and role play. However, I got tired of it because it has certain drawbacks. For one thing, it has even more units than the original or VI, which means more opportunities for the AI to mess up and (for example) train an army that is mostly javelin units and is easily wiped out by a better designed army. (The Hungarians tend to do this.) Also, XL increases farm income across the board. This is supposed to favor the AI which farms much better than it trades. However, it also makes the rich provines even richer, which favors the player, who can target wealthy provinces more intelligently than the AI does. So it really depends on what you are looking for. You get more variety but sometimes you get less challenge. I never tried the Tyberius patch. Maybe it corrects the problems?

I also enjoyed Samurai Warlords. I think it increased the challenge because the unit roster is smaller, and has fewer useless or overpowered units in it, so the AI has fewer opportunites to make recruitment mistakes. Also, the starting positions can make things really challenging, depending on who you play. I suggest you use the gnome editor to eliminate the crossbow unit (the AI builds too many and suffers for it) and also eliminate the kensai unit, or at least tone it down. Its too powerful. I think the most recent version may have taken care of the crossbow and kensai, but I'm not sure. The strengths and weaknesses of this mod are opposite to XL. You get less variety but more efficient opponents.

Interesting thread guys…

Maybe I’ll post some more elaborate comments later on. I have actually considered putting up a similar thread as this one from time to time (as in; “why do you still play vanilla/raw MTW?”). Regardless, for me it is definitely modifications and alterations all the way for various and numerous reasons. Otherwise I would not have bothered working with the MTW-plattform, now would I?

- Cheers

I'll never make any modifications myself but I do enjoy trying out others' work. Ancient TW is great fun. It's not as replayable as vanilla but still great fun for a change of pace. Been playing Reducks lately and it's well done/good fun.