The Caravel Mod

[huth]

Hello, last weekend I started playing Humankind, this game can be played kinda as you want, it's audio and visual design is quite calm and very immersive, so it somehow brought me to reflect about countless hours spent in strategic games years ago... I've checked my disk do I still have totalwar folders, there were, one with MTW with Caravel mod, that I tried long ago.
I've gone wild with my thoughts, so let me put my hmm essay into spoiler, because it's pretty off-topic and just reminiscent...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It was actually last mod(well far later I've checked some version of Redux) before I quit playing MTW for Rome, M2, and other grand strategies. But MTW has something so relaxing for me, I don't know what is it, it was the first big strategy game I've played after some old 2D RTS and RPG games. I remember in my youth just having it run, ambient music played while I've been reading books or doing homework(offtopic- is it a right english tense to use it in this sentence? Doind smth while smth else goes on but everything in the past?). And doing some moves or battles once in while. And then a crash haha... old times. Maybe only Rome with Europa Barbaroum or Europa Universalis with Magna Mundi and some cRPGs gave me that immersive but calm vibe, though they are much more challenging and require a lot of thinking(well not cRPGs...). I have lost plenty of time in other games, they gave me fun but I consider it as lost, wasted, forlorn time, especially Civ games(they are good only in exploration and early to mid kingdom phase then it's managing of managing of m... and probably Humankind would add to it...), newer paradox strategies(fun over hmm... history?), totalwars from M2(why graphics matter more than gameplay integrity?) and M&B Warband and the whole mod and MP world of this - truly this ugly but immersive game with so many layers of gameplay(is it a medieval sim? battle sim? rpg? action game? tactics? even big strategy? - mods just made this game into dozen other. And MP mods... one made this an MMO - my first and the last, this type of games should be sold with excize tax because how addictive they are.
Well, years gone, and sometimes I think if I be born in the world without computers I would have a great edu degree and fine job and all that other important life things that people use to strive for. Or... went pathologic because I couldn't hide in virtual world while quite bad things happened at home. Or alcoholic or dead because I could not fill the uncertainty and emptyness of the late youth/early adulthood only with books(so exciting) and just go partying all the time. So I am - confiding at forums of twenty years old game. And I'm sober, oh man, now I've got to drink for sure haha.

Anyway, I started playing again, I've got sucked in...
I forgot how great is AI managing in Caravel. And that there're no peasants and other rubbish. Army roosters are accurate to a nation. They might seem boring without some fancy local units, and universal scheme of unit kinds, but it feels historically accurate and balanced. Catholics get types of militia-spearmen-shooters and mainly light-medium cavalry and some nation-specific unit but nothing weird. It gets a bit messy(a bit) in Middle and Eastern Europe. And of course Muslim/steppe cultures have an emphasis on bow, but I was surprised that their shooting units actually get into fighting and not only run. Well those Futuwas and Turcomans are quite a challange with some valour from high-star general.
I play Spain(well, it's more like Castile-Leon, but who cares), because it was always easy as I remember(and I wanted a chillful weekend game) just need a very risky and skillful first turns gameplay.
And well, it was. I took Cordoba early, then bunkered and went into economy while fighting Almohads for ransom money(well, it's a nice exploit, probably not so historically accurate as they're not Christians, so I suppose they'd be treated in quite unhealthy way...), slowly made a fleet, bribed Valencia and Portugal, got Navarra and left Aragon as a nice buffer. As things weren't interrupted by English and other nations crusades(they went East somehow) so I've unleashed crusade hell on the heathen North Africa and stop at Sinai, because Turks luckily didn't conquer Egypt yet. It seems Almohads are much weaker than in vanilla(they have some crazy good early period infantry units). Then... well I post later with screenshots, just need to check what are nowadays free pics hostings.