Stainless Steel 4 Initial Impressions: Two Thumbs Up

[King_Sulieman_YHWH]

I recently decided to install SS4 mod and try it instead of the vanilla campaign. I remember Rome: Total Realism made R:TW so much better so I tried this. I am glad that I did.

It rocks! They added Aragon in Pamplona (or is that Zaragoza?), Knights Templar faction north of Jerusalem, and the Rus in Kiev.

The game changes, rule changes, additions, and new provinces are all great. The added visuals are great too. Would anyone else care to elaborate on what they like in the mod the most? Right now my favorite changes are the differences in the map and the new factions.

[Garnier]

The map is very good. Still not nearly as big as bigmap (which is good) but bigger than the vanilla, so there's room. And not too many new provinces. I wish I could port the map to LTC easily. The trouble with it is I personally don't find it too balanced, and it has CTD's sometimes for me. Also its not bugfree.

[King_Sulieman_YHWH]

yeah i was playing as aragon and CTD by turn 5.

ill give it a go with a 'normal' faction.

[King_Sulieman_YHWH]

okay, after a couple days, this ***** is really, really buggy.
characters and generals are getting stuck with no movement on bridges and coastlines for seemingly no reason. when it happens on land ur screwed, when by the coast they still get the option to enter a ship and can be saved.

this happened to my heir, who eventually became king, he got stuck in a bridge when he was 22, he fell and caught his leg in it, and hes been there for 36 years now, try to get free. all of his stats went to zero except piety, which he has 2 of. No command, no authority, no chiv or dread.

Bye bye King Alffonso and Stainless Steel its done so nicely though. even graphics run better on my system when using that mod. but .. i cant use it, yet, anymore, too buggy. hope they release a patch or a 4.1 or something.

[HistoryProf]

I've been playing as the Byzantines and Sicilians, (W/ quickfix #3 and Quarks mini-mod replacement for Darthmod), and I can tell you that this map is the best I've seen so far (good balance of size of/quantity of settlements), and the skins are jaw-dropping.

I've only had minor problems with not being able to acquire one or two resources. I've had only 1 CTD as 10 different factions over a total of a few hundred turns. GrimReality takes some getting used to, but ultimately makes for a better game. Kinda tired of seeing peoples Campaign Map screenshots where Scotland or Poland rules the entire continent, which is literally (and I don't mean that figuratively) impossible.

Bloody good effort; 4.1's bound to be even better.