Help Me Understand How A MOD works

[Marquis Sarabande]

:hmmmlease could someone brief me about what exactly a MOD is, how to install it, and if it alters the basic application. Details would be greatly appreciated. I have played all the Total War eras extensively for some years and never tried a MOD. Please help me understand what to do and how the MOD may affect the basic Rome or Medieval Total War applications. I have Windows Vista, and a moderately decent Radeon Video Card, running on a relatively new HP laptop with extra RAM.

[irishron]

Mod is abbreviation for modification hence the game is modified as in changed. Each mod is different as to the likes and dislikes of modders and mod teams. Read the descriptions of the mods and see which ones have what you like included. Mod come with directions on how to install and each one different depending on the mod. Being a laptop don't expect any great performance or running it on high. Graphics aren't as intense as M2TW but it will suck it dry.

[MasterOfNone]

The quality mods will generally be modfoldered - this means they sit in a folder beneath your vanilla (original) game files and so will not affect your game. Keep a look out for the green folder symbol in the Wiki released mod tables...

More about modding can be found here: http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Modding_Portal

The best list of released mods can be found here: http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Released_Mods

[Brusilov]

If you want to make sure that the install of a mod never affects your original game then take a copy of the game you want to mod (the entire folder) and install mods over that.

I take this approach even for the games that are modfoldered. If I want to remove the mod (and not the original game) then I simply delete the copy folder. I currently have around 10 different R:TW and R:TW BI based mods installed.

You will probably find that a mod will be more demanding than the original game for graphics and memory usage. The skins are usually more detailed than 'vanilla' R:TW which is where the graphics hit is.

A lot of mods will have a larger campaign map with more settlements to conquer.

Enjoy the game and try a few different mods - there are a lot of very good mods out there.