Hmmmm... What's the deal?

[OJsakila]

Rome Total Realism... Why do I NOT want this? It seems to me that the RTR mod is pretty unique. Are there any "better" mods available that I could be unaware of?

[Malrubius]

From what I hear, it's pretty good. Removes a lot of the fantasy units. New music. Has a unified Rome. More realistic battles. New recruitment concept.

I would also recommend you check out Europa Barbarorum. The goal is to provide a more immersive experience on the battlefield with all new models and skins and a completely reworked stat system for combat, as well as a new more accurate campaign map, with a new recruitment concept, 4 turns per year and a lot of scripting. We're conducting open beta testing now. I'm pretty proud of what we've done with the traits system so far. :laughing:

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

depends what you want. If you enjoyed vanilla but want it more realistic and challenging then RTR is a good point to start. It's advantage over EB is that it is stable and not in Beta, but EB is gonna be very interesting when it comes out.

Alternatively, if you enjoy the battles most then I'd recomend SPQR, it's like vanilla on speed, hugely challenging but doesn't bother with realism too much.

What I'd recommend you do is try SPQR first and see whether you like it (you either will or won't), it is very different from vanilla in the way it plays whereas RTR is much closer to vanilla. If you don't get enjoyment from SPQR then try RTR.

[Greenbeef]

I find it very difficult to play any mod that's still restricted to version 1.2. The bugs CA has fixed and features they've added really show up when you go from playing 1.5/1.6 to 1.2.

I'm looking forward to Imperia Romana for BI, RTR 7.0, and SPQR 6.0. The RTR team hasn't disappointed me in the past, and their mod was great if you enjoy slower paced campaigns. I would recommend SPQR 5.0 if you enjoy a faster paced game with more battles.

If you're looking for some good 1.6 mods for BI, I would recommend looking into this thread here:http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39550

For 1.5, there are only a few mods out at the moment. The only two major mods for RTW 1.5 are linked as follows:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=38756
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=40697

While I haven't tried Lusted's mod, I have tried out the Warmap one. The map for Warmap is simply massive, it's worth checking out.