any way to mod the vanilla game without having to unpack and repack the game

[Baltane]

Greetings. I am a total idiot and have not modded a TW game since Rome 1. It was quite easy to do along as you didn't mess up, but is there any way to do the same thing here? As in simply opening up the DB, making the edits then saving them without needing to make a separate mod?
Again, sorry for my ignorance to this way of modding.

[crzyrndm]

You can do this, but why? Every patch, you have to redo your changes. If you break something, reverting is harder than it has to be. Shifting between mods requires doing all your changes each time.

Especially when setting up your own mod.pack is so easy, why?

I guess you're probably trying to modify an official pack. Don't do it, theres a reason PFM tells you that you shouldn't. When you want to make a new mod, the first thing you do is set up a new pack. This means that if you screw up and do something which breaks the game, all you have to do to fix it is uninstall your mod.

Step 1: Add a new personal mod in PFM
File -> MyMods -> New. Enter the name and location that you want to store it. When it asks you to select data proceed to step 2
When you have a mod selected under MyMods, extracted tables automatically locate themselves in the mod directory which makes extracting multiple tables much faster

Step 2: Extract the files you want.
Open the official pack (probably data_rome2.pack) in PFM, and navigate to the file you want (I'll use data_rome2/db/kv_rules as an example). Right click -> extract -> extract selected. If you navigate to the folder you created for your mod, you will find a folder structure representing the location of the table in the pack (eg. <mod name>/db/kv_rules in my case) with a binary file inside cotaining the details of the table.

Step 3: Import the files into your mod
File -> MyMods -> Select your mod
Files -> Add -> File(s)
Navigate to the binary files you extracted and add them. You can use the directory option to add a group of tables at once, but be careful to keep the structure the same and not accidentally add another level. Individual Files is safer

Step 4: Make your changes

Step 5: Install your mod
PFM has a great feature where it can manage the user.script.txt entries and add your mod.pack to the Rome2 data folder for you.
File -> MyMods -> Install ____ (depending on which of your mods you have selected)