Best Mod to play right now a difficult decision

[MoBo]

I started playing ETW about 2.5 weeks ago with Darthmod i enjoyed it so much then i really liked the BAI and firing animations and mechanism in ID so i switched but i'm hating it campaign is really bad it removes more than it adds other than the battles it's really not enjoyable so i'm in a decision do i go back to Darthmod or try Empire realism + any good CAI improvement mod i've heard good things about it, or maybe try an amazing combination of mods what do you recommend ??

[alhoon]

Darthmod & Causa Belli

[-Durango-]

You can PM me if you want to try out my own personal mod setup. It's based on vanilla, but aims to fix problematic areas in the game. Also includes my portrait mod!

If you decide to go with established mods, how about Imperial Splendour? Probably the most accurate to the period if that is something you value.

[pxfofo]

Durango: Can you please post your modlist publicly?

[Rottmeister]

Durango: Can you please post your modlist publicly?

I definitely second that!!!

@MoBo:
As -Durango- suggested, Imperial Splendour is recommendable; there´s two versions however (for early and late campaign), and only the latter (RotR, i.e. Rise of the Republic) is really fleshed out (I still hope for the early campaign to come out of beta stage finally!...).

Also would second alhoon, with submods for Darth. There´s also BranMacBorn´s DME mod settings, which fixes some of the weaknesses of vanilla Darth (particularly regarding campaign AI). There´s quite a few versions to choose from as well - which also is a drawback, since the thread is a little messy and differences not so very well documented, yet can be quite glaring... Generally though, they all have a focus on more "action", more war, more and larger armies, so consider this if you want to try one of the "slaughter"-versions. There´s also a few more "tame" versions (which I would consider fairly balanced and "realistic"), particularly the "regional development"-versions (posts #15, #19, #29, #2154/2156 and #2158 of Bran´s DMEmod-settings-thread). You can also throw an adapted version of "Causa belli" into the mix, or an adapted version of AUM (Additional Units Mod) for more unit variety. I had a quite nice playthrough with the second version in #19 with Sweden (on H/M; with Bran´s settings, "normal" ist roughly what "hard" is for vanilla Darth, "hard" would be "very hard"...). Side note: In Bran´s settings trade is by far your most important source of income (personally that´s my main gripe with it - taxes and industry don´t quite have enough impact economically), so watch your trade lanes!

Another good suggestion is "Wind from the East", which quite recently evolved from "Ottoman Total Overhaul". Other than the name suggests, it meanwhile became a very solid overhaul for all of the factions and for gameplay in general, especially if you´re going after "realism" (you really need to think twice about what you want to build or recruit, things are expensive). There´s also an adapted version of AUM to go with it for even more units (however, that one is still in "experimental" stage - only the most important values like unit size and general strength have been adapted, but still needs some fine tuning). It´s also still being developed (like Imperial Splendour), and I kinda "feel" that it is thoroughly done. Definitely will try this on my next playthrough.

Empire Realism... - it´s great, if only it wasn´t for two (I remember two) things that for me spoil the experience: First, the three classes (upper, middle, lower) have been reduced to two classes only, I would suppose by accident or some misunderstanding, so the mechanics connected with this are broken (don´t know if/how revolutions work, for example, and you also might get problems with unrest despite of everything seemingly optimal - because "under the cover" the wrong class might be getting being catered for). The second problem is that economics is not balanced, with most of the money being made from roads(!) and research, while industry has not nearly enough impact. Last year, JaM wrote something about a new version, so I really , really hope this otherwise great mod will get improved and those two problems fixed!...

One more suggestion ist TRoM (The Rights of Man), which is also quite "realistic" and rather close to vanilla. Can´t remember that there were any major problems, but it´s been a while that I tried that one. It was one of the first mods I´ve tried when I returned to EmpireTW some months ago, and the only reason I did not stick with TRoM was that I first wanted to try a few other mods as well (however, if you look for mods which are as well "finished", stable, balanced, the choice pretty soon gets rather slim, unfortunately..). Solid choice to try out as well, though.

But yeah, I would be very, very interested in working, compatible combinations of submods on vanilla basis as well!