Total War Game Mods

Know of any good ones? What do you like about them?

Much as "A Scotsman In Egypt" convinced me to buy Medieval II, "I Am Skantarios" made me try out the Stainless Steel mod (version 6.2). I'm currently playing a French campaign in it, and for the most part find it to be an improvement over the standard game.

Pros:

• Much larger map. There's a dozen settlements in the British Isles alone, and a frankly intimidating amount of new territory in the east. Unit move rates are boosted to compensate, allowing armies to do a surprising amount of marching and fighting each turn.
• No Americas.
• More factions: Norway, Ireland, Castille, Aragon, Lithuania, Kievan Rus, Cuman Khanate, Kwarizmians, Knights Templar...
• More units, especially mercenaries.
• Buildings take longer to complete. This may not sound like a Pro until you realize this affects how quickly you spend money. The end result is that everyone has more pocket change to build armies, which makes for much more interesting wars, even if the computer likes to field huge stacks of Spear Militia.
• Gatehouses automatically dump boiling oil on attackers during sieges.
• Wonder-esque special buildings: Notre Dame, the Hagia Sophia, the Masjid al-Haram, St. Mark's Basilica, etc.
• No more "Spies = Dread" bullcrap. It looks like it's harder to get Dread on the battlefield, too, so you aren't punished as badly for not fighting like an idiot.
• An incentive to Exterminate settlements: you get more gold from it than sacking now.

Cons:

• A lot of little typos in the unit descriptions.
• For some reason Crossbowmen have extreme difficulty seeing over walls, making them useless during sieges.
• The aforementioned Spear Militia spam.
• If you thought playing Scotland in the vanilla game was tough, wait until you try out Ireland.
• Siege equipment got nerfed hard. Catapults take roughly a century to knock down gates even if they hit each time (which they most certainly won't). Ballistae can't even attack gates at all. The game really wants you to build battering rams and siege towers. Or do what I do and field lots of Spies.

edited 9th Aug '10 2:14:08 PM by Tacitus

Gonna have to recommend Europa Barbarorum for Rome. Harder to install than its other famed mod, Rome Total Realism, but I thought it was far better done.

Europa Barbarorum is what made me the Hellenophile I've become today. And infinitely safer in some internaet circle compared to my previous interest.

"Helleboos - like weaboos but more intellectual."

I take it buildings now cost less than an arm and a leg to build in that mod?

No, they're even worse if anything... well, some of them.

Upkeep cost for Chaonion Agema: 1337 Mnai per turn (if I remember it right, that is). (Tax) revenue from a city: 2500 Mnai AT BEST.

Yes, in this mod if you don't build market and mines like crazy you're going to be broke faster than you can say "Hannibal is at the gate".

... Does the 'add_money' cheat still work?

You'll have fun spending between 12000 and 35000 mnai on mines as well.

Third Age: Total War is a very polished Lord Of The Rings mod; definitely worth checking out. The only thing even moderately disappointing about it is that all of the unique locations from the books and films (Minas Tirith, Barad Dur, Isengard, etc.) are bog-standard cities and fortresses. Pretty much every onther aspect of the game has been changed to fit the LOTR universe, though—the amount of work the put into it is really quite impressive.

Also worth a look is Call of Warhammer, which has all sorts of interesting features like specific groups of famous mercenaries you can hire, neutral evil factions like the Beastmen and undead who populate little forts all over the map, and if I remember correctly, even a few scripted battles in the main campaign. Be warned, though: it's buggy as all hell and a complete pain in the ass to install. Once you fix the interface fluctuating between English and Russian and manage to avoid a crash every time you try to besiege a Border Princes settlement, it becomes quite worth it.

They're both for Medieval II, just to clear that up.

edited 22nd Oct '10 9:28:27 AM by Davie

Any of you play Clouds Over Europe, or something like that? It brings in Wallachia, amongst numerous others.

As for Medieval II:

Once Europa Barbarorum II is out, I'll kiss my social life goodbye.