To the civ 4 veterans, we all know firaxis is always behind what we believe should in the game, from bhuric to solvers unnofficial patches we never played exactly what firaxis wanted us to, and eventually these changes always made it into an official patch, just months after we'd all been using them. So my question to you guys is what mods are you using now to make the game feel the way you want? I've been using jooyo's combined mods patch and it's pretty damn good, but I do wonder if it goes to far in some areas. We need to come to a consensus, as a community, as to what mods actually belong in the game so that when we are discussing strategy and what not we aren't playing completely different games.

I think that's a really good idea, but we're still expecting official patches with sweeping changes. I'm cautiously optimistic about the patch(es) solving some of the mechanics problems... less so about some of the AI problems. I haven't played with mods yet but will if this new patch doesn't significantly improve things.

I've been using jooyo's combined mods patch and it's pretty damn good, but I do wonder if it goes to far in some areas.
I used to play Joyoo's CCMAT mod, but I agree with you here and now only use Thal's 'Combined Balance' mods. I also use Perkus' 'Harder Free Tech' (crucial to stop silly slingshots) and Killmeplease's 'Emigration' (crucial to stop negative happiness exploits). I think that these three should be the basic minimum for all players.

One mod I won't play without any more is smellymummy's tech overflow mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=398296)

Apart from that, Thal's balance mods mostly preserve vanilla gameplay with adding some tweaks. I don't want vanilla gameplay in many parts so I do my own, though.