Balance mods?

[user330977]

Hello folks,

I'm searching for some balance mods that tweak the base game and add some balance/polish here and there without changing the underlying formula too much. For this reason I find mods like History Rewritten and Realism Invictus rather heavy-handed, though I appreciate the immense work the modders put into these.

My go-to mod for years has been BatMod 4.1. Something like K-Mod or AdvCiv seems great, as I like how they rebalance civics and some other minor changes, but it doesn't seem to come packaged with up to date versions of BatMod or the improved terrain mods. Is there anything one can do here?

Grateful for any and all assistance.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[f1rpo]

BlueMarble is easily added to K-Mod (and to AdvCiv); there are instructions at the end of the initial post of the K-Mod thread.
And there are partial merges of K-Mod and BAT: MMod, KatMod
However, neither of them include the BULL changes that K-Mod misses, i.e. those two mostly add artwork.

AdvCiv has, at this point, most of the functionality from BULL or something (imo) nearly equivalent. Missing BULL features include city tile highlighting (or is that a BAT thing?), the widescreen Foreign Advisor, enhanced Espionage screen, Victory and Members tab; I never found the time. The usability tweaks innovated by BAT (HUD civics display comes to mind) are also missing in AdvCiv. On the other hand, AdvCiv has dozens of UI tweaks of its own (screenshot of the menu).

AdvCiv also has its own terrain textures, which, however, are (deliberately) pretty close to the original textures. Essentially no other artwork changes. AdvCiv Plus adds a similar amount of community-created artwork as BAT does, but it's quite different from the Varietas Delectat collection that BAT uses. It's easily in the "inofficial expansion" category of mods, i.e. adds a fair amount of content, and makes various AI and rule changes of its own too. The DotO mod is in a similar place, with less artwork and many of its gameplay changes being optional.

The real balance mods, in my book, are the multiplayer mods at RealmsBeyond.net - as those balance changes are actually the result of extensive discussions among competitive players. But, then, they're aimed at multiplayer only. The Close to Home mod is fully integrated with BULL. (Well, sans pre-chop, I guess, since that's not multiplayer-compatible.) I don't think it makes any artwork changes.

 

[f1rpo]

Drat, I forgot about the Ethnic Units Extended graphics pack for AdvCiv. I suppose it was created recently enough to not have fully registered with me after telling players for years that no such thing exists. Only covers units, no ethnic city styles.

[...] I combined units from many other mods and tried to keep it simple. [...]