So, what is Darthmod exactly?

[MetalTrail]

More importantly, is it vital to my enjoyment of the game? I really wanna get into Empire.

[DieHeftigeHelga]

Well it adds units, improves the game, I think better graphics, some factions are unlocked. I think thats it...you should use it because Vanilla Empire Total War just sucks

[Insaniac]

It's for people who found easy difficulty too challenging. And it's playerbase seems to be overwhelmingly comprised of new players who bought into hype. For instance the fellow above me has 10 hours playtime. The most common excuse for this is that steam has magically just stopped counting all these people's hours logged in game. Furthermore, it basically throws money at you, tampers with already poor balancing, and adds a bunch of poorly done units into the game. Finally, almost all of the changes it makes to the game can be done without breaking multiplayer, and multiplayer undoubtedly provides a better challenge and often more exciting battles than singleplayer. I personally have almost 3.5k hours playtime and have modded the game adding new agents, new abilities, new buildings, new sounds, new units, and new factions; all without breaking multiplayer. If you really want a mod you're best off downloading PFM and ESF Editor and custom tailoring the game to your own likings. That said, Empire: Total Factions is decent.

[Servius]

I think Kumelowski is being a bit harsh. Up until Shogun 2 and Total Warhammer, most of CA's Total War games came out undercooked. They often had bad AI (campaign and battle), a corresponding slew of hidden buffs for the AI (campaign income, battle morale, etc.) to compensate, overly-standardized units across nations, and some wonky systems or abilities that overall led to a meh experience. Luckily, the TW games have also been blessed with a really great modding community at The Org and Total War Center. Back before Rome 1, you could mod these games by opening txt files in Excel and tweaking values as you saw fit, but it got a lot more complicated once the games entered the 3D era with R1. Anyway, there have been a bunch of great modders and great mods, and DarthMod earned a reputation over several games for being one of the best overhaul mods available. Darth has moved on to his own game company (he's the guy behind Ultimate General games) but I'm pretty sure the mod is still considered one of the best.

Best solution, try the game without it, then read the mod notes where Darth talks about what the mod changes, and see if it sounds like a good idea.

[Insaniac]

Well I doubt Darthmod would speak negatively of itself in its own notes. It's not like they'd tell you that some of the unit cards are stock photos and the corresponding units have incomplete unit description blurbs or no unit description blurb at all. And it's not like they'd tell you that, "oh by the way, your economy is totally stacked so you never have to worry about financing." Nor would they tell you that the supposed, "AI improvement" is actually more akin to just the AI behaving differently. It's like going to the Apple website and expecting them to give an impartial assessment of their own product. Again, most of the popularity of this mod really just boils down to snowballing hype.

[Hat8]

Originally posted by HeavyMetalJezus66:

More importantly, is it vital to my enjoyment of the game? I really wanna get into Empire.

It's easy mode.

[SuperGorp]

It adds a lot more immersion and I think the battle AI is much improved. I wouldn't pay too much attention to that Kumelowski guy, if you so much as think or utter Darthmod he goes into convulsions and fits. I honestly don't see much difference in the difficulty between it and vanilla. The economy is a little easier but it's that way with all factions. Have recently tried Imperial Splendour mod and am enjoying it so far.

[SuperGorp]

Originally posted by Kumelowski:

It's for people who found easy difficulty too challenging. And it's playerbase seems to be overwhelmingly comprised of new players who bought into hype. For instance the fellow above me has 10 hours playtime. The most common excuse for this is that steam has magically just stopped counting all these people's hours logged in game. Furthermore, it basically throws money at you, tampers with already poor balancing, and adds a bunch of poorly done units into the game. Finally, almost all of the changes it makes to the game can be done without breaking multiplayer, and multiplayer undoubtedly provides a better challenge and often more exciting battles than singleplayer. I personally have almost 3.5k hours playtime and have modded the game adding new agents, new abilities, new buildings, new sounds, new units, and new factions; all without breaking multiplayer. If you really want a mod you're best off downloading PFM and ESF Editor and custom tailoring the game to your own likings. That said, Empire: Total Factions is decent.

You do realize that the Steam hours logged on this game can be inaccurate. I would think there are many like myself who played the hell out of this on the disc version and then later bought the Steam version. My hours only show about 140 or so and I'm sure I'm around a 1000 hours

[Insaniac]

Yes, I'm sure voicing my opinion equates to convulsions and fits. I sincerely apologize for answering OP's question in a fashion that you found disagreeable. And yes, I'm sure that ALL these sub-100 hour players just so happen to have thousands of unverifiable hours on the disk version of the game. A real coincidence. Anyway, I wouldn't call being able to afford upgrading all my starting buildings on turn one and still having money left over a, "little easier." Nor would I call the outrageous amount of income you can generate from trade a, "little easier." Furthermore, I disagree that it improves immersion, not more than any other far smaller mods.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Veteran Sergeant Servius:

I think Kumelowski is being a bit harsh. Up until Shogun 2 and Total Warhammer, most of CA's Total War games came out undercooked. They often had bad AI (campaign and battle), a corresponding slew of hidden buffs for the AI (campaign income, battle morale, etc.) to compensate, overly-standardized units across nations, and some wonky systems or abilities that overall led to a meh experience.

Really? You're gonna say that? You do know that AI in Shogun 2 and up are handed research, money, troops and buildings pretty much on a silver platter right? You can't bankrupt the AI in Shogun 2 and later, you can bankrupt the AI in Empire and previous.

Originally posted by SuperGorp:

You do realize that the Steam hours logged on this game can be inaccurate. I would think there are many like myself who played the hell out of this on the disc version and then later bought the Steam version. My hours only show about 140 or so and I'm sure I'm around a 1000 hours

Oh yes, the disc version that requires Steam in order to be installed and played. Nice catch there ;).

[Insaniac]

Speaking of Shogun 2, I was REALLY disappointed with FoTS. Admittedly I made an impulse buy. But it's just a major turkey shoot, and the unit rosters are terrible.

[SuperGorp]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Originally posted by Veteran Sergeant Servius:

I think Kumelowski is being a bit harsh. Up until Shogun 2 and Total Warhammer, most of CA's Total War games came out undercooked. They often had bad AI (campaign and battle), a corresponding slew of hidden buffs for the AI (campaign income, battle morale, etc.) to compensate, overly-standardized units across nations, and some wonky systems or abilities that overall led to a meh experience.

Really? You're gonna say that? You do know that AI in Shogun 2 and up are handed research, money, troops and buildings pretty much on a silver platter right? You can't bankrupt the AI in Shogun 2 and later, you can bankrupt the AI in Empire and previous.

Originally posted by SuperGorp:

You do realize that the Steam hours logged on this game can be inaccurate. I would think there are many like myself who played the hell out of this on the disc version and then later bought the Steam version. My hours only show about 140 or so and I'm sure I'm around a 1000 hours

Oh yes, the disc version that requires Steam in order to be installed and played. Nice catch there ;).

Yes, the disc version required you to log it into Steam but you could still play off disc. Later got a new computer and re-installed Empire by buying it directly off Steam site and it meant a whole new game, new hours, and had to finish Road to independance all over again to play U.S. It was the same way with my Rome 1 and Medieval 2

[Empire_TW]

Darthmod is an overhaul mod. Is it vital? No. It is quite overrated and overall not that good. Most changes harm gameplay, the biggest one is how broken the mod makes the economy.It makes the game completely challengless. This game is about managing an 17th century empire and this mod pretty much throws that all out the window. Making trade ship and building up industry are all rendered mute by the mod even though they are supposed to be important.

The mod introducing this economy system also breaks public order, in vanilla and other mods you have to build buildings, swap out ministers, change tax policy, or other methods. In darthmod just queue up a full stack of units, you can more then afford it. Also if you like naval battles the mod makes them unplayable, the Ai will have entire fleets of heavy first rates and it just turns into a game of bumper cars.

As for changes in battles there isn't much actual change however it changes unit sizes and these are mostly negative. Line Infantry have like 550 men in a regiment and fire by rank only works in 3 ranks, 550 men is too much to form 3 ranks so line infantry won't work properly. Also platoon fire us removed because it didn't work properly with such big units. Also for some reason the mod makes elite infantry tiny compared to other units and milita can beat them, armed farmers beat royal guards.

In short its not really that good, most changes are negative and the mod doesn't really add anything new. You are better off getting ACW, Imperial Splendor, or Imperial Destoyer. Those mods add actual new things without making the game easy or broken. Or you can mod the game yourself which is probably best overall as you can do whatever you want.

[Inardesco]

You need Steam to play the game. While it is possible to play with using steam offline, you always need to open steam in order to play the game.

That's basically the same across all Steam-launched games which is noted by the steam.dll in the install folder.

[SuperGorp]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

You need Steam to play the game. While it is possible to play with using steam offline, you always need to open steam in order to play the game.

That's basically the same across all Steam-launched games which is noted by the steam.dll in the install folder.

Correct, but I'm telling you when i bought the Steam version it did not include my disc campaigns or hours

[Crisco]

I read the changelog history and decided NOT to install Darthmod after reading how he changed upkeep costs so certain nations like Russia could field massive armies. Also he fiddled around with ammunition amounts, accuracy, melee lethality, ship hull strength, ship cannon hit point buffs and other things without any mention of historical sourcing or comparisons.

Just from reading the change log it seems, imho, that he just wanted a game with giant stacks of armies slugging it out with massive numbers of troops in each regiment. He seemed to focus more on armies and battles and 'epicness' than on the real world feel of managing an 18th Century Empire and the fact that he is now making games is reason for concern.

Vanilla has it's issues but at least it's playable and a challenge and not just 100's of armies and navies running around the map with little regard for financial management.