Good Mod (NOT We the People thanks)

[mabo404]

Can anyone suggest some good mods for this game? I've tried We The People which just adds so much spam that I think it creates total overload and could use some judicious bloat-reduction. You can also succeed with pretty much any route because there are too many options for goods that makes good positioning fairly irrelevant.
I'm looking for something to fixes the original bug that punished you for going with more than just one or two cities so makes expansion fun again, but doesn't make the game so bloated that you can succeed no matter what.

[hawkeye]

RAR and TAC are earlier mods than WTP. As far as I can recall they were tougher as the indians went hostile earlier and europeans were more aggressive. This is just my perception though. Historically none of the various factions liked each other at all.

WTP has a major weakness in that europeans do not upgrade their fortifications. I think that RAR does, not sure.

I play the 1650 mod. It is meant for use with RAR. Europeans start with reasonably historical setups. French in Canada and Martinique, British in New England, Dutch along the Hudson, Spanish in the Caribbean and Colombia, Portugese in Brazil. Swedes and Denmark. I usually play as Dutch and try to build up NY before taking out British or French colnies then Spain. So maybe try 1650 with RAR. I play 1-plot towns which is more historical. I just play for a domination victory as once other colonies succeed in rebellion that's game over. So if you want to be a rebel 1650 might not be appealing. It involves a lot of ship action. Otherwise I'd try TAC and RAR.

[nightinggale]

I'm looking for something to fixes the original bug

WTP is the one to use if you want to avoid bugs because all mods and vanilla are full of bugs by comparison. We fixed so many bugs that everybody have lost count.

could use some judicious bloat-reduction

This is mentioned from time to time, but it seems that nobody wants to put in the effort to make a light version of WTP.

WTP has a major weakness in that europeans do not upgrade their fortifications

That is news to me and something, which should be looked into. WTP had a major overhaul on AI building selection, which makes it develop the colonies a whole lot more than it used to, but I won't rule out that it somehow unintentionally makes it less likely to build defensive structures.

[vonEssen]

Try Pilgrim, Trauma, Stress & Disorder version 1.5.3:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/modmod-ptsd-sub-mod-for-we-the-people-4-0-x.30072/version/34483/download

It is a sub-mod for We The People v3.0.1 (which you would need to install first)
https://github.com/We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod/releases/tag/3.0.1

It is stable as far as I can tell, and with it I tried to alleviate some of the issues you mentioned. It is a bit micro-management intense though, which I personally prefer.