Best mods?

[stezzag]

Which are the best mods according to you, actually?
Are there any "must have" ones like it was in Dom 5 for Lucid's heroes and objects?

[SaD-82]

The only must have mod I had in former iterations was "No AI recruit".
And as this one isn't necessary anymore, I don't use any mods at all.
All those other mods (like the one you've mentioned) weren't essential for the game - in my opinion they either were strange/not lore-friendly or changed the game too much to be considered a dominions game anymore.
At the moment the series reached a point at which it's actually not mandatory anymore having mods running alongside it. And that's quite the accomplishment.

[Mormacil]

The game is barely half a year old, a lot of Must Have's come about a bit later in the life cycle discounting ports from older games.

We're still exploring how the game actually works, what is balanced, etc. It will be quite a while before I will recommend any rebalancing at all.

[Demonsthenes]

Lucid's improved casting AI mod is the only one that I basically won't play the game without; it makes mages use their time much better once the script is finished, which is fantastic both for single player and multiplayer.

Trusty Research is great; it lets you allocate your starting research. I hope it becomes obsolete though, as the game already has an option for how to allocate starting research (random or evenly distributed), so it would most naturally be just another value for that option.

But I really enjoy the extra options for expansion that it opens up, both for using expanders but also have your mages able to cast basic but impactful spells like Temper Armors or Web.

[Draken]

It's great if you like Lucid's improved casting mod, but I definitely would cation against slapping it on single player games without knowing what it does.

It changes how the AI casts offscript, and as the AI opponents always use offscript, it means that they won't buff anything if Lucid's Casting mod is enabled as the mod disables that. Even if it would be a good idea.

So you can enable it, but you have to know that it will make the AI opponents casting different and worse in some situation. Because of that I would definitely not label it a "must have" mod.

It's a great mod if you want what it does, otherwise it might cause you issues and frustration.

A very good mod that doesn't change to much I would recommend is Spark of Divinity.
It adds a bit more spice to the pretender creation, as all pretenders have unique ways to infulence the game beyond just their chassie and paths.

[freek_o_nature]

CBM! Collaborative Balance Mod! It addresses a lot of minor things that I really appreciate, but which are understandably outside the developers' priorities. I've heard that the first iteration of CBM for Dominions 6 should be out soon!

...Collaborative? It might be Community Balance Mod; I thought it was Collaborative because I think it used to be called Balance Mod Colab? Honestly, I dunno if CBM means Community or Collaborative Balance Mod, but it's almost a necessity for me.

...oh, Collaborative Community Balance Mod! CCBM! Nailed it. #fistpump

EDIT: Lucid's Improved Casting Mod (LICM?) and AI No Recruit (AINR?) are also great, I totally recommend trying LICM & AINR. Also,

Originally posted by Mormacil:

The game is barely half a year old, a lot of Must Have's come about a bit later in the life cycle discounting ports from older games.

We're still exploring how the game actually works, what is balanced, etc. It will be quite a while before I will recommend any rebalancing at all.

This is also a really good point to remember: there are enough mechanical changes to this version that "must have" mods may change a year or two down the road, but this won't necessarily affect all mods equally. It could have a major influence on CCBM, since that addresses such a wide range of small things (and some bigger things, too), but I think AINR is likely to stay useful more or less the way it is, since it prevents the AI from making what most would consider "bad decisions" like filling its armies with indie militia instead of national sacreds, stuff like that. So these mod recommendations may be subject to change in the near future!

[eddieballgame]

The mod that my group has been playing for awhile is Sombre's Warhammer Mod.
If one is a fan of that 'world'; I, highly, recommend it.

[Demonsthenes]

Lucid's mod does have a single player version, which I find makes AI players more capable than without it. But yes definitely don't use the multiplayer version in single player games.

[Moon Horse]

Three personal favorites:
Nation Overview by Sturm. Honestly should be part of the vanilla game by now.

Better Indies by iflyte, Makes indie mages have a chance at slightly better/more diverse paths.

Sprite Overhaul by Sturm. Again, must have for me.


Improved Casting mod doesn't really make the AI better, it just makes them spam damage spells instead of buffs, which is a sidegrade, not an improvement. I tried games with it and without it and I prefer games without it.

Trusty Research - tried, didn't like it. Encourages metaslavery too much.

Spark of Divinity is impressive, but I've found that the changes it implements are way too extreme, to the point where it's a completely new game. Every pretender has like seven billion new events tied to them, and I find a lot of them extremely undesirable.

[timlagor]

I have
Nation Overview -just no reason not to - at all - ever
Sprite overhaul I'm seriously considering.


Single Player mods:
AI Passive Blood -not sure how this will play out but it seems like a good idea. (there's also AI Mictlan Fix one that might be wise to stop them just falling over if playing EA)
Community Memes -makes the AI Pretenders a bit more reliably competent.
Second Starting Armies for AI nations gets them Expanding a bit better.


There's also a holy item one for the AI that I don't use. (AI Automatic Divine Blessing)

I'm wary of the Spellcasting one because I might switch over to MP and don't want to train myself wrong (I haven't played that much yet) -yes I realise players play differently but this is more about battle behaviour. Of course that might get used in MP games too.

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

Nat Overview, improved casting, Trusty Research, Sprite overhaul are kind of a no brainer, imho.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Nation overview and capital population normalisation are about the only ones I'd call 'must-haves'. There are others I like, Spark of Divinity is high on the list for example, but none of them are unambiguous improvements in the same way.

Lucid's casting AI mod, for instance, doesn't altogether improve the game's casting AI, just makes it different. It generally weights the AI more towards throwing offensive spells rather than painting buffs, which is sometimes a good thing, but sometimes I want my mages to be painting buffs offscript, y'know? Buffs are pretty powerful in this game.

[Demonsthenes]

My experience with off script buff casting is it will drive you crazy watching your mages paint buffs on newly animated longdead from horde of skeletons, commoners in tavern assassinations, Mistform on your new hawk from Summon Hawk, and really anything nearby where buffing them does not contribute combat power at all and just is a waste of fatigue.

I would love to see the game improved to allow more control over what your mage will prioritize off script. But in the meantime, while there are certainly situations where "advance and cast" buff casting would be nice, there's a lot more when off script buffs make a mage completely useless.

One note BTW is that if you read the mod file, you can see it's split into sections with good comments. If you don't like some of the choices, you can delete those sections and still have a mod that does great stuff like improving prioritization among different Evocations. I don't think I've seen anyone say they love the vanilla behavior of Air mages preferring Storm Wind over lightning magic, for example.

[freek_o_nature]

Also? Rebirth (or a similar mod). I know it's not up a lot of players' alleys, but economic management is something I enjoy doing (even though the game isn't quite built for that), so a mod like Rebirth allows nations like Ermor and Sceleria to exist in the game without completely wrecking the world forever: provinces that are reduced to 0 population get bumped up to a couple hundred or so, just so they're not totally useless. Also a pretty important one for me!

[Nukular Power]

Spark of Divinity, casting AI, and Worthy Heroes are the only must have mods imho, but there are a lot of neat nation mods you can take your pick from, and a bunch of AI helper mods that are nice too.

Guy above me didnt like SoD - I love it personally, makes AI pretenders way more fun to fight against. Made SP way more fun for me but to each their own

[Big Dog]

I always play with Trusty Research, also a big fan of Pretender Recuperation.