Mod Recommendation

[yamfah]

Which mod improves the vanilla gameplay best?

[whatamidoing]

I'll claim the first reply for Blood and Iron before the usual responses of HPM

[Dan]

HFM for sure, HPM and Blood and Iron are also great. All of these greatly enhances the vanilla experience (that imo lacks a lot of immersion).

[a.k.a DMDonahue]

depends on your taste. if you want straight vanilla improvement for MP, lembmod v4 is the best, historical accuracy (to an almost annoying degree on *certain* nations lol) I'd say Greater Flavor Mod, if you want improvements to vanilla go Historical Project Mod, same as HPM but more flavor at the cost of running worse go with Historical Flavor Mod (the mentioned GFM has surpassed the original hfm in my opinion) if you want alt history go with Divergences of Darkness, if you want the future go with Cold War Enhanced.

[Dan]

Originally posted by a.k.a DMDonahue:

depends on your taste. if you want straight vanilla improvement for MP, lembmod v4 is the best, historical accuracy (to an almost annoying degree on *certain* nations lol) I'd say Greater Flavor Mod, if you want improvements to vanilla go Historical Project Mod, same as HPM but more flavor at the cost of running worse go with Historical Flavor Mod (the mentioned GFM has surpassed the original hfm in my opinion) if you want alt history go with Divergences of Darkness, if you want the future go with Cold War Enhanced.

HFM is a little heavier, sure, but that's the cost to have a much more pleasant looking map,HFM's map look gorgeousl.
Also I'm now curious about this GFM, I've never heard of it, is it really historical accurate, does it use HFM as a base? I'd love to hear (read) more about it.

[whatamidoing]

HPM is too railroaded imo (HFM is even worse), while BAI takes the vanilla gameplay and improves on it without adding too much of that or useless bloat.

[Dan]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

HPM is too railroaded imo (HFM is even worse), while BAI takes the vanilla gameplay and improves on it without adding too much of that or useless bloat.

If what you call "railroad" is to make the game feel like a real somewhat realistic and have some meaning and sense while adding decisions and events to make you feel like you're actually doing something and actually affecting history by the decisions you make and facing consequences from these decisions, then that' what make them much better than vanila and I love them for that. If you like a more generic and flavourless experience then you should play vanila or even something like civilization or other game for people who don't like history and for whom the historic background doesn't even need to be there in the first place lol...

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by HerrDan:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

HPM is too railroaded imo (HFM is even worse), while BAI takes the vanilla gameplay and improves on it without adding too much of that or useless bloat.

If what you call "railroad" is to make the game feel like a real somewhat realistic and have some meaning and sense while adding decisions and events to make you feel like you're actually doing something and actually affecting history by the decisions you make and facing consequences from these decisions, then that' what make them much better than vanila and I love them for that. If you like a more generic and flavourless experience then you should play vanila or even something like civilization or other game for people who don't like history and for whom the historic background doesn't even need to be there in the first place lol...

It can be realistic without having to be real every damn time, and I'll take believability over hard realism any day. The AI doesn't do much of anything in the railroaded mods except the same thing over and over again, and I don't see how that can be fun for very long. BAI adds in plenty of its own flavor without a bunch of useless fluff and pointless bloat. See, when you and the AI aren't railroaded, pretty much everything thing you do affects history and impacts everyone else. Now that's real fun, and it still maintains the historic background even if the history itself can play out radically different every time.

[Dan]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Originally posted by HerrDan:

If what you call "railroad" is to make the game feel like a real somewhat realistic and have some meaning and sense while adding decisions and events to make you feel like you're actually doing something and actually affecting history by the decisions you make and facing consequences from these decisions, then that' what make them much better than vanila and I love them for that. If you like a more generic and flavourless experience then you should play vanila or even something like civilization or other game for people who don't like history and for whom the historic background doesn't even need to be there in the first place lol...

It can be realistic without having to be real every damn time, and I'll take believability over hard realism any day. The AI doesn't do much of anything in the railroaded mods except the same thing over and over again, and I don't see how that can be fun for very long. BAI adds in plenty of its own flavor without a bunch of useless fluff and pointless bloat. See, when you and the AI aren't railroaded, pretty much everything thing you do affects history and impacts everyone else. Now that's real fun, and it still maintains the historic background even if the history itself can play out radically different every time.

Well, I don't know about you, but every game I play in HFM feels completelly different. There are many paths to choose and the AI in no way follow the same pattern. One game Carlists won in 1836 and in another Spain is a republi, in one of my recent games CSA won the civil war (something funny enough I rarely see in vanila) and so on. Sincerely I only see advantages of playing HFM (besides the minimal downside of being a littler heavier, but the game isn't really heavy anyway). I don't know about you, but seeing anarcho liberals really kills my fun, you see I like RPGs and fantasy games, but when I play a historical game I preffer an aura of "realism" etc, seeing anarcho liberals is like playing a fantasy game, totally kills my immersion. In HFM you just need to click an option and they are disabled and this is just one example out of many.

[a.k.a DMDonahue]

Originally posted by HerrDan:

Originally posted by a.k.a DMDonahue:

depends on your taste. if you want straight vanilla improvement for MP, lembmod v4 is the best, historical accuracy (to an almost annoying degree on *certain* nations lol) I'd say Greater Flavor Mod, if you want improvements to vanilla go Historical Project Mod, same as HPM but more flavor at the cost of running worse go with Historical Flavor Mod (the mentioned GFM has surpassed the original hfm in my opinion) if you want alt history go with Divergences of Darkness, if you want the future go with Cold War Enhanced.

HFM is a little heavier, sure, but that's the cost to have a much more pleasant looking map,HFM's map look gorgeousl.
Also I'm now curious about this GFM, I've never heard of it, is it really historical accurate, does it use HFM as a base? I'd love to hear (read) more about it.

gfm is it's own thing. it was made by a regular community member named Abraham Lincoln

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by HerrDan:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

It can be realistic without having to be real every damn time, and I'll take believability over hard realism any day. The AI doesn't do much of anything in the railroaded mods except the same thing over and over again, and I don't see how that can be fun for very long. BAI adds in plenty of its own flavor without a bunch of useless fluff and pointless bloat. See, when you and the AI aren't railroaded, pretty much everything thing you do affects history and impacts everyone else. Now that's real fun, and it still maintains the historic background even if the history itself can play out radically different every time.

Well, I don't know about you, but every game I play in HFM feels completelly different. There are many paths to choose and the AI in no way follow the same pattern. One game Carlists won in 1836 and in another Spain is a republi, in one of my recent games CSA won the civil war (something funny enough I rarely see in vanila) and so on. Sincerely I only see advantages of playing HFM (besides the minimal downside of being a littler heavier, but the game isn't really heavy anyway). I don't know about you, but seeing anarcho liberals really kills my fun, you see I like RPGs and fantasy games, but when I play a historical game I preffer an aura of "realism" etc, seeing anarcho liberals is like playing a fantasy game, totally kills my immersion. In HFM you just need to click an option and they are disabled and this is just one example out of many.

It's been a long while since I've played HFM, but I remember my games being pretty much the same. No conquering of non-core territory by the AI (I think it had that event that makes the AI return non-core land? Pretty sure HPM does, at least) and who ends up colonizing where, it's... eh, I prefer BAI. I found out about another mod not too long ago, Crimeamod, that's based on BAI and seems pretty neat, although I've only done one game with it so far. Bit of extra flavor, but most notable is the changes to the AI to make them prioritize better techs, build armies with better unit composition, and keep a large and up-to-date navy (among other things), which leads to them going out and conquering more, even the secondary colonial powers like Spain, Portugal, the Dutch, etc. France annexed Korea and the UK Taiwan, Germany and Russia have been quibbling over the corpse of the Ottomans after Russia won the Crimean War, etc. All in all, pretty interesting, and the readme is rather based. I'll have to play more to see if I like it over BAI, but it seems quite promising to me right now.

Originally posted by a.k.a DMDonahue:

Originally posted by HerrDan:

Also I'm now curious about this GFM, I've never heard of it, is it really historical accurate, does it use HFM as a base? I'd love to hear (read) more about it.

gfm is it's own thing. it was made by a regular community member named Abraham Lincoln

From its github page, it looks like it does indeed use HFM as a base, though.