How do I install mods?

[Carlos Chircop]

And what mods would you recommend?

[A Velociraptor]

Well a couple of the bigger ones are as follows:

Stainless Steel: Basically New Game+ for Medieval 2, adds more playable factions, more units, and other similar improvements. I've played this one and it's pretty solid and improves on the base game pretty well.

Third Age Total War/Divide and Conquer: These two are probably the most well known fantasy total conversion mods for Med 2. Both convert the game to Middle Earth during the Third Age (AKA the time period the lord of the rings films and books take place). Third Age Total war, at least the last time i played it, is good but is lacking in faction variety and unit rosters. These problems may have been fixed in later updates. Divide and Conquer however is the superior experience for LoTR mods and has it's own host of submods, in fact it was a submod for TaTW at one point but is now a standalone mod. Divide and Conquer i think is the better mod but Third Age is good if you want a lighter mod, you can also always get both.

As for installing mods, the ones i mentioned are as simple as putting them in the mod folder and renaming their folder to one of the kingdoms campaigns, make sure if you do that to rename the original campaign to something like "campaign_original". There's a guide on the community page here that explains this as well.

[Gigantus]

Forget about renaming folders, simply apply this guide once and then install mods as per their instructions:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=859017394

My steam compatible repacks for the mods mentioned by raptor:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=861485547

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=863223393