Elemental Forums
What mods for the game are the best at the moment and why?
Here the list I currently play with:
and of course..
I've also done my own modifications to the game. Stuff like removed the +1 attack from Swarm, reduced Crushing Blow to only 50%, Renamed several XP giving improvements, revamped the Metal Collection amounts, generally anything that I would consider a improved tweak, yet important enough impact to make said tweak in order to improve the gameplay. I did have a much larger list of balance improvements, but they were recently added to the 1.2 changelog...so they are now off my list. 
Other mods that I'm probably going to add in short order are:
Reason behind why I choose the mods that I choose can be summerized as follows: I don't like the game to radically change from what the game designer (SD) originally intended the game to be. Yet, at the same time I look for mods that will bring out the fullness of that gaming experiance, mods that add to the gameplay without detracting from intent.
Obviously the arguement can be made that if SD intended the game to be a certain way they would have done so to begin with. Well, I don't want to say that 'I know better', but we'll say 'I know better as to what I like'.
Thanks for the shout out GFireflyE!
Since introducing the Monument XP mod, I can't bring myself to NOT play with it, as I love how it changes the game. Plus, it benefits the AI and players pretty much equally, which isn't an easy thing to do with most mods! Of course, I'm biased...
As for other recommended mods:
Snaking and River Bridges by Parrotmath - I think this is a must have.
The just released New Outpost Upgrades mod intrigues me, but it was just released today so I can't recommend something I haven't used yet. Nonetheless, I like what I see!
I have a bunch of other mods ready for installation as well, but right now I'm in modding mode so they aren't installed at the moment. I like to balance versus 'Vanilla' E:LH when testing my mods. Parrotmath and Heavenfall both have great mods, as do a few others.
One other minor change I play with involves the Elemental.Defs file. I've reset the minimum resources for city sites to 2 food/1 materials, and increased the cap from 9 to 15. To be honest, I've never seen a site with over 10 resources, though, and even the 8's/9's are still rather uncommon. This changes the 'balance' for city sites dramatically, and in particular this drops the Materials count for most city sites A LOT. I did try changing the caps for the starting city as well slightly, or just leaving them the same, but the game is ignoring that one. My starting cities now use the map values, not the 'minimum starting values'. Apparently changing the other values 'broke' the minimum starting values. As this changes the Elemental.defs file, though, I won't release it as a 'mod'. I hate changing others' core directory files if I can avoid it, especially this particular file.
There is a very nice resource mod that increases the resource counts for tiles, but I haven't played with it yet (still playtesting). It is a somewhat radical change from Vanilla E:LH.
On that note, someone should probably start a LH mods list thread... and keep the first post up to date with all of the current E:LH mods...
I'm still pondering an .xml issue that I haven't found the solution for, so I can use the distraction for a few minutes!
I still say we need not as 'overly cute' smilies for this forum!
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