I'd just like to share my thanks to you for this gem. I've played almost 400 hours of campaign time, am a Total War vet/nut, and have totally kept my mouth shut with the whole debacle of Rome II's release, etc. I'm an older guy, very level headed, and generally don't complain much at all with issues; I've been fortunate to have been playing Rome II since launch quite bug free for the most part.

I've heard everyone talk about Radious' mod, or some battle mod, etc. Upon watching and reading them however, I always felt like they "tweaked" just a bit too much with the base game. Maybe because I'm an artist, I just don't like altering someone's creation to a point where it's really different. I know this is very debatable when it comes to this game, but I hope you understand my opinions on that; I still respect everyone's complaints and do agree much can be said about the AI, etc.

Sorry to be so long winded... I guess what I want to say is your mod pack here is exactly the slight tweak I've always wanted. It's simple, doesn't change base stats, adds pilum throw (thank you!), and I do love what you did with the skirmishers in re: to their accuracy / damage. The fact that you only change melee combat in terms of blocks & misses is so perfect... I can't tell you how great that makes things. Essentially a unit will still defeat a weaker one like in vanilla, but you draw it out longer, so it gives us time to counter with flanking or exhausting a unit, etc. So many possibilites now.

I'm not sure if you'd be interested, but I have only one request: when not in campaign mode, I like to break to do custom battles... I especially love Rome; my only wish is someone make a working mod where Rome can recruit her auxiliaries as we can do in the campaign. Auxiliary Spear Brothers, Thracian cavalry, etc. As a history lover, I always enjoyed reading of Rome's reliance and excellent use of local forces to suppliment the legions (usually almost to 50% of the forces if I remember correctly). I apologize if this is off-topic here, but you seem to be the perfect chap to ask as I know you wouldn't butcher the base game, etc. I recall an old mod for Rome 1 where they added a whole slew of auxiliary / mercenary units for every faction in custom battle... this was so fun as it made it very realistic and diverse. That might be asking a bit much, for Rome at least I'd be very interested in working with you on that! I don't know much about modding, but I'm a quick learner.

Anyway, apologies again for such a long post. Thank you very much keeping the vanilla game still intact while adding so much more... I'm tempted to try your AI / Tech mod, but I usually play campaigns on Normal or Hard, and I play slow / realistic, probably making it hard already (and I keep my pre-Marius units for quite some time).

Very best wishes & happy holidays,
DDCP