Since there have been quite a lot of new players flooding to the game during big sales (and I myself know quite a few who bought the game and started playing in the last few days), I thought it might be a good idea to compile a list of mods that I frequently use (or recommend) in ironman runs. Now I am not an expert in this game at all, and there are many who can make me shake my head in shame; but I would like to provide some quality-of-life enhancement to newer players and to bring convenience for myself and other players, whilst sticking to the original vanilla experience as much as possible.


There are, however, a few things that I would like to mention, as there can be compatibility issues if a person just smashes the "subscribe to all" button and load every single mod on the list into the game.

Maps
Pick between "A Revolutionary Borders Mod" and "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum". Both are decent. Once you have picked your poison (do not ever look back afterwards), get the rest of that particular set of mods.

Event Windows
Vanilla'd UIs are all great, and personally I love the historical flavour they provide. For example, I would go for Caesar UI if I pick a country in Europe (including Russia or even the Purple Phoenix). By all means subscribe to all the Vanilla'd UIs; but be careful, you can only pick one of them in the launcher! If you pick all of them on the list, launch the game and receive a buggy event window, please don't come here (or to the modder's page) and complain about it.

Loading Screens and Music
Now this one is complicated. Personally I love "50 loading screens" because of the historical flavour that it provides on the loading screen. However, there are clashes with other mods, or more like other mods can have compatibility issues with the one I just mentioned.

The first mod that clashes with it is "Age of Empires III Music + Loading Screen". As an AOE3 player, I love listening to some of its soundtracks and even more so when I am at war. The problem, however, is that it has its own loading screens. By all means download both mods, but you might want to delete the loading screens from the latter mod or merge the files together somehow.

"GFX Overhaul" is another decent mod itself, but it contains its own loading screens and opening music that can clash with both mods I just mentioned. You can still subscribe to the mod (and for sure you should, because of the vast improvement it provides), but you might want to delete the "loadingscreen" folder under "gfx" as well as the "music" folder to get the optimal result.

There are many patroitic/classical/movie music mods out there, and it just requires you to know the search function, so I won't be listing those here.


If you are an experienced player or an ironman modder, and you think there's something missing on the list that deserves to be mentioned/included, please by all means feel free to contact me or comment down below.

Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the quality-of-life improvement and convenience brought by this compilation of mods. Full credits to the modders, as they are the real bringer of better life, not the person who istrying to steal their glory by compiling this list.

Anyway, may the RNG and friendly AI always be on your side. GL HF!