Hi all,
I'd like to showcase my mod, CFBM, which is an add-on to Extended Timeline and something I've been keeping going for 11 years at this point.
Its main purpose is to generally improve the way that the map evolves in Extended Timeline, while also adding many new countries, religions, trade goods, cultures, and mechanics. The primary headline is that with my mod, the map is able to evolve in ways that it did historically, but is not guardrailed/forced to do so. A simple example: with CFBM you can have Anglo-Saxon culture spread to England in the migration age, and also subsequently have English culture appearing given the right interactions with France, but all-in-all, it is possible for Britain to ultimately end up as any culture group, and I've added unique alternate history tags for each of those possibilities!
The main feature I've been working on for the past year and half has been an "independence" mechanic, which acts as a counterbalance on nations which have not managed their internal affairs too well. It means that large states have a meaningful chance to eventually collapse instead of remaining as large blobs on the map for hundreds of years, which isn't too realistic. It also offers an additional challenge to the player and encourages you to keep internal affairs in check. It also means that countless vanilla/extended timeline tags now have a chance to appear (I cover this in the linked video). I highly doubt a world conquest is even possible now with this, but if you're not too keen on this mechanic, you have the option to slow it down or play without it entirely at the start of your campaign.
I have added over 1000 new countries, covering three primary areas: alternate history colonial nations, alternate cultural/government forms of nations (like what HOI4/Victoria does), and more subdivisions that can pop out of countries due to the above mechanic.
This mod also hugely rebalances Extended Timeline in so many ways, especially regarding colonisation, but also for the roman empire, the great schism, protestant reformation, HRE imperial authority, dynastic tags not evolving when their dynasties are long gone (or not being adopted), and so many other changes that I could go on about.
All in all, I personally can't enjoy EU4 without it now. It not only makes my own campaigns much more interesting but also makes the world map more fun to look at too. The mod has great ratings so far, and hopefully with this post I can convince some more folks to give it a try!
Steam Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=438503893
Forum Link: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/mod-flavour-bonanza-mod.854715/
Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions for my mod, or things in vanilla/ET that you'd like to see added/changed.