CURRENTLY OUTDATED as of latest game-version. Awaiting updating of contained mods. Please be patient with our modders, they deserve our respect and gratitude <3

Tested, working and updated for the earlier version The Twisted & The Twilight DLC, 2020 Dec 6th.

TLTR
Compatible and ready for use in single player campaigns. If you have no other mods installed you can click "subscribe all", "enable all" in launcher, and start playing. Set campaign difficulty to normal and battle difficulty to very hard to let the mods work their magic.

All mods taken together lose me between 0 and 5 fps in benchmarks, and increase end-turn times by approx 10%. They work together in concert to alter vanilla behavior for what I believe is an improved game-play experience at the expense of a slight performance-hit.


Description
First, the selected mods aren't random. They are chosen among alternates to generate a certain kind of game-play.

The concept for this collection is to afford the semi-casual player a challenging campaign without having the AI cheat to provide it. Further, to make the world seem as immersive as possible and maintain faction variety. And finally to enhance the strategic variety and make options we wouldn't otherwise consider, viable. All of this while maintaining the vanilla mechanics and balance. Beyond the main purpose of the collection a number of mods were added for complimentary reasons.

To achieve the above begin a new campaign after activating all the wanted mods, and set the campaign to normal campaign difficulty and very hard battle difficulty. This will activate the best AI behavior without having it cheat. Optionally, also enter the new mod configuration menu in-game and turn off confederations unless they already default to that state. I also advice turning off dynamic army-caps and rather set the static one to 20000 (or whatever you think best, of course).

The No-brainers:
Skip Intro Logos, Better Camera, Higher Campaign Camera, Faster End Turn Camera and Decline Diplomacy are mods just about everyone enjoys. They simply remove various time-wasting sources of frustration. The purist may find that Better Camera is a cheat since it affords you better points of view in battle.

Essential AI Behavior:
If you set the campaign difficulty to normal and battle difficulty to very hard, activating the mods No AI Cheating in Battles, Hard AI on all difficulties, AI Tweaks - No Anti-Player, Improved AI skill selection, and NNOBBs - Lite will change the AIs behavior for the desired effect. It will enhance the industriousness, reactivity and aggressiveness of the AI without adding the numerous cheats that are baked into the TWWH2's difficulty settings. Further it will prevent the enhanced AI from ganging up on you just because you're a player, but rather attack opportune targets (which of course can still be you). The last of these mods is an AI-cheat, but without it the game becomes dead boring after 20 turns or so unless you just sit in your castle. If you like to take your sweet sweet time building up your cities and army from the start without expanding you may want to keep NOBBSs - Lite deactivated.

Essential Immersive Behavior:
Mod Configuration Tool: Reborn, Confederation Options, Loreful Empires: Great Leader Bonuses, Diplomatic Options - Liberate All Factions, and Cataph's Less Rebel Rebels work in concert to accomplish 4 things. First, prevent explosive blobbing from confederating AI. Second, increase non-stagnated action between AI factions to compensate for the elimination of confederating. Thirdly, provide a tool to un-blob if expansion get out of hand in the later stages of the campaign. And lastly, prevent nonsense rebel army-compositions. This should maintain the great variety or factions that makes the game interesting, and provide some compensation by increasing the odds that the main factions don't stagnate in wars against lesser ones. Note, you have to enter the mod configuration menu to set this up for the desired effect. The Confederation Options mod can also be used to micromanage who can and can't confederate in your campaign.

Cost-based Army Caps:
This amazing little mod adds a gold-cost based restriction on your campaign armies in addition to the normal slot-based one, just like in custom battles. This changes the strategic dynamics of our campaigns drastically. You have to be willing to let go of the novelty of auto-win doom-stacks. But if you choose to do so, the reward is that lower-tiered units remains useful and never becomes obsolete. Suddenly all kinds of army-compositions becomes interesting to try in the campaign, where only a couple optimal ones were before. This again changes city-planning and our overall unit ramp-up strategy.

The non-essentials:
You'll find that most of the mods in this collections are not essential for it's stated purpose. They can be deactivated at leisure without any detrimental effect to it's mission. I included them because I feel they have some universal value to most mod-users without any real detrimental side-effects. There are however 3 exceptions to this. NO MORE STUPID ANIMATIONS FOR ALL RACES, and No Degradation - Persistent Summons adds some very pleasant immersion to battles, but they also shift the army balance. The first because animations affect combat performance, so some units come better out of this change than others. The second because it's highly exploitable, which is probably why it's not enabled in the game to begin with. Lastly Find Idle Units provides a tool for battles that makes it easier to manage your units in battle, which some may find is a cheat. Still, I think most players interested in this collection will find them worthwhile, which is why I chanced including them.


After Patches
Be aware that the downside of using mods is that many of them break the game when vanilla get's an update. The many mods needs to be updated in turn to accommodate the new code of a newly patched TWWH2. Some mods can be safely disabled mid-campaign without harming your save-files, others can't. Sometimes a modder abandons his project or discontinues it, meaning his mod doesn't get an update at all, in which case you may be forced to abandon an ongoing campaign altogether. This is the natural hazard of mod-usage and means it pays to make oneself aware of hos far off the next patch for TWWH2 may be before starting a new modded campaign. As of writing this (2020 Dec. 9th) it's pretty much the ideal time to start a new campaign.

Finding out when a certain mod gets an update after a vanilla patch require some work on your part. You have to enter the individual mod-page in the Steam workshop and check the date of the last update in the top right corner of said page. If you're unsure on whether the mod needs an update, read the last 2-3 pages of the comment section of the mod to see if anyone has mentioned it. If none have, feel free to ask in comments. Please take care not to vent your frustration of having to wait for an update in those comments, or anger over a discontinued mod. Remember that the modders work for your benefit on a voluntary basis and free of charge. They are not in any way beholden to us, rather we are to them. If we go to town on them all we accomplish is killing their motivation for continued support of our game. They are who makes TWWH2 really shine. Love your modders and treat them well, always <3


Creds
All credits to the mod-authors. They make this mod-community and the game into en ever brighter polished diamond. If you like a mod feel free to visit it's mod-page and leave a like and a fav. :)


In Closing
I spent a few days gathering and testing these mods together. If you enjoy this collection feel free to leave a like. It increases it's visibility and gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside <3