An other mostly forgotten mod: Magyar mod
Originally created by a hungarian team, lead by Csatádi and Döme. The aim was to have a historical Hungary in Medieval 2, and I think the result is very good.
Features:
- historical Hungary roster. Note what Döme did with the units! Instead of having ethnic units, generic spearman have slavic, hungarian (and german, not in pic) in the same spearman unit. Also, royal bodyguard units have coat of arms from historical magnate families.
- more detailed map, especially eastern Europe and balkans area. I really like that the guys didn't go overboard with adding too many regions. The AI has an easier time this way, while the look of the map is much better.
- revised start positions (stronger moors, poland, turks became Rum turks, for better AI performance)
- additional factions: Novgorod and Kiev (orthodox, recolored vanilla Russia Units), Cumans (pagan, Broken Crescent units), Lithuania (pagans, lithuania mod units)
- stricter eras. Even when having the population, the player cannot upgrade the walls/castles until a given date.
- very good soundtrack
- some small quality of life improvements (eg. less alcoholics, less frequent but stronger rebels)
- generally slower pace: buildings take about double time to complete, rebels are stronger in general.
- XAI campaign and battle AI (works well)
- generally very stable (moddb has 2.18, which I don't have, might be a difference here)
- cool loading screens by Danova
Known issues (not many)
- lithuanian bodyguard unit is silver surfer (didn't play with last version! moddb has 2.18, I have 2.16)
- very strong pirates. Too strong, crusade with mercenary galley is impossible.
- bodyguard units have 1 HP. The developers wanted to force players to use generals as commanders, not cavalry. However, this hurts the AI much more than the player.
- a faction is kind of missing from the Syria-Baghdad region
I could recommend this mod to players outside of Hungary. Gameplay in eastern Europe is much improved, this has a positive effect on unmodified factions (Poland, Venice, Byzantium, Turks) too.