It's about time we had another Stainless Steel discussion methinks, probably the best and most popular Medieval 2 mod.
I haven't actually downloaded the new 1.4 patch as I don't like the sound of some of the changes.
*****
I've only just started a campaign as England, striking up into Scotland first of course, but I'm forced to give them a respite or face excommunication. The French have expelled me from their shores after two nail biting defenses of the wooden Castle at Caen.
There is currently a Crusade on for Jerusalem as the Crusader States lost it to a Jihad. The area looks pretty intimidating though with one Fatimid and one Turkish stack camping in it's back yard. Still, I sail a fleet of pilgrims, spearmen and basic archers toward the Holy Land but I'll probably need to pick up some decent Mercenaries when I get there so long as they're not too costly.
Interestingly the Moors have just taken Sicily and Venice has turned into a powerhouse, as have the Byzantines.
I lost a decent portion of my main army trying to wrestle Bruges from the rebels. During the siege their poor quality spearmen clogged the streets and my men's morale was not enough to deal with their numbers. Its a battle I would have won on vanilla Medieval, but that is why this mod is so refreshing to play.

Is this vanilla Stainless Steel or Real Recruitment? If it's the latter, good luck in holding the holy land early on if you're not based there
I play the RC/RR compilations, and I've had some awesome times. Teutons are actual buggers to play late campaign, as your units are so slow to recruit while your enemy has decent facilities for themselves. And you're surrounded. If you push into Lithania, you get the two Rus factions declaring war on you at the same time, so your big push is flanked on two sides. It's ridiculously hard manoeuvring and conservation of troops while balancing a very small economy. Often I had no choice but to hole up in cities while Novgorodian armies walked freely through, and I had to send a slash and burn stack down to Kiev to occupy (read: sacrifice themselves to as dearly as possible) the Kieven armies massing around their capital.
It took me until gunpowder to gain enough control of Lithuania to be able to launch a second attack, which is brilliant- a couple of bad battles and honestly I was on the ropes a few times.

Being in university i generally have a hard time finding the time to play stainless steel, but i absolutely love the game. Havent been able to finish a campaign yet, but the turns and recruitment updates seem to make the campaigns last alot longer compared to vanilla or retrofit. havent tried real recruitment yet.

I have tried real recruitment before but honestly found it too slow and frustrating. I've also tried the latest version of Byg's Grim Reality and find that overcomplicates the base gameplay. Whilst I understand some enjoy these mods, they're not my cup of tea.

Urgh, I just looked at the table of contents at Byg's and screamed. At least I can still recruit in every castle without fiddling about.
Best battle I've had was as Portugal I was against Aragon and was attempting to relieve a city. Only problem was they had a rather huge army, while I had a half stack of similar quality, and the garrison was a 3/4 of militia (up to swords militia, but still). It was a really interesting battle field as well- I set up my lines so that crossbowmen could fire from some ruins above my left flank, which got charged by crusading knights, and I had to strategically disengage at one stage a few metres up a hill. Cavalry were also pinned back by having to constantly charge and retreat against the enemy cavalry that outnumbered them, and my infantry were groaning under the weight of numbers and quality when BAM goes the garrison, ploughing directly onto their unguarded flank. In goes the King, bye bye Aragonese!

The Crusader States are a very, very interesting faction to handle ( that would be the best way I can put it) in Stainless Steel. Within the first fifteen turns any work you put into your Jerusalemite territories or diplomatic negotiations with the Fatimids will be quickly undone by said Fatimid. Full stacks will fall in from the south and soon your small economy will buckle from the pressure of defending. From then on, you're more than likely going to have to live off of Nicosia's lands with your rabble.
In spite of this, what made the Crusader States so interesting for me was the choice of play after this. When I knew Jerusalem was about to fall, I fell to relations with the Sicilians using my Roman diplomat and, with proper retribution, managed to acquiesce Bari and turned that into my new economic base of operations.
If there was one bonus that made the Crusader States so savoury, it was the upkeep levels of their religious foot infantry that rarely, if ever, went above the 150 marker. After exploiting the benefits of a cheap date, I soon rebuilt and created enclaves all around the Mediterranean (Cagliari, Palma, Tunisia, Rhodes, Athens, etc.). Also in tow was a fleet that could control the naval trade of any faction that dared to oppose me since the base in Bari allowed me to reel the Pope's actions with mortal temptations. The amount of turns that I needed to establish such a spread put me at the early half of the Renaissance but now I had the ability to meddle in the affairs of every faction bordering the Mediterranean.
Loving that sheer flexibility, but I honestly believe that if one was looking for a real good challenge of their battle abilities, they would try a Crusader States campaign and actually attempt to hold the Holy Lands instead of the alternative route.

Sounds awesome
I just had a tussle where I shrank to Antioch or something but then crusaded my way back to Jerusalem and Cairo. And then when the HRE was excommunicated, crusaded up into their territories, using Bologna as the starting point of a colony.

Actually I checked my game settings and Real Recruitment is infact enabled. I must have gotten it mixed up with some of Byg’s settings.
My England campaign has progressed a fair few turns, but I haven’t made considerable progress on the actual map. My Crusade fleet arrived one turn too late. The Genoans captured Jerusalem from the Fatimids before I could even unload my forces on the coastline. My young promising military general now sits on deck off the coast of Nicosia with no enemies to his numerous troops to fight. Not to mention I’m paying in full for them, including the expensive mercenary Templars, Gallogliach and Gwent Raiders I picked up. I don’t want to land and attack Adana for the sake of it with little chance of holding it in the long term. At the same time I don’t want to waste 10+ turns sailing back up to England, by which time I may have convinced the Pope to launch a second Crusade. What to do with an idle army so far from a relevant enemy?
Much to my dismay Scotland is still sticking around in all of their original settlements. Everytime I engage their forces on the border the Pope slaps me with a ‘cease and desist’ and so I wait it out. I ignored the last one however and took Edinburgh after an (almost lost) battle. I couldn’t sit around and let them continue to rebuild their forces else I’ll never be rid of them.
So hand in hand, between my failed Crusade to appease the Pope whilst I kill the Scots, and my complete lack of actually killing the Scots I have achieved nothing over the past 20 turns except for conquering Ireland and defeating the French at Caen.

You could always sail that army back towards Italy, move on the Scottish again and if the pope objects, use the crusaders to correct his view. That's probably an awful idea, but thought I'd mention it.
I used one of the early stainless steel mods for a while and I did download and run 1.3 recently; but my computer is still in limbo following my house-move waiting for somewhere to be put and I whilst my wife has very kindly let me install retrofit on her laptop so I can continue the forum hotseat, I thought SS might be a step too far...
I like the idea of Byr's complications, but I've never been brave enough to try them. I remember there being lots of campaign AI options and thought it quite odd that I couldn't see any option for having all of them at work - being assigned to factions at random at the beginning of the game. That would have seemed to me to be quite a jolly twist, particularly given some of the versions uphold alliances and behave honourably and the others are untrustworthy - it could add personality.

When playing real recruitment, does this stop you getting a certain number of particular units per province or over all of that factions combined provinces? Also does anybody know if this also works for the AI controlled factions and how you know what the maximum of each unit is you can build?
Thanks for any help, I am thinking of playing real recruitment next but not really sure of how it works.

Would anyone like me to write Opening Move guides for SS6.4 or Perhaps Vanilla or Kingdoms, upload walkthrough videos on youtube? Is anyone wanting for someone to do that, cause i may be willing to.

Does anyone know how to tone done the model detail, other than setting the in game visual effects all to lowest? It eats up a massive amount of my laptop's resources...

SEGA/M2TW/Mods/SS6.3/default (open with notepad)/Then:
grass_distance=9000
unit_detail=high
CREATE BACKUP! change to grass distance to 1 to turn it off or 0. There's no grass but it helps alot.
Unit detail to lowest if not already, because the in-game way doesnt work.
Change resolution to the lowest possible bearable resolution.
SOMEONE PLS CORRECT ME IF IM WRONG!

Alternatively, in the options at the main menu, there's an option for 'texture detail', separate from 'Unit detail'. Play with this option to see if that results in a better frame rate

I thought he said 'other than the visual in game settings'. I'm pretty sure he has them all at the lowest

Yes, he's probably fiddling with the 'Unit Detail' option, while what you've described can be done by changing the 'Texture detail' option on the main menu

ohh alright Btw make unit scale small or normal.

This mod sounds rather good. Might have to re-install M2TW, which has been gathering dust since I (rather quickly) got bored of Third Age Total War. Though it does sound a bit slow for someone who does not know how to develop his economy in ways other than enslaving every town he comes across.

I can promise you that this mod is amazing!!! The battles are just EPIC The game with SS is alot harder, but its way more fun, especially when you enable Byg's Grim Reality Mod (comes with SS), Real recruitment and longer assimilation.

Well, not Byg's, but Real Recruitment and Real Combat are awesome. IMHO.
I can guarantee you will get at least three major (and by that I mean major that live in the memory) battles before turn 75. Unless you're Teutonic knights, in which case it'll be by turn 40.

trying to reinstall. For some reason, data pack 4 refuses to be installed. Crossing fingers it decides otherwise, so I can download SS tomorrow and play in the holidays. I.E, next week.
Any faction suggestions?

Try redownloading pack 4.
Faction suggestions? Portugal's good fun, actually- and Iberia is one of the places where the new map has been reworked brilliantly.

I mean M2TW vanilla. It isn't working, for some reason

Scotland is probably my all time favorite faction, i just love their units and their location. The Teutonic Order is brilliant, Principality of Antioch, England, France, Sicily, HRE. These factions are available in Vanilla.