SKYRIMLE Civil War Overhaul (by Apollodown)

[zodden]

Well so far so good. I used Live another life to start out as a stormcloak and proceeded to the battle at whiterun.

 

Somebody managed to set the outer walls of whiterun on fire during the battle. The flames almost killed me. I used ice spells to put them out though. It was HUGE fun. CWO is running great. I haven't had any issues yet, unlike 1.1- Even with 200+ mods running with it. Immersive Settlements caused some pathing issues but it was minor. My FPS took a hit though- went as low as 30ish at some points, but I get these drops sometimes near places added with immersive settlements regardless of what's going on.

 

I was able to win the battle and move to the next step in CWO without using the console (lol for the 1.1 issues thankfully gone)

 

I did a little trade off due to scripts. I traded in Platyer headtracking and Wet and cold for Apollo's mods to lessen the impact somewhat of constant scripts running. I also ditched many texture packs to lessen CTDs. (every one I kept I used DDsopt or downloaded the "lite" version) So far so good.

[phazer11]

I did a little trade off due to scripts. I traded in Player Headtracking and Wet and Cold for Apollo's mods to lessen the impact somewhat of constant scripts running. I also ditched many texture packs to lessen CTDs. (every one I kept I used DDsopt or downloaded the "lite" version) So far so good.

 

Just a tip as a general rule I would treat every mod with textures in it to be unoptimized until the author has proved they release properly optimized textures(I do). I've stopped bothering even trying to  DDSOpt any of Cabal's textures since there isn't any noticeable improvement (i.e. the file size doesn't decrease) now that doesn't mean that the optimization doesn't do anything just that I don't think it'll be noticeable enough to warrant it eating up more space on my HDD.

[Nearox]

The author brought out major version 2.0 about a month ago, which he proclaims is fully working with the exception of known bugs. Has anyone used CWO 2.0 with STEP:Core? 

 

No matter what I do with regards to patching, it always crashes at random moments during the Alduin attack of the intro scene... Anyone got an idea what's up with that?

[EssArrBee]

I'm doing a playthrough right now with STEP: Core, DCO, Civil War Repairs, Perfect Legionnaire, alternate Start, and the Civil War and Battles plugin from Immersive Patrols. I have only had one issue so far and it one of the known bugs with CWO, where after loosing a battle you just sit there and don't progress to a camp site for new orders. I want to do a civil war pack kinda based around this mod, but it is so extensive and so touchy that it requires quite a bit of testing.

 

If you know any other good civil war mods let me know, I only have a half dozen mods for this pack so far and I wanted to do about 10 or so.

[Nearox]

Thanks for the info EssArrBee :) I just did the intro 5 more times in a row and it didn't crash. Perhaps it was simply a very unlucky CTD for whatever reason...

 

I don't think there are any other civil war mods that can live up to the quality and extensiveness of CWO. Apollodown is working on 3.0 which aims to do away with the known bugs. Did you manage to fix the bug you encountered via one of the solutions proposed by the mod page's description?  

 

 I'd be more than happy to hear your experiences with CWO and the combination with the other mods you mentioned. Could really use that kind of info for my new vega extended project :)

 

By the way, do you mean you are working on a STEP Pack themed around the civil war?

[EssArrBee]

The bug I encountered is just a weird one that Apollo hasn't really figured out yet. Basically, you should save before starting any battle and then if you lose the battle and the game doesn't transport you to a campsite then you have to reload the save.

 

Yes, I'm making a Civil War pack and so far I have 6 mods, Alternate Start so you can start as Legion or Stormcloack, CWO, DCO because you have to do at least one dragon battle for Jarl Bulgruf to help you, Civil War Repairs since the towns don't fix themselves, Perfect Legionnaire just to add some armor flavor, and two plugins (Civil War and Battles) from Immersive Patrols.

 

I don't want anything as comprehensive as CWO, but I do want some other small mods that compliment it. I'd like probably 3-4 more that are part of the civil war questline. Maybe I'll start a thread for it later today after I get farther into my playthrough so I know what I already have isn't going to blow up my saves or crash constantly.

[Nearox]

Sounds like it will be a cool pack and a nice addition :) 

 

By the way Civil War Repairs hasnt been updated in ages. Once you finish the CWO, I'd be interested to know how the repairs work out :)

[tschilpi]

I ask myself if anyone has made further experience with this mod. The author seems to have done really great work; however, as it has been said there are tons of complaints about dozens of bugs and errors, which happen due to very diverse reason and the old Skyrim engine which is probably overload or can't handle the rebuilt that this mod tries to do.

 

I would anyway start with a new game and if I'll just have to reload some saves and use commandbox fixes to get through the quest line it would be fine for me, as it seems to be worth it. But I would not risk this if there is the possibility of it breaking down my game. I would also go with STEP:Core, Requiem and some content mods like Frostfall and it's patches. So there would be even more conflict potential.. but who knows.  Anyone haz experience with version 2? ^^

[EssArrBee]

I did this mod with STEP: Core and completed three playthroughs, 2 as legion, 1 as stormcloak. The issues I ran into were that quests wouldn't move forward, so I had to reload and then it would work. I suggest saving often since most bugs you encounter will usually require you to reload a save.

 

Did not play with Requim or Frostfall though. If you mix big time gameplay overhauls with big time quest overhauls, then it is always buyer beware. The engine cannot handle it, and never will be able to handle it. If you make it to say level 30-35 without the game becoming unplayable, then count your blessings.

[phryxolydian]

I tried this mod couple months ago and I was really having fun with it but then after winning the Battle of Morthal (Imperial side) I had the quest objective "Reunification of Skyrim" and "Defend Markarth" as the first target. This is a bug since "Talk to General Tullius" should've been the first target. I'm sure I wasn't having any mod conflict since that character was just created to test the mod out and was very lightly modded (mostly textures) to ensure best possible compatibility. I tried reloading and that only translated that whenever I won the battle I would get the same bug over and over again and if I lost the battle but survived and ran for it then whenever I'd get killed next (anywhere) I'd be sent to Ulfric's room and lose "The Last Battle". If, however, I lost the battle on purpose when there were more Imperials left then I'd be sent to the Pale Imperial Camp and the target "Talk to General Tullius" would show. I tried this several times, I tried console commands but I wasn't able to win the battle and get the correct target. I told Apollodown of this but he merely said that since I was having many strange bugs, it was user error. Ha! Turned me off and deleted the character.

[Solmyr]

Played through this mod in god mode via using Alternate Start and starting as an Imperial/Stormcloak soldier. From what I can see, the main things it adds are battles for the cities (rather than using small fort battles to conquer holds), the ability to lose, and lots more spawns. Most bugs could be recovered with via reload, but the last two Imperial assaults (Winterhold and Fort Amol) somehow caused the Imperials to be hostile to me as well, so it was rather odd with both sides trying to kill me. The mod was tested with a relatively light mod number, I'm guessing it may stutter more with a larger load order. It may also clash with creature-spawning mods if they happen to spawn in the same areas where this mod's battles take place (though I guess that would clash with vanilla too, as the battles out in the world take place in the same forts/camps). City battles may conflict with heavy-duty city-altering mods. The huge hordes spawned by this mod may also stress your system, although corpses disappear quickly as in vanilla. I'd also expect you need to be pretty high-level to have a chance of winning, as the NPCs spawned are quite tough and there are dozens of them. The large amount of spawns was the only thing I didn't like about this mod, otherwise it looks very fun and solid.

[statmonster]

Good overview Solmyr. I've often been tempted by this but fear it will lead to an unstable play through.

[EssArrBee]

On Expert, Master, and Legendary difficulty it is really hard to win the first Whiterun battle as an Imperial. The idea in that was to defend to barricades that go down with 2-3 hits and then prevent everyone from getting to the drawbridge handles. The opposition sends in runners that go straight for the drawbridge, so this is really hard at higher difficulties when your damage is scaled down severely it becomes nearly impossible to win. If you play on Novice it is really hard to lose, almost the opposite of the other difficulties. You just plow through enemies in a couple swings and defeat all the waves of them.

 

One thing is that there are a wide varieties of enemies now. The Stormcloaks have giants and thieves and the Imperials have mages and big dudes in Ebony armor. It makes the battles feel a bit more exciting if you ask me.

[Solmyr]

Another thing added is fighting the enemy jarls in their palaces during sieges, and new dialogue for their surrender and new jarls taking their place. I understand it's Bethesda dialogue that was cut before release but left in the files. I liked it, but it's probably not anything you can't live without. The jarl scenes can also sometimes glitch - for example, in Markarth, when I (as Stormcloak) fought in the palace, I killed the Thalmor envoy there; this caused the subsequent scene not to progress, as the Thalmor had some lines in it. Replaying the battle, I left him alive and the scene worked fine.

 

EDIT to add:

 

Overall, it seems that this mod is primarily there for atmosphere rather than radically altering the game world after the civil war. Whether you play this or vanilla, the end result is the same: jarls are replaced, Ulric/Galmar or Tullius/Rikke are dead. The only exception, I believe, would be if you lose the war with this mod. Now, I have not tested what happens when you lose, but as all the town guards will be replaced by appropriate faction, they will all be hostile to you, which will likely screw your character (though you can disguise yourself by wearing opposite faction armor). So IMO, this is not necessarily a mod that you NEED to have in every playthrough - as long as you've experienced the added scenes from it once, you've seen it, and the end result won't change.

[swiftfoxmark2]

What is funny about this mod is that it adds giants as Stormcloak fighters. Apparently, there was going to be a quest on the Stormcloak side for you to somehow recruit a giant in the original game (which would have been interesting, to say the least). So while ApolloDown wasn't able to recreate that quest, he did create Stormcloak giants as part of some of the Stormcloak patrols. Basically giant shock troops.