I have installed almost every mod I want and am on the fence about the two or the combo of the two. So far, I have 0 stability issues. Are these two mods worth the hassle in your opinions and are they known to cause and CTDs?

On a related note, does Deadly Reflex cause CTDs?

I think that both mods are fantastic, and you should certainly use either Better Cities or Open Cities Reborn.

Deadly Reflex is a hugely complex scripted mod, so the potential for CTDs is certainly there.

As for Better Cities and Open Cities, that depends on preference, do you want your cities to look their absolute best, or would you prefer to be able to walk right into them without pausing to allow the game to load?

Neither of them will cause stability issues unless you overstep your hardware capabilities.

Better Cities has got to be 1 of my top 5 must-have mods, it's just that good imo - *casts 'Fill-With-Pride**' spell on Voriens & Ismelda*


** can cause 'Swelling-Head' side effect if cast too many times

My PC is amazing. I have a CoreI7 near top of the line processor with six gigs of DDR3 ram on an amazing motherboard. The only weakness is my graphics card which is a ATI HD4890 but in Oblivion that's not a bad card since it has 1 gig of ram.

So better cities it is! Thanks guys! Is there a banking mod worth a damn or some mod which adds lots of places for a thief to break into?

For me it is either Better Cities or Open Cities Reborn that is a "must have." I love them both.

Better Cities makes the cities look much grander, like real cities, not just towns.
Open Cities basically just opens the towns, so that they aren't, and this don't feel like, different worldspaces.
Open Cities Reborn goes one further; opens the towns and rearranges them, sometimes significantly. If you are familiar with the original layouts; then the effect is spectacular (especially now they include differing wall types and so forth.)

It is also worth noting that Better Cities now as an "open city" option for its cities as well. But I have yet to check that out.

I was a "Die Hard" Better Cities user, but recently switched to Open Cities Reborn, and am loving it. I was missing some of the cool stuff from the Better Imperial City (Open Cities doesn't touch the IC) but much of that has been mitigated by adding "ImpeREAL City Unique Districts" to my load order. Which adds some of what Better Cities did for the IC.

I'm loving that combination right now. But can't really recommend one over the other: Better Cities or Open Cities Reborn; I recommend taking whichever takes your fancy.

This is exactly what I have done, only I've also added Nernie's http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22834, which is integrated into Better Cities anyway. I've also added the "Add some cool bits from BC to OCR" mod you can find by poking around on the BC tesnexus page. Now, if the Waterfront Passage from BC was available separately, my happiness would be almost complete (the mod it was originally based on is still available, I think, but is very old now and has been very substantially improved in BC).

If you're talking about IC expanded - I'd stay far away from that mod. Read the comments.

If you're talking only about the IC tunnel mod - BC has a better version I think.

I have corrected Vargr's post, above. Vargr named the wrong mod when talking about opening and rearranging the towns.
Better Cities' Open Better Cities option is the same as Open Cities, except that it includes all the content added by Better Cities.

You can use Open Cities Reborn, and still use the Imperial City part of Better Cities as well (don't use the Open Cities IC Outer Districts ESPs).



The Better Cities archive includes a cleaned copy of IC Expanded tweaked to be compatible with Better Cities. It should not suffer from the CTD issue of the original mod, as so far no one has reported still getting crashes when using the BC-tweaked version.

The IC Tunnel used in Better Cities is integrated from a separate mod which was never finished, however that mod is no longer available. The version in BC has been enhanced, NPC AI packages completely redone, and the tunnel merchants now have their own shop alcoves to sell their goods in. It still needs more work though.

There is an ESP provided on the Better Cities Nexus download page, which is still work-in-progress, adding most of the Better Cities buildings into Open Cities Reborn, so that players can enjoy the best of both mods. Not all cities have been done yet however, which is why it is still WIP/beta.

You've been busy since I last checked in with BC.

When did you incorporate ICexpand? I recall requesting it numerous times. I recall menu options to make them work together but not actually incorporating it.

No Thursday crash? I tried the fix on the comments page of ICexpand, but it still crashed.

Is the ICexpand sections connected with the merchant tunnel and waterfront tunnel areas?

ICExpand is not integrated but we offer a cleaned and fixed (hopefully) esp of it.

No the tunnel is not connected as ICExpand is not integrated.

My answer was better than Ismelda's, but the forums have deleted it for some reason, must have been a server glitch. Oh well.

I highly recommend using Better Cities but avoiding the "Open" portion as it can cause crashes on even the best systems, unless of course you opt out of some other mods that are performance heavy. Or you can go for Open Cities Reborn, really its about seamless transition from wilderness-city or having a living breathing city, but then again certain mod set-ups can remedy this. For example, im using Better Cities for the IC and Bruma, but have decided against it for Chorrol as UL alters the same cell that an Open Chorrol would occupy, which cause crashes from PC Overload.

Chorrol used to give me problems, but things have actually re-stabilized for me quite well when I took Anti-Aliasing out of the equation. This is the main reason I don't use AA for this game anymore.

Ismelda and other BC team members => have you seen this french mod for the BC tunnel? =>
http://oblimods.wiwiland.net/spip.php?article384

Rapid translation of the plot:

When I tried better cities earlier this year, I was getting CTDs with the tunnel to the waterfront, but I think it had something to do with the expanded waterfront district. Or heck, it could have been some other mod. I didn't seem to have any problems with anything else, but got side tracked by my own modding project. All I know is that when I took the tunnel out of the equation, I stopped getting CTDs. But that may have been fixed by now.

I'd vote better cities. Try it without the open options first. If that works, then maybe try opening each city one at a time.

I haven't played it personally, but I've heard nothing but good things about it.

D'oh! Thanks for the catch. I have now made the correction in the post itself. :rolleyes: