I went back a bunch of pages and didn't see any thread with a recommendation of a (current) mod list. I saw a couple links to old outdated mod lists, but that doesn't really help. And a few more specialized ones looking for certain mods, which doesn't really help either.

My goal is to greatly enhance Oblivion, but I don't want a huge mod list with a ton of esps/esms with a ton of tweaking needed. I want to avoid mods that require tons of compatibility patches, I actually avoid those in Skyrim too. I didn't get any mod that needed a novel's length of patches to work with other mods In Skyrim I spent hundreds of hours on my mod list (literally at least over 200 hours), with TES edit wrye bash and all kinds of things. I don't really want to do all that again lol. I had to reinstall skyrim so much, I'm not interested in going through that again

I do want a much better gameplay experience. No leveling with your character (that always annoyed me), a different leveling/skillup system...I think I used one that gave you exp or something before. More immersive game experience. I kinda like more travelers on the road, but those tend to cause CTDs if I recall. I love sound/weather mods. I know sounds of cyrodil I think its called was pretty popular at one point. Though that same mod for Skyrim (Sounds of Skyrim) caused a ton of ctds and save bloat for me so I removed it for other sound mods.

Really, I'm kinda looking for Oblivion but greatly enhanced...if that makes sense. I don't want a huge mod list, I don't want mods that require tons of compatibility patches (more than 2-3 is too much for me) to get them to work properly. I just won't get them, I didn't get those ones for Skyrim either. I kind of want just a nice, mod list that doesn't require a ton of work to get to playing Oblivion but makes the game 100% better. Did that in Skyrim with TES edit and all kinds of things to get Skyrim stable, don't want to do it again

For a climate overhaul, I saw there is a new one on nexus that turns Cyrodil back into a tropical place like it used to be in Lore...I might go for that one.

Definitely going with one that adds more children (that looks like a new one too), as that was pretty cool "feature" in Skyrim.

I'll probably go with mart's mutant mod too, unless there is a new mod that adds monsters to Oblivion...its been a long time, so not sure.

I would recommend taking a look at http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/42780/? to start with. It comes with a boatload of cool features, it is very conflict-free (needs few patches), and it is extremely configurable (via an .ini file).