I have played 3 mods so far
Native expansion; Sword of damocles; and Floris
and I can say with conviction, that the best one is.....
Diplomacylol... both SoD and Floris seemed better than native expansion in my opinion, but after noticing that both mod's best features where identical, I realized that it was actually diplomacy features, which is integrated into those two mods.
Native expansion is nice, but the other two mods kinda offer the same, and more. They lack something like the dark invasion tho, but IMO it doesnt counterweight the other mods features. Plus a dark invasion feels nothing like native xD
Now, betwen those two; IMo both are better than native expansion, but are not perfect.
A small comparison.
As I said, both includes Diplomacy. Also, both have "after death cam". Both are kinda "must have" for me.
SoD:
-Introduces a huge new map (like 4 times bigger than vanilla, with more towns castles and villages obviously)
-6 new factions, plus the old 6 factions. Of those, two are quite original, and feel new, the other 4 are just too similar to another already existing faction.
-New items. Less than floris tho. It has some fireweapons, but very balanced, they are usefull but doesnt break the game at all (unlike "with fire and sword")
-The bad:
-still on the making, so right know is very unbalanced. Wars and alliances are declared all the time, the world politics are just a huge caos. Also, the bandit guys are either nonexistant, or appears en mass (prepare to fight 200 bandits at once) so its very hard to start a game.
-Lots of repeated castles and towns (in sieges). I had to do the same siege like 3 times in a row conquering 3 different castles. Kinda boring.
-The game loads quick (almost like vanilla), but once playing, the world map tends to lag (you see "jumps" while traveling). This is due to the huge map and 12-13 factions doing stuff.
Floris:
-Vanilla map. If you like native expansion, this one is like it, but with even more stuff.
-You can tell your companions to pick the loot for you. Their inventory skill is actually usefull now! They can also be told to auto update their stuff with the loot.
-New troop tree. A bit chaotic, but there are submods with nice alternatives.
-New arenas (actually fun now), new siege scenarios. Some are quite awesome.
-More eye candy. More tall grass, better sky, better terrain overall, etc.
-Huge amount of new items. More than in SoD, no firearms tho, but it have new mounts (donkeys, mules, and cammels), and more helmets. Some are kite awesome.
-Ability to set amount of reinforcing waves. I set to about 50, so a 800 vs 800 men fight is just one big long fight. Really awesome.
-New musics.
-Minimap on battles.
-The bad:
-Its a mod compilation, so the credit goes to other people actually.
-It is buggy. There are some armors that look awefull (too bright). Some helmet overlap with the armors. Seems like they just added all the stuff they found without filtering to much.
-The sounds are a mess, I have to play with native sounds or the game wont start. But I still have a couple of bugged sounds, including a world map loud noise instead of the traveling horse sound. Super annoying!
-There seem to be a lot of people with that problem, and the support from the mod just ignores us.
-The game tend to lag a lot, specially on loading. Once playing tho, it doesnt lag that much.
Currently Im playing Floris, but only until SoD get more work on it. Once the world in SoD doesnt behave as chaotically as now, and once they add some more contect (lots of mercenaries factions) I will start playing SoD.
Some SS of my current floris game
Example of shinning armor bug
My team of bodyguards (another feature). Bunduk, Katrin, Desvali and Nizar. Just took care of a drunk bastard
Some general ss I found nice.
I have always hated Rolf, so I gave him a donkey for a mount so he can feel noble enough
This is how you usually look when you fight nords xD
Calvary charge
My character
Delivered 500 damage to that poor horse. A two handed sword swing with both horses running at full speed in opossite directions I guess. If this were DF, we would have horse vomit everywhere xD