[God Emperor]

If you just want mods that just tweak the existing game I recommend;
1) Mod Pack,
2) Sundevil's mod (tweaks politics, anger files)
3) My mod - ResearchShip_v127c (tweaks research and ship design files and gives point defence at game start in order to help the Ai in ship combat).

All of these mods are compatible. I suggest that you load them in the above order.

I also like a couple of the SystemNames mods around (eg like those produced by Tarkin and Dracus).
I have combined a number together and have done a bit of an edit on them for my own purposes. I would suggest that you do the same.