Personally I wouldnt consider Dominions 2 as "the vanilla game". It implies that somehow mods are more flavorful whereas in reality I highly doubt Dominions 2 will see a mod sufficiently interesting to be superior to the standard game. Not because I think all mods are bad, but I've seen about one mod for a good game that was better than the standard game. Mods are mainly decent for occasional variety. And with Dominions 2 adding variety isn't too much an issue
nor is fixing balance issues I'd imagine.
I like to think of Dominions 2 more as the supreme game.
Not that I don't plan on downloading any LOTR mods...