Anybody play any of the mods? I'm in love with the
Rise of Mankind 2 (must have BTS exp). The F3 screen is freggin awesome(totally revamped), the tech tree is a million times better than stock. One sucky thing (other than the fact that it's hard as hell) is that you can only "create" one religion. It forces the spread of different religions instead of always just coming up with 2 or 3 main ones. I still force Buddhism down everybody's throat, often at the tip of a shortsword.
If you've just got the Warlords exp,
Total Realism kicks ass. At least it did a year ago. Excellent tech tree.
I mainly do the standard Earth maps with all the civs in their proper location. I'm normally Germany or Rome. Those Praetorians are nice, although toned down a lot in the mod I play (because Iron is much further down the tech tree, it's after Monarchy). I'm mildly aggressive militarily, especially if I get a head a little on the tech tree. I blow up around the time gunpowder and ocean ships come around and just start kicking everybody's ass. It's good to wait a bit, if you attack to early you have to build TONS of settlers to fill in the gaps. If you wait until 500BC, the Russians, Persians, Chinese and Mongals have all the good locations taken with fairly large cities and if you time it right, can be easy pick'ns. It's fun to roll across Asia with Knights, spreading Democracy, the Free Market and Buddhism to the heathens.
