Same here ^_^. The changes in 2.6 should be interesting to see.
That is a very good point. I've generally found with EB that the decisions you make for your cities can decide your fate. It is definitely a very unforgiving mod, and if you mess up your economy and don't have the funds to raise an army when you get in to a war, odds are you're simply dead. And the difficulty of some factions - namely the ones bordering the Seleucid Empire - I think is a perfect example of this. If you begin a campaign with Pontos, Baktria, Hayasdan or Pahlava - or any other faction I'm missing that borders the Seleucids - you will get crushed if you don't know what you're doing and don't make perfect decisions. Although the problem of not having enough funds to raise an army if you make bad decisions regarding economy is somewhat alleviated by the amount of forces you start with. A lot of factions in EB start the game with only one or two provinces, but an army that is all-up around 12-15 unit cards. The goal is to use your army to quickly dispatch a few rebel cities to find yourself in surplus rather than deficit. Or, that's how I've always gone about it. I'm not afraid to go in to deficit in the first few turns while I take a couple cities to get my economy going.Although, technically when you said, " If you are playing a mod where every denari has to scraped up with great effort, and then used to buy a very badly needed unit for your army, it tends to slant everything towards the battle side of things."
thats not really true since if you have more expensive units, then economy becomes even more important. Say, you are playing RS2 and you haven't managed it well, you may still be able to have a few stacks. Whereas, in EB, a good and bad economy is the difference between having 1 stack, fighting a two front war (defeat) and 2 stacks fighting a 2 front war (victory). Also since you can afford more units in RS2 then you have more battles so the mod slants towards battles more???.....
The way I look at it isn't that one or the other is bad, they're simply two completely different ways of going about things and trying to compare them at all isn't really a smart idea because they're so vastly different. Both of them are difficult, challenging and fun but in completely different ways. Simply put, they appeal to different people. Personally I like them both and tend to go through phases of liking one more than the other.
As for these:Before I reinstall the mod,
1. how fast is the pace of expansion (for a player who likes to blitz)
2. is there any way to tone down the number of battles?
3. Changing movement speeds of ships, spies, diplomats and armies?
4. I never realised RS2 was a 0 turn mod. Is there a way to change it to one turn recruitment?
1. I'm not sure, but I'm sure DVK will know the answer to that one.
2. Play a 1-turn campaign.
3. I imagine you'd make some edits to things. Again, DVK probably knows.
4. The launcher gives you the option of choosing a 0-turn campaign or a 1-turn campaign. You select a 0-turn faction or you select 1-turn campaigns and then you go for it.