Oh, yes, definitely play classic, or at the very least if you want to play with the expansion play with the original factions. The ones added in the expansion are retarded and/or unbalanced.
You're not wrong about retarded/unbalanced but, once you learn how to play, you'll inevitably and easily defeat the AI every time. There's nothing wrong with trying expansion factions for fun new playstyle. Starting off on the water as Pirates is particularly giddy, despite its silliness.
BING XI LAOOur mod is a mix of some weird shit a modder made of the game and attempts to remove the dumber additions of the expansion. We've generally been re-tuning the mod in the direction of being less stupid (and fixing degenerate stuff that is possible in the base game, like supply crawler abuse).
A lot of people understand the game and its mechanics better than I do. My only justification is that my modding changed gameplay to more closely resemble what I enjoy. What you wrote above recommends nothing about the mod, so I can't imagine why you lot stick with it. You should play vanilla or another mod like Thinker or Will to Power, both of which are much more clever. They're not optimized for multiplayer but neither is vanilla.
I don't recommend anyone play my mod. It's based off Yitzi patch which sometimes crashes during mind worm combat after turn 100. I like it (I would) but I'm on-and-off working on a better one that takes advantage of numerous new hax to the exe. Codex PBEM crew autistically went through the txt line-by-line and denounced it as not making any sense, which it doesn't when you don't take the exe alterations into account, but that's Codex for you. They instinctively hate anything new as knee-jerk reaction to everything that came out within the past twenty years being utter garbage. I was quite startled they adopted my mod in the first place. Most bro thing the swede ever did.
So, if multiplayer, try
Nevill's mod or my new one when it comes out. If singleplayer, try Thinker or Will to Power.
