I started working on this a couple of weeks ago and found I couldn't stop:
To me, if there's a part of the world that deserves it's own RFC mod, it's definitely India. I have been interested in history, especially older history, since I was a child, but India had always been something of a blank spot. So many times the historical atlas would just say "many small kingdoms" or something like that. There was the striking figure of Asoka, the brilliance of the Gupta golden age, and a distinct shortage of the detailed documents and archaeological finds which were illuminting contemporary Mediterranean civilization so vividly. I got curious while playing the Sword of Islam (I was so disappointed when I came to the edge of the map just at the start of the Ganges plain!) and then I was forced to actually do some research while working on RFC Classical World. Attempting to learn about ancient India can provide more questions than answers. Is Varanasi really thousands of years older than Jericho or Catal Huyuk? Were the Harrapans speakers of a Dravidian language and were they related to the Elamites and maybe also the Georgians and Basques? Did the Mahabharata war take place and was it a struggle between invading Aryans and defending Dravidians? Will we ever know?
The first decision I made when starting to think about this project was that there would be an abundance of civs. I went through the online historical atlas and wrote down every civ that appeared. That gave me over 50. Then I decided to move the start date back to Vedic times and added 12 of the Mahajanapanda kingdoms that occupied the Indo-Gangetic plain then. Closely following on the first decision were two others: no unique units, buildings or powers and no unique victory conditions. This may seem like a great loss but I can't see any way around it. There are well over 60 civs and many of them are very obscure. To compensate I have reintroduced leader traits and written a flexible set of victory conditions with more than one path to success. There are a number of goals divided into four catergories: military, religious, cultural/scientific and gold. The player must achieve one goal per catergory to win. This can be expanded and adapted as the mod progresses, including the possibility of making all the goals harder but granting victory with any three catergories fulfilled for even more flexibility.
These are the victory conditions as they stand now:
Spoiler :
The current version allows playing as all civs up to 200BC, a total of 21 civs. the tech tree is finished up to roughly that point. I'm going to try to flesh out the ancient era with some more buildings and wonders.
Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism are all unfounded at the start of the scenario. Religion "founding" is obviously taken rather loosely here, but a case can be made for each. Hinduism requires only one tech and is usually founded by turn 15 or so. This represents the transition from what is generally called "Vedism" to what is generally called "Brahmanism". It is frequently founded in Varanasi, due to a dye providing commerce to that city from the first turn. Mahavira, the 24th and last Tirthankara or prophet/teacher of Jainism, was a contemporary of Gautama Buddha and was the great reformer and popularizer of his religion. In this mod Jainism and Buddhism are founded by two different techs, identical in cost and prerequisites, two techs after the Hinduism tech. So far religious buildings are not identical from religion to religion, but they all have equivalent shrines. In the auto-plays I have run up to the Nanda spawn (450BC) all three religions are present nearly every time. To aid the early spread of Hinduism to each of the starting civs, researching Priesthood (the Hinduism founding tech) will spread the religion to your capital if it is already founded.
Civics are a bit of a work in progress and not many of them are available in this scenario. There are two catergories of religious civics, one for religious organization and one for religious tolerance.
Settlers require a tech that may not be reachable before the time limit due to other tech priorities but many barb cities spawn on the first turn so there is opportunity for expansion through conquest. If you move any of your units on the first turn it is possible to interrupt the city spawning so for now its best to sit tight for one turn. Other barb cities continue to spawn at scripted times and places.
There will be corporations, representing foreign merchants (Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Silk Road etc). Each will generate commerce based on resources and will give access to a foreign resource. The first of them start showing up after this starting scenario.
Stability and Piety are both included. Stability is so far unchanged and seems to be generating good results but Piety is in the process of being modified to suit the different levels of religious tolerance.
Leaderheads are static. Some are much better than others. Flags are generic horizontal stripes in the civs colors.
The map is 60x80. Big enough but not huge.
This is not carved in stone, but here is the civ list I am working with:
Spoiler :
There are four Wonders buildable in the early game representing four of the great epics of ancient India: the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. They all boost either great people or great general production and have other effects. They can only be built by great people. (prophet for the Vedas, prophet or scientist for the Upanishads, prophet or artist for the other two, although only prophets will probably be available early). Each also requires a tech.
The Nandas spawn at Pataliputra in 450BC with a large army, destroying the Magadhan and Vrijjian capitals if they are AI and flipping the provinces of Magadha, Vrijji and Kashi. The Achaemenids invade the provinces of Sindh, Gandhara and Arachosia around 530BC.
Some notes on the starting situations of the civs:
Spoiler :
I intend to try to get this complete quickly. The lack of unique assets means that this is possible. So far I am up to the Satavahanas and balance seems quite reasonable. The Nandas and Mauryans don't reach their historical extent but they do control the Ganges plain and become the most powerful civs.
Thanks go primarily to Rhye for the RFC idea, embryodead for refining the engine to its current highly evolved state and Bakuel for all the unit art, without which I wouldn't have attempted this.
At the very least, UHVs won't be too hard to think up. 
It's just not right for an RFC modmod to not have UHVs. And I do hope some of the larger provinces are going to be split up eventually.
in capital. Of course, it's not available right now, so it doesn't matter, but you might want to fix this when you do get around to releasing the full timeline. 
