I finally was able to play RFRE through to the point where I constructed all five components of the Byzantine Legacy (spaceship). However, there appears to be a bug, because when I completed the fifth and final piece, Civ Conquests crashed to the desktop. No big deal I guess, since I had "won" at that point, but it would have been nice to see a screen saying something like, "Congratulations, mighty Caesar, you are victorious!".
One caveat -- actually cheating on my part -- I modified the BIQ to make the spaceship buildable in 475AD rather than 575AD. I am glad that I did, because that saved me fifty turns of empire micromanagement.
As someone mentioned previously, the Sinope resource is not on the v0.9 map. I edited the BIQ and put it in the correct spot prior to starting my game.
I "won" the game around 481AD. To give you an idea of where my technology progress stood at that point, I was just beginning to study Intelligence. I had not yet discovered Armored Cavalry (the next in line in the tech tree after the optional Intelligence tech). During the game, I kept all my research timeframes very close to 12 turns per tech, and that was not difficult to do.
Note, however, (more cheating on my part) that I changed the BIQ Dictator settings from 90 to 100 optimal cities and from 45 to 36 corruption. That freed up some extra cashflow to help me maintain a high research rate. In retrospect, my revised settings provided way to much cashflow, because I built up a huge Treasury. I used propaganda to buy a total of five Syrian and Persian cities, and I also spent about 15,000 gold upgrading roughly 175 Miles Alarius from the Gaulic to the Germanic variety.
RFRE gets very tedious after say 400AD. By then, I had wiped out all AI civs except the Britains and Germans and Scythians and Persians; their remaining cities were on unconquerable marsh or Persian Heartland cities, so I could not attack them. I had nothing to do other than man my border defenses. (Numidia was still in the game, but I just never got around to conquering them because there was no reason to. By then, I was too lazy to move a bunch of my units to the southwest corner of the map).
I set up the Limes along my entire border, but I left a few gaps to entice the Germans and Scythians to try to infiltrate, rather than directly attacking my entrenched units. I chopped down all the forests 3 squares deep (AI HN units have M3) and built roads so that my catapults and cavalry could pounce on any unit dumb enough to try to sneak through the gap. I easily rode out the entire Crisis of the Third Century and only suffered a handful of casualties.
After 375AD, the later German and Attilae HN units (the ones with the multiple unit icons) did not bother to try to infiltrate the gaps. They simply hit my Limes head on. My units located in Limes, on hills, and behind rivers stood no chance, despite my having adjusted forts and limes to +50% defense each, and despite my having changed the Legio Merc stats to A5 D7 from the default A6 D6.
On the other hand, that was no big deal, because I had a HUGE military, so I just funneled replacements into my Limes to replace fallen units. I also used stacks of catapults to kill the high-HP, HN units.
Had I played through 575AD when the spaceship should have been buildable, I don't know whether I would have been able to maintain my border defenses. In 481AC when I finished my game, I was down to about 2 Legio Merc and 4 Miles Alarius Germanicus in each Lime along my entire northern border, and say 25-30 counterattack units in each of my northern cities. It sounds like a lot, but it is not.
For example, at one point in the mid-400AD timeframe, I was at war with the Germans. They had built a road to one of their marsh cities, so I figured that I could make a quick strike and legitimately conquer it (after all, it was they who built the road, not me). I sent a stack of 32 Miles Alarius Germanicus and 2 catapults towards that city. They were wiped out in a single turn in the square right in front of my Limes, just on the German side of the border. The German attack was like army ants swarming over a fresh kill. Dozens and dozens of cavalry units appeared out of nowhere. Needless to say, I sued for peace as quickly as I could after that....
The moral of the story is that no matter how big your military gets in RFRE, keep cranking out the no maintenance Miles Alarius and Legio Merc units as fast as you possibly can, and move them north. You will need them....
My second piece of military advice is to build a whole lot of catapults, since that is the only way to take out the German and Attilae and Praed Picti units which have big HP bonuses.
By the way, the Pread Picti should get more HP, because with five catapults in southern Scotland, the Player can easily kill them off before they cause any harm.
I saw one German transport ship (transport capacity of five) trying to head south down the Atlantic coast of France. I rushed completion of a Dromon and then sank the German ship. I only saw the one ship during the entire game, but I put a couple Dromon's on patrol in the English Channel just in case.
Speaking of Britain, I put a bunch of extra bonus resources around the Hadrian's Wall city, and had the Hadrian's Wall Wonder reduce corruption locally as well as give +50% tax and +50 luxury bonus, because otherwise there would have been no reason to go into Britain in the first place. I'm not sure how historically accurate the changes were, but for gameplay reasons, at least it gave me an excuse to try to hold that city.
I turned off naval bombardment in this game that I just finished. It made things go a lot more smoothly than prior games. Naval bombardment only adds headaches and more micromanagement to the game.
I cut road building time in half (i.e. from 40 to 20). That helped a lot.
The Wonder that is supposed to spawn Arc Fabris in the Middle East (Lime Persia?) only requires Oriental Goods so it can be constructed in Athens or on the little island off Athens. I suggest adding a second required resource so that the Player builds it in the right place.
I was unable to build the Bible because I conquered Jerusalem after the Crux Lesi expired. The Crux Lesi should not have an expiration date.
I modified the Constantinople Wonder to give +2 ship movement. By the time the Player builds that Wonder, he has mastery of the seas anyway. That helped move units across the map more quickly.
I also preplaced some specific imperial roads (railroads) on the map at the beginning of the game. The railroads ran the entire length of Italy. I also had a couple other railroads in AI territory, but never more than 5 squares long. The goal was to save one turn of movement time but not confer any strategic advantage to either the AI or the Player. Imperial roads were unbuildable. With these changes, I had no problems with unit movement.
I made Maximum buildable by unchecking the king box and unhighlighting king. Otherwise, he cannot be built. I only built one Maximus during the whole game, though, since it is supposed to be a king unit. I am not sure how to make a king buildable and unique within a BIQ, but the default v0.9 settings do not work in this regard.
The AI kings and queen units just sat in their respective cities and did nothing. The only exception was Pontus who actually left his city and tried to attack me.
The Castrum should confer a huge anti-bombard ability. They are expensive to build, but since the AI units have "collateral damage", they can easily destroy a castle. That kind of defeats the purpose of building a Castrum in the first place. (If bombard and collateral damage are two different things, then the collateral damage for the AI units should be unchecked).
I was unable to build the Castrum Numidia Wonder because it took me too long to win the Third Punic War. Maybe the spawn rate could be cut from 10 to 20 but the Wonder could stay active until say 150AD?
Finally, the years pass too quickly at the beginning and too slow at the end. There is no way to match Rome's historic expansion rate, but then turns are kind of boring and uneventful later in the game. Maybe the first 50 turns that are currently set at 2 years can be changed to one year, and then the final 50 turns of the game can be set to 3 years. The number of turns and years would be unchanged, but there would be more time upfront. However, this would kind of screw up the tech tree I guess....