My congrats! Great scn. I'm almost done with my first game, playing as Castille. I'm playing on the third difficulty level and having a great time. I'm actually working on a scn taking place right at the end of this mod (renaissance), and I think I got plenty of ideas from this fantastic game. Now for some impressions about the mod:
Logistics are really important here, with relatively slow units and huge map. It's really hard to battle far away from home, if you play as one of the westerns civs getting to holy land must be almost impossible. How many crusaders do you load in your boats? It would take forever to get there and probably would fail (unless you send like a hundred). I've had very very bad results making amphibious attacks and finally only used them when I had absolutely no other choice. When I started the expansion beyond current germany, it was almost painful to watch all the units slowly trying to get to the border cities so I could launch an attack (and on several fronts, since many people were attacking). First I had some help from nice neighbours but eventually they all hated me. Beyond certain point, I think there's no way to make the AI like you again (no matter how many techs, luxuries and resources you give them!). I don't like that..
My main concern has been with the assassins. They are actually able to conquer cities without declaring war! They've really made my life impossible in some areas. And the only unit i can build to detect them (that i know of), the inquisitor unit, comes very late in the game to be of real use (I just researched it to discover they actually don't have stealth mode).But for a very long time the assassins destroyed my improvements, workers and several mounted units (and razed a couple of cities, that really hurt!). I guess the AI "knows" just out of the blue which of your cities are undefended or with just one unit and can send them right there.. Always hated this part, it's so unfair. If I sent my inquisitors while at war with somebody they AI also "happens" to guess where they are and kill them despite being invisible, so I see no real use for them except for having a couple located in your border cities to kill the assassin that try to get through.
Plagues are wreaking havoc everywhere, it's quite hard to keep your cities protected when almost all of them are infected (great opportunity for the assassins to come again and start razing cities)
One "bug" I noticed: When the harbour goes "ka-boom" the tags are switched. If you click "Zoom to the city" you ignore it, and if you click "let them rot" (can't remember the exact sentence) you zoom to the city.
And another funny things, I found a worker with a jesus christ complex. See picture attached (and I hope I know how to attach a picture here). That German city in Orkney btw was their last, and it took me more units and gold than all their other cities combined (see again my initial point on amphibious attacks).
Again, great work, thanks a lot!