So I had modded some stuff in the leader xml file when I first got the game. Then later I realized that you were supposed to copy the file to the custom assets folder and mod from there. So restored the original (I made a backup) and moved the modded file to custom assets folder. Everything still worked. It got a little weird when I deleted the custom file and my changes still showed up in the game. I made sure to delete every copy and every backup copy on the machine and still the mods persisted. Finally did a search through the whole computer with any file that had the word 'leader' in it. Apparently it was hiding in a folder labeled 'cache' in my documents\my games\sid meyers... blah blah blah'. The weird thing is I couldn't see the folder with 'show hidden files' turned on, nor could I get to it from a dos prompt. Weird.