[Ironhawk]

I only ever play with CB Mod. As Kissblade says above, playing vanilla is just asking for exploits to be brought into play which always ruins things for me.

I'm surprised to find that people feel there is a "learning curve" to the balance mods tho? I mean, you just plug it in and go. Do you seriously memorize every unit from every nation and every spell? It seems a better strategy to me to just abstract your knowledge of dominions - what values make a unit or spell good/bad and then you are ready to play any game with any mod. Just glance at the units and spells that fall into line with your strategy and you are good to go.