I think these absolutely amazing Civ4 mods needs their own thread.
Basically, for those not in the know, these mods are built from the original Fall from Heaven mod (FfH1->FfH2->FF->RifE) and are a collection of "dark fantasy" mods for the game Civilization 4. They're almost professional in quality, and they're a hell of a lot of fun to play.
They also make you feel like you're a part of a living, breathing world, if you select the right options on world creation. Recently, I started a game where the world starts frozen and slowly thaws out the longer you play, with increased animals etc. I sent out my initial scout, raided a few ruins in the centre of the map and released a giant spider which he got killed by, but I thought nothing of it at the time. About a hundred turns later, I had gotten a message that Mokka (basically the leader of a bunch of frost-goblin things) had came to the world. All the ice tiles that were left (luckily none near my almost unprotected cities, since I was playing a faction that terraformed whatever land it landed on) spawned a bunch of frostlings. I sent out a few scouts to try and find where he was only to discover that the spiders had built up a fairly expansive bunch of spider dens near the centre of the map
Within 100 turns, a unit I had accidentally released from some ruins had set up a pseudo-empire that could probably crush me fairly easily. (Spiders are overpowered.) I rushed for the tech that would make peace with them (makes peace with the entire nature barbarian faction) and hoped to god the city didn't get captured by frostlings.
Honestly, this was the most fun game of Civ4 I've EVER had.
How about you guys, ever played it? Got any stories?
(Oh, and the Illians are way overpowered in Rise from Erebus. They got like 1000 points whilst I was on 400-odd.)