Duck and Cover

Civ 2: TOT was my fall-back option for monotonous days for a couple of years at least.

I liked 3 with the expansions (Y)

Toxic, you mean Rhye's of Civilization?

No, but I might check that one out as well. It's actually called "Total Realism Mod" -- dead slow gameplay, game timer removed, town with average production = construct 2 buildings / 4 units during 1 technology research ( which was what killed vanilla Civ4 for me, the whole "I'VE INVENTED THE ATOMIC BOMB, THE TV, THE STEREO, THE CURE FOR CANCER and yet these fucking barracks are still under construction." ), a mercenery system, a tougher economic system and a throng of custom units and wonders and buildings and resources and whatever the hell you want. Handsome boy, me give you good plice.

Ah, well I play on Rhye's earth map with 24 Civs, for Warlords(there's also a 18 Civs one for the vanilla Civ4), but I set the speed setting to Epic. Technologies are slower to research, and the speed is more balanced. You could also try Marathon, techs are even longer to make.

I have yet to try the Total Realism mod or Rhye's.

Sure, the tech's get slower, but construction gets two times slower as well. The only way to realistically play vanilla Civ4 is on the fastest setting, where everything is reduced to a maximum of 4 turns and as such balances out research and construction (semi)properly (you just stop giving a fuck). Case in point, Total Realism fixed the issue, and I'm happy.

I find Epic to be perfect. The production isn't slowed down as much as the techs, I'm pretty sure of it, because I used to hate Civ4 and stopped playing it because it went super fast.

I just got back at it 2 weeks ago when I discovered the Epic speed setting.

But yeah, I should try Total Realism. And Rhye's of Civilization also looks kick ass.