Rather than actually playing the game I enjoy pitting two A.I controlled Nations against each other and watching how the battle goes. Admittedly the A.I is not too bright and does some strange things at times, but it's still quite enjoyable, for me the sign of a good game. I've been using my own 19th Century mod for this but wondered if anyone else has tried this with the Vanilla version or any of Awars fantastic mods.
I prefer to play in the game when I'm trying the differents versions of mods, in a classic 2v2 settings with one AI ally. I sometimes wonder how their battles goes between AI so I take a look, sometimes it even get a stroke of genius and will send hussards to help me.