Understandable, Durango. The forum rules are pretty clear on warez/piracy, but Stazi's question isn't about cracking the game. Given the age of the game and it's well-researched, hardcoded quirks, I suppose this kind of question was inevitable at some point.

The pertinent section of the Org rules FAQ:
Quote Originally Posted by FAQ
Posts containing addresses of warez sites or anything piracy-related: note that this includes "hacks" designed to enable Total War games to run without a CD. The administration is aware of the fact that some use a "no-CD hack" for the purpose of enhancing their system performance, but we feel that the possible illegal benefits from these hacks outweigh all other considerations. Such hacks also require reverse engineering of the game, and this is in violation of the End User Licence Agreement. Anything pertaining to software piracy in general is highly discouraged.
We know Stazi isn't trying to circumvent the copy-protection scheme, but the alteration would still violate the EULA. So at this point, I am inclined to allow this discussion (the question of "can I?") continue until we get some more feedback. I would strongly discourage the posting of methods/guides or links to modified .exe files until we get a decision though.