:D Your understanding of 'hardcoded' is spot on. Basically, some aspects of the game are controlled by the games basic code ( the chunk in the RomeTW.exe file) and others are read from text files etc. The stuff in the exe file can't be changed without illegal hacking and reverse engineering of the exe file.

CA cold change it and relee a new exe file, but pobably won't. Some changes might happen in the soon to be released 'Barbarian Invasion' add-on. Don;t think they are changing the things you want done though....

Your 9600XT isn't a bad card, and you are using the same CPU as me. I have 1Gb of DDR400 though. Right now, RAM is cheap....so you might want to take the chance on throwing another 512Mb in.

A good way to check your graphics cards effect on the game is to turn down the detail levels, switch from 32 bit colour to 16 bit, and see what effect that had. I am using a humble GF4 Ti4200 ( until tomorrow when my 6800GT arrives ) and find I quite often need to turn down the resolution a bit.

To properly test it, set up a custom battle with as many troops as you can. Then let it go. Check to see if the game gets slow and stuttery. Turn down some detail options and try again. Repeat until you run out of things to turn down! If you hit a sweet spot, then great.

If not....go buy another 512Mb of ram and try again ;)