I never played Europa 7-8, the previous Version of EB 1.0, but I think the client ruler section of the script wasn't there for that version. Which means if people want to go back to when the script was smaller, they should just use what I said here.

Your second choice, if you want better combat AI and an increase in turn/scroll speed, is using the Alexander mod to start EB, which is save game compatible with vanilla EB.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=96135

Btw, the largest performance boost for EB seems to be to have 2 gigs of ram, whatever speed.