it's kind of funny that you ask. I've actually tried this for my mod...but it doesn't work in TA. Apparently when recoding the abilities for TA, something was messed up with the range code and now range penalties have no effect on the game (eventhough they show up in the civ manager). Both Macmatt and I have tried it and i asked kryo about it.
-Dave
I don't know what problem you're having, but it worked for me. I'm the one who wrote the AAR with the -200 range penalty, and it worked just fine. It was TA 2.0. I'm playing TA 2.01 right now with a -100 penalty and it's working. I updated to 2.02, but I'm still playing an old game and it seems some of the new features didn't stick. Anyway, I've played 4 games now with modified range.
RickSmith - Go ahead and give it a try. For it to work, you'll also have to delete the raceconfig files in your My Documents folder. I don't have the path in front of me, but it's something like My Documents/Games/GC2/TA. There will be raceconfig files in there from the last game you played. You have to remove them.
I'll update later when I can give an exact path. Let me know if you try it and how it works. Also, check out the modding forum for modding tutorials. You can find a couple that go through editing races and such.