It's so funny you say this because this was my introduction to modding and programming as well, except with Red Alert 2. I remember changing the cost of the items, adding new units, replacing the graphics, etc.
Ha! I had fun with Red Alert 2 as well, though RA2's rules.ini seemed much more involved.
The RA2's rules.ini pretty much exposed the games internal hierarchical layout for units, i.e an IFV loaded with GI's is different compared to a IFV loaded with Engineers.
But serializing all of these led to a much larger file than RA1, it was quite a bit more difficult to hand-hack RA2's rules.ini. I ended up caving to a utility tool like TibEd and Red-Alchemist. [1]
The RA2's rules.ini pretty much exposed the games internal hierarchical layout for units, i.e an IFV loaded with GI's is different compared to a IFV loaded with Engineers.
But serializing all of these led to a much larger file than RA1, it was quite a bit more difficult to hand-hack RA2's rules.ini. I ended up caving to a utility tool like TibEd and Red-Alchemist. [1]
Good times...
[1] https://www.tibed.net/tibed1/