If you try to play vanilla 1.08 on GameRanger, you will desync. GenTool rewrites the network code. It forces the game to use a single CPU core (preventing "random" lag) and syncs the random number generator across all PCs.

Here is the critical information regarding this patch:

Patch 1.08 is the last official patch released by EA for the game (2004). It addresses multiplayer synchronization, balance tweaks, and bug fixes. Key changes include:

If you are saying "No" to the broken vanilla 1.08, you are implicitly saying "Yes" to .