It's part of the Conquerors expansion for AoE II, you'll have it in your version too. When you start new game, you select Custom in the Map Style box, then Pilgrims in the Location box that appears beneath it. They have lots of interesting custom ones, like Capricious which alters the resources, you can have tons of everything, or lots of all but one resource which is meager...as the title says, it's capricious.

Definitely going to check that out! Right after I finish my current game, which isn't going too well right now... the scurvy Franks keep destroying everything I throw at them.

My strategy has always been to build castles/bombard towers on the outskirts of an opponent's territory, and get them to waste most(if not all) of their forces trying to destroy them, then build another castle closer to their town center. Once their settlement is pretty much abolished(or converted using monks) and they abdicate, I move onto the next. I'm so boring, I really haven't changed my strategy in all the years I've been playing. Of course that requires lots of stones and some gold(for the bombard towers at least). On my desktop which has the original version(Steam HD version is on my laptop), I can use the cheat codes to bulk up my supplies since there's no achievements(Steam won't count 'em if you use the cheats). Still working on beating the Gold Rush scenario by getting all the gold first!

That's a strategy I've never even heard of, but it seems worth a shot... I've been playing in Death Match right now, so I don't need cheat codes because the game starts with huge resources. I'm loving how cheap castles are! The Frank's have been attacking me with swarms of Paladins and rams, reducing about a third of my town to ruins, but I plan to use a guerrilla strategy- build new buildings elsewhere in the forest, and slowly build the biggest army of halberdiers and onagers that I possibly can. Archers would seem like a good idea because I'm the Britons, but they actually just get slaughtered when the enemy closes with them. Not a pretty sight.
I usually played as the Huns in the past just to get the game going faster, but now that I have Aoe2 again I'm trying to learn how to play the basic, old fashioned way.

I don't think I've played death match that I remember...did regicide once I think.

Death Match is for people who want to fight. You start with resources in the neighborhood of 10,000, so you can start building immediately. Of course most of that gets eaten up with aging up and improvements if you start in Dark Age, but it gets you moving and battle ready much faster. And your armies have a better chance (I think) of getting REALLY HUGE!!
Regicide is cool if you want a fast game that you can win with a single blow. It's just crazy though that that really hefty king can walk faster than some horse units...
Good luck with the gold rush! (You might find "robin hood" helpful there if you know what I mean. That is unless you're playing fair....)

Oh, I just 'rock on' in Gold Rush to build castles all around the gold piles to make sure all the other civs die if they try and encroach

Ooh, that might work... so long as the enemy doesn't build too many trebuchets .
I'm gonna try and use my massive halb army strategy in a minute. Let yon pesky foemen beware!

I usually beat them to the trebuchets, if not, I just have some knights/calvary holed up in my castles to take 'em out

Man, you thought of everything!
My halb swarm is growing slowly; Black Forest is probably the absolute best map to do this because of the excessive amount of wood available. If you have wood, you can build farms, which give you food... and that's all 500 halberdiers need. Just wood and food and lots of it!
Do you have a favorite civ that you play all the time?

Well since Reno is my favorite FFVII character, I've been playing the Turks pretty much all the time lately.

The Turks are definitely my favorite civ!... in Age 3.
My favorite civs in Aoe2 used to be the Teutons and the Vikings, mainly because my ancestors on one side were actually Teutons and Vikings, but when I first installed The Conquerors, the Huns kind of took over as my new official civ. (Actually I have some Hungarian ancestry on the other side, so possibly I have some Hun ancestors. Or maybe Magyar... ). Really though, the fact that they don't need houses was a bit more interesting to me than ancestry.
My 400-something halberdiers failed last night. I'm beginning to notice a problem in the way my men fight; when I move them up in formation and order them to attack, half of them go, and half of them freeze for a second, and then waddle around like confused penguins, not even fighting the enemies who are chasing/attacking them. Some even go the other direction. My men got slaughtered by a force half their number because of this; the enemy would finish off one group that was actually fighting, and then go on to the others that weren't.
Have you ever had this happen? Do you know what causes it?

I've tried AoE 3, but I'm not that fond of it, it's not like an upgrade of a game I already know(was easy to play AoE 2 if you played the first game), it's like being confronted with a brand new game that I don't really understand and therefore have no reason to like it.

I don't think I've had that problem, but then I don't use such big numbers. I've rarely used more than 5 troops at a time. It might be something to do with the command 'stances' you can have them in down below in the control bar(where research options appear when you click on a building). Only thing I can think of, like I said, I don't often attack with troops, I just bait them into getting slaughtered by my castles/bombard towers. Trebuchets to take out their castles(and gates so I can build my own in their place and they can't use it) if need be.

My ancestry is mainly European(Celtic, Scandinavian, and German), but I am 1/4th Japanese, and one of my great-grandfathers was Jewish I believe. Only influence that has on me when I play is that I'll usually wait to destroy the Japanese til last if I'm up against them.

Oh and check your settings for the AI player when you start a new game in the Steam HD edition. There's the option of AI or Original AI when you're choosing the settings/options for the new game. Original AI is how the actual game played, AI is the newer meaner HD version of AI apparently. Because when you play Nomad scenario, in original AI only one opposing villager will start building the town center. In AI, all of them do it together so you don't have a chance to pick off the villagers one by one before they get it built. I think my least favorite scenario is Metropolis, because it may sound easy to start with 3 town centers and more villagers, but your enemies also do, and you have to destroy each one to win.