How can I make terrain for iOS game? (re: terrain engine alternatives)

Since the Unity3D terrain engine is only usable on the iPad 2 (and even then it’s a bit slow), what is everybody else doing for terrain?

For example, I’d like to make an RTS type of game with some very simple hills, plains, etc. It will be viewed top-down (like most other RTS games).

The terrain engine would allow me to create terrain really easily but since that’s not an option… what else is available?

(I’m actually thinking about using 2D sprites and making it tile-based, but using 3D terrain does have certain advantages…)

(EDIT: How is something like this accomplished?)

Could just make the ‘terrain’ in your favorite 3D modelling program, potentially with all static scene geometry part of the single mesh, single material. Depends on size ofcourse…

If you had extra geometry for the scene, could always static batch and use culling to save processing unseen geometry