@wowgetoffyourcellphone has also been a big help and great source of expertise when it comes to modding!  

Welcome to the official topic for Classical Warfare AEA - A more in-depth version of 0 A.D., with an emphasis on historical accuracy. New units and technologies, but a similar approach to the game. (In simple words, we think it makes the game better.) Our original post was deleted when the account was accidently flagged for spamming Anyway, welcome and we hope you enjoy the mod.  IF you have any suggestions or are fascinated with this part of history and want to contribute don't be shy!  We are hoping to keep it going as long as there is interest from the community, after all it's the community that makes this game and this project so much fun! Big thanks for all the people along the way that have helped keep this project going. Starting with of course the one and only @TheCJ but also @Genava55 @Atrik (but he seems to mostly be retired now) @Tyrannosaurus @Thalatta @Seleucids (another retired OP soul) @Outis @Stan` and I'm sure many more that I am forgetting.   Emacz2/classical-warefare-aea our git hub incase you want to download or check out some of the differences! you can visit our webiste here! Thanks @Asher for setting it up

I meant left vs right.

I guess the question is, when this happens, can you still play? I imagine it would be nice to keep doing so while listening to some dialogue.

It depends on what a cutscene is for you. Dialogue and cinema paths (predefined camera movements such as in the cinema demo map) aren't tied to each other, either one of them can be shown on its own, but also both at the same time. What they have in  common is that both show the the two black bars at the top and bottom and there's a way implemented to synchronise the two systems. Then there's what I called "cutscene mode", which disables visual overlays like territory borders, health bars and selection rings -- the mode is always enabled during cinema paths and optionally during dialogue (it can be specified).