https://www.oriental-studies.org.ua/en/smirnou-syncretism-in-the-religious-life-of-ancient-palmyra-in-the-3rd-century-сe/ I'm going to leave this here and let you know that I'm working together with other developers in Palmira.   I am working on the symbology of Palmyra and it is complicated to choose symbols for a very syncretic city. It's impressive, but there aren't many images or details online about this faction. Apart from sculptures and other objects, there aren't many clear images from the 3rd century. There is very little art from that period; the original gods of Palmyra are almost entirely unrepresented. It's interesting that they had an anonymous god just like the Athenians. They had Bel and Baalshamin, two gods from different triads. Baalshamin is similar to Canaanite Baalshamin but more advanced and does not share a monotheism like Yahweh, it is a syncretism between Baal and the god El. He has armor, which indicates that he is a warrior god.(similar to Semitic gods in armor fighting in the skies). I am developing a new eagle, I don't know if as an emblem or as another symbol. Baalshamin is probably a kind of Semitic Zeus; he appears alongside eagles as a symbol.  Being an economically Semitic civilization, the gateway to the Silk Road, it is a city of trade and many foreigners with their gods. This city and its civilization should be in the game. It's unique, a cultural mix of things. Visually, they can be unique. This god is represented in what some call the anti-classical style. All that we see represented in late art, the lack of realism and naturalness in favor of facial expressions. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/cavestocathedrals/chapter/late-empire/ This will also be useful later on.

Yes, that's also in Campbell's book: "the vertical blade, flanked on either side by five triangular teeth, was perhaps designed to cut into mud-brick". But none of this confirms it belonged to a log being carried by troops, as mentioned, it's dated from the late 5th c. BC, a time where there were already ramming "engines".   But we would need to additionally know: were they targeting stone walls? Mud-brick walls? Wooden palisades? A gate? For the last two probably it would work, for the first two, I would need to see more concrete evidence. Looking at the representation, it would seem that they are running towards the gate:

There is a theory the Olympia one was specifically designed for breaking mud bricks.  The Trajan column actually shows Dacians attacking a Roman fort by holding a metal capped wooden beam (too late for this discussion, but at least it's some evidence that this sort of weapon existed in antiquity).

I like the idea of turret points on boats. I think it would go well with #8957. In my opinion we also need some logic to allow shrinking turetable unit model's => When a unit is turreted on a boat, it become 20% smaller. Just for visual consistency with boats being a bit smaller then they should. Also as you pointed out, units should die when the boat sinks.

Maybe after being placed beside a wall, units could go slowly up, in the same way they go up when they are posted on top of walls. Would look a bit goofy right now, but still.   Yes, the Assyrians would do that to ram a thinner part of the walls. In this case, Old Smyrna 1948-1951 by J. M. Cook states that "so gigantic a mound, raised from the low ground to overtop the city fortifications, can only be explained as a siegework; and on chronological grounds therefore it can with certainty be attributed to Alyattes", which would seem to imply that they built it all the way up for troops to climb, but then it says "at a low level in the mound (about 8 metres above sea-level) a large mass of solid mud brick was encountered in our excavation; this may possibly have fallen from a breach effected in the superstructure of the city", and later on "the mud brick superstructure of the fortification there fell forward at the time of the capture or very soon after", which seems to imply ramming at a higher level. Maybe "overtop" was not literal, and the second interpretation (the Assyrian way) is indeed the faster way to do things. All this is a bit of a problem since I don't think troops carrying a log (even capped with metal) would have had enough strength to break a wall, even at a higher level. Interestingly enough, this was also the case for the Thucydides quote already mentioned, before stating the "snapped off the nose of the battering ram" bit, he says that "while raising the mound the Peloponnesians also brought up engines against the city, one of which was brought up upon the mound against the great building and shook down a good piece of it", thus, these were already engines, used in the Assyrian way. All this means that I don't see these siege ramps/mounds viable before having proper battering rams, which coincides with both appearing in Greece in the 5th c. BC, as mentioned before.   I think the earliest attestations for these in Greece come from the 5th c. BC.   In conclusion, and besides the guys with a log (after all, D. B. Campbell in Greek and Roman Siege Machinery 399 BC-AD 363 states that "it is very likely that Western warriors would soon have discovered the value of a stout tree trunk in bursting open a gate"), what seems reasonable in chronological order is: spies, climbing mud-brick walls at certain points, at some point capping the log with metal, after that (EDIT: or before, who knows exactly, both could be independent in the game) and seemingly before the 5th c. BC building a non-movable shed for it, and having ladders for the newer unclimbable stone walls.