SMST

The Pergamon Altar, and yes, it is in Berlin, and it is awesome. My Greek class went on a trip there once.

Astonishingly, this option exists in almost all RTS games, but not in EE (1).

(\ Hm. I have yet to see a freeze frame cinematic aka "diashow" that looked epic enough to substitute for a proper render scene. It will certainly save time and effort, though. If you had to suffer through the atrocious "videos" of Empire Earth 2, you know what I am talking about ...

There was a VERY old trailer of the game that I can't seem to find on Youtube anymore but had the perfect mood for a game intro. It was about a Roman soldier standing watch at the borders of the Empire being overrun by barbarians. Maybe someone else knows where to find it? @lordgood: Why, if that isn't a hoplite pony ... brohoof?

Boudica looks a bit ... overly masculine.:-/ To be honest, if you didn't tell me, I would have thought she was a man.

Here is a quick shot of Hannibal in the actor editor. Ashoka does not yet exist in the public svn. (well, he does, but he looks like Xerxes.^^)

Where did you read that? The origin of the Etruscans is a mystery, actually, because of their language, which resembles nothing spoken in Europe or the Middle East (Indo-European or Semitic, mainly). There have been attempts to link them to Minoans and Basque people, because they too spoke/speak a language that was/is not related to anything, but these attempts were not fruitful. Also the Etruscans did not settle in Umbria, they lived, believe it or not, in Etruria. My understanding is that they were hellenized when they were already in Italy, not before. I might be wrong, though.

0 A.D. is "a period in time that never was". Thus spoke the creators. You could always say the old nobility of the Achaemenid empire revolted against Seleucid rule or something like that. If I recall correctly, this did actually happen at some point ...

Also note that the Auxila Units that you posted would be Imperial Roman. They will most likely be part of the Imperial Roman faction in 0 A.D. Part II (I am ready to bet a year full supply of chocolate that they will fill the role of Infantry Spearmen ). Thracians, Samnites and Etruscans (and Scythians) would be nice additions indeed. Though we already have many civs more than were planned originally (first there were 6, now we are down to 10, I think), so go easy on the devs.

I'd love to see a Selecucid fighting male chicken in the game!

Also, Camels! (I hope?)

Hmm. Looks interesting. How do you intend to handle the buildings in cliffs? I thought they were unique structures like in Petra, but your photos suggest to me that Ancient Arabs build their cities inside cliffs on a regular basis. Which is awesome, but kind of hard to portray in terms of gameplay. What would be their civ traits? Something about trade for the first one and maybe a bonus on desert terrain for the second one?

This is really awesome. Takes me back to when I was six or seven and watched my older cousins play it. AoE might very well be the first video game I came in contact with, ever. So yeah, this would be an awesome mod ... Edit: Yay, I just noticed the screenshot that quantumstate linked in his post was taken from the German version of the game. "Altsteinzeit" ... "Palaeolithic Age" - how very disappointed was I when I learned that the English version had *just* "Stone Age" as a term

I I did state quite clearly that I like the mechanic in the skirmish mode, but would like to have civilians for scenarios.

I saw this topic and was all for it, so have some Male Citizens! No person is "made" for war. Not even in ancient times, except maybe Spartans. And even here I think the ancient records that we have (Athenians, mostly!) exaggerate highly. Civilian men were either drafted or fought willingly for their city/kingdom/empire/whatever, yes, and it works great for skirmish mode in this game. But for more specialised situations in a scenario, it would be nice to have some free men that are not soldiers. Farmers, craftsmen and the like. Yes, they would become soldiers in times of war. But not everyone of them and not all the time.