Some suggestions

[Cartaphilus]

Very good post!

I agree with your suggestions about the dawn of time syndrome, and with the anti-blitzkrieg tactics too - but remind that it is still a game. We can't wait hundreds of turns to conquer a town, because the game would become unplayable.

And I agree with all the rest.

[Korlon]

Very nice suggestions indeed! I would certainly like to be able to slow recruitment down a bit as well as most of the rest of the things you have said.

[Ephos]

Fantastic suggestions, I particularly agree with the naming scheme. It could be theoretically done with a batch script that would simply copy names from one folder to another in /data/text;

example:
/data/level1
/data/level2
/data/level3
/data/text

copy ./data/level1 ./data/text \y

As for the blitzkrieg, I somewhat disagree, because I end up spending several turns preparing an army for combat before attacking anyway, even with M2's speedy training system. I actually ensure that they are all properly equipped, the proper amount of units to ensure maximum flexibility, etc.

Anyway, overall great suggestions and I agree

[I Am Herenow]

With regards to anti-Blitzkrieg tactics, I am certainly not proposing that we slow the game down ad absurdum, but simply that we limit the acceleration of the growth of empires that occurs in the game.

For instance, if the player plays as the Romani, they could feasibly conquer every conquerable region on the map before the birth of Christ - outstripping the real Romans by centuries. However, if the real Romans could have conquered so much land so easily, do you not think that they would have done it? It just seems unrealistic.

[General Appo]

I like most of your ideas, especially about the opening tour of ones lands.
I hope at least some of your ideas can be implemented. Oh, and please lets not make this just an discussion about blitzkrieg, to many threads with many great ends up just discussing one and forgetting about the others.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I doubt it will be possible to realise such levels of spelling. For starters it would require us to maintain 3 different text files; something which is troublesome enough with only 1 for each 'topic' already. Another issue would be the limitted range of the various fonts the game uses; fonts typically limited to Western languages -- i.e. not even their Greek charset would be sufficient for covering the Greek names; let alone the Sanskrit/Celtic/Punic symbols.

Still if we can manage to replace one of those fonts with some other, then yes perhaps it could be done for the quotes.

[Cartaphilus]

I like the idea about the "heretics".
It would be cool that they increase the unrest and the rebel armies.