After noticing that FF uses the great general model from warlords, I decided to make a personal shuttle/mobile command center in blender.

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc60/V3N0M1300/shuttle2.jpg

Took me a couple of tries to get the engines the way I wanted. Now I just have to make the skin.

It looks neat! Although the link between great generals and shuttles is beyond me ^_^ Nice work though

In star wars all the imperial officers and other important people had personal shuttles.

Ah, that actually makes sense. Anyway, nice model!

working on the UV now. There doesn't seem to ba an easy way to mirror uvs but I'm working on it.

I've never decompiled a civ model. what kind of animations does a great person need?

Just use the animations from any other of the shuttles, it should work fine.
The model looks very good btw!