Oops, I closed the window without noticing that when I got to a blank screen. Does that mean my results haven't been submitted?
Very interesting questions and an interesting civ (from my perspective) to ask about. This is because I haven't had my interest in Egypt inspired by Civ, and I rarely play it in Civ, and yet I have for many civs in areas in which I'm more interested (indeed, when first playing Civ 1 and unable to be the Vikings, who I was then very interested in, with the existing Civ names, I decided to rename my Civ the Vikings and looked up a lot of Scandinavian city names. My dad was quite impressed to come across me playing with Trondheim...)
I was however very engaged in the historical aspect of the first Age of Empires campaign, from first settlement on the Nile to war against invading Hittites. And it was certainly more accurate than, say, a Christian Jacq novel.
Not that I'm uninterested in Egypt at all, it's just too well-known to really interest me archaeologically - I make a point of visiting archaeological sites when I'm there, but I don't go there for them specifically.
I think to a large extent my Civ interests follow from my real-world interests rather than vice versa (as with the Vikings years ago). I play a lot as Siam in Civ V and visited Ayuttaya and Lopburi some years ago. I played Khmer in Civ 4, having previously developed a reasonable knowledge of their history from a visit to Angkor. I was thrilled to learn Petra will be in Gods & Kings - strangely this is more of a draw for me than most of the new mechanics, probably in part because I visited the site a couple of months ago.
But there's definitely interplay. I'm a lot more interested in Mali now having played around with the Songhai, and read up on them following their inclusion in the new game (although the Malinese were name-checked in Civ 4, that game's list of anonymous cookie-cutter civilizations really made it difficult for me to get a 'feel' for any of the civs I was playing, hence perhaps latching onto one I already knew well). I'm a very big proponent of adding these lesser-known civs to these kinds of game, for my benefit as well as of more general interest. I have yet to get round to playing a full campaign of Empire Total War (the number of starting settlements and rivals all over the map makes it look daunting), but as and when I do I intend to plump for the Maratha Confederacy.
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