naw... its not the dimensions causing larger files... its the layers. I just added layers on top of layers thinking that .dds files would flatten them. Not to worry, easily fixed.
@Genie: Some interesting thoughts. I've always thought the City Raider line should've been City Invader instead for much of the same conceptual terminology rationale. Pretty much all of those ideas would take some new tags and dll work to achieve but they all seem cool for a truly 'city raider' concept. The argument about city defenders not amassing xp is also fairly valid. I've seen some city defenders become quite powerful when the attack force isn't quite strong enough due to a quantity over quality attack style delivered by the ai, but commonly, I think you're right.
Now, in my experience, speaking in terms of equal tech opponents, generally, no amount of city attack power can overwhelm the city defenses without sufficient siege support. (Well... there IS the surround and destroy style that can take out weaker defenders in lagging culture cities.)
And the opposite tends to be true as well, that once sufficient siege support has been applied, it doesn't take all that experienced an attack force to squash the city defenders. What would really go a long ways in making the after siege battle more exciting would be to add a line of buildings that would nearly eliminate all incoming collateral damage from bombarding or attacking siege units.
And along the lines of your consideration of defenders not amassing xp, it might be worthwhile to have a training building that adds 1 xp to one unit in the city per round, cycling through so it gives equal coverage to all units after an amount of rounds equal to the amount of units in the city. After a time, this will make for some very profoundly potent defenders and would help the earlier created defenders keep up with the modern training expectations of the later built ones. Could it be used to enhance attack armies? Sure, but at the cost of leaving that city's defenses less trained. (EDIT: My wife points out this may be too strong and it should only be handing out an xp per round while at war... I really like that idea!)