Those tiled roofs look tight! The Temple looks better too. It looks more like a temple from the mid to late Republican era in Rome or the late classical Attic style, than age 1 building.
Age 1 Roman and Greek temples may have been flat-roofed crypts containing or built around a holy spring or natural altar stone. They may have been built out of rough-hewn sandstone or limestone, or unmortared stones built in a round enclosure. Early ones looked like vaults. 2nd or 3rd age temples acquired portico, colonnades, etc. in increasing orders as time went on. (Or as temples were burned down by civil unrest, and rebuilt by later rulers.)
The role of the temple transitioned from vault of sacred items dedicated to a god and accessed only by priests, to a multi-use building (z.B. temple of Saturn was also the treasury of the Roman state and its archives) accessed by a variety of different priests, clerics, magistrates, and officials, to a truly public venue for worship. Hence more porticoes, more colonnades, more and larger buildings and outbuildings, a small garrison, etc. so that the business of government and the actual sacred precinct overlapped less and less.
The old Caesar-saying is generally true: it went from being a wood and reed city to a brick & whitewash one, and then a mostly marble & gilded one. And the brick parts were largely of yellow or tan brick, not the bright red bricks we have today as a result of being close to high iron content sediments. Copper was plentiful in Italia, Greece, and the horn of Africa, so many of a temple's fixtures were made of bronze, dating back to traditions borne out in the Bronze Age and loath to change just because 1000 years had increased access to iron. IN fact many of Rome's earliest temples were largely the product of Etruscan artisans: votive statues, temple stonework, bronzework for doors and window gratings, bronze or bronze-lidded
arces and scrinia for holding sacred relics, sacred weapons and armour that could not be of iron for religious reasons were made of gilded bronze (Apollo) or tin (Jupiter). The earliest buildings therefore looked much like what they were: sacred vaults, and were heavily ornamented but not with stone.
anyway, you've made me hit an artery, I think. I've been waiting for an opportunity to put my Greek and Classics degree to use. At any rate the existing AOE3 bank building texture seems to me the best for the brick + whitewash buildings - compare with the early Imperial Temple of Jupiter here and the appearance of later age marble buildings goes well with the texture you have for your temple and columns, as seen in the 3rd century Temple of Saturn. The Parthenon would also fall in this category as it's a huge complex with 2 layers of colonnades and a separate area for the vaults and the public observance of sacrifices and state holidays.
I would totally rip the original Bank building texture for mid-late Roman Republican municipal buildings and temples. I would also rip the Taj Mahal texture for Classical Greek and Imperial Roman major temples. The Aztec unmortared stone cottage is a good texture to recolor and use as the unmortared yellow sandstone rounded vaults of earliest Roman and Mycenaean temples, homes, and low fortifications.
In the original European HC you can change the color of your HC tech buildings, New World Trade Center, etc. I would rip most of those and use them for different buildings in different civs and ages. For instance, the tawny yellow and light terra cotta brick textures for the Mediterranean building custom skins is perfect for a variety of Roman, Greek, and other Mediterranean buildings. The darker brick and stone ones (also European fort) seem perfect for use on buildings weathered by excessive rain or wind, like the Pharos or heavy fortifications in Europe, on the Limes, etc.
Sadly Tarquin's original Roman temple buildings and stuff didn't survive under all the renovations, rebuildings, periodic dictatorships and Roman civil wars. That would have been ideal to use as an example of age 2 models.
Crunkatog on ESO
Bart331 balance suggestion: aztec: remove civ
Voltiguer: Ender, Sioux in 1.04 will be a top civ, no matter how many layers of Sioux goggles you put on
schildpad on Elephants: ...their mansabdar unit sucks so hard it looks like a black hole
Crunkatog on Steam.[This message has been edited by As_Saffah (edited 07-08-2009 @ 01:47 PM).]