but the landscape was a little simple and looked the same every I look, so I do hope that you'll change that.

That is definitely one of our goals with Rome. We've got almost 10x the number of tree species plus double the number of terrain textures we had in gold and we've been doing our research to try get the environment created as accurately as possible. You'll also see a lot more variety in the architecture as the main cultural factions (Romans, Germans, Gauls, Britons) all have their own building styles.

And plz include a a kind of skirmish mode where I can start from scratch and build my empire against the computer :)

We are looking at a few additions to the sandbox mode. Just to clarify, you're looking for some scenario where both you and the computer start with a single city and compete for control of the map?

And one more thing, I would like to be able to zoom out a little more and still control my forces.

As i mentioned in a previous post, with the increased terrain res and slightly smaller units you will effectively to able to zoom out further on the 3d map.

Any idea when a demo will arrive?

We plan to do a beta in the new year which we'll announce a signup here and in our newsletter and, as with all of our games, there will be a demo available when we launch the game later in the spring.

One question, will you be going with pre, or post-Marian reforms?

As with all aspects of the game we try to keep it as historically accurate as possible and so our units will be based on the Roman legions after the Marian reforms. So Caesar's army will be composed of standard legion units as well as auxiliary cavalry, archers and other local units. For variety we do plan to emphasize the unique legions that took part in the campaigns like the Fifth Alaudae or Caesar’s favoured Tenth Legion.

As far as the specific size and composition of the legions are concerned, in the beginning we discussed trying to represent this more accurately but because the size of the units in Hegemony are already abstracted from the real numbers and by Caesar's accounts his legions often ran well below strength during the Gallic wars we decided to keep this a little more flexible so it was easier to balance the gameplay.

We also have a few ideas on how to emphasize the increased amount of supply they carried themselves but we'll get into those kind of details as we get closer to the beta.

so you are implying that we will have more than 3 or 4 "unique" or "special" units?

I don't have an exact count right now for the number of unique/special units in Rome but we got a lot of positive feedback on them in Gold and I think I can safely say you can expect to have at least as many in Rome.