I was happy that they corrected this obvious flaw by changing her name to Hatshepsut, who was certainly very Egyptian.  Of course in reality Hatshepsut dressed and acted like a man to fool her people, since female rulers were unheard of at the time, but let's not get started on that.

But now I bought this expansion and now I find one of the add-ons, Darius I, is black???  I realize Firaxis has to appeal to as wide of the American demographic as possible, but please.  Since when did Persians have a Negroid component to their ethnic makeup??  I'm guessing all this is derived from the movie 300.   Maybe some Firaxis developer was really crazy about the movie and thought a black Persian would be so much cooler.  Or perhaps Firaxis is privy to archaeological evidence not yet made public to the rest of the world.  Cyrus, watch out for Civilization 5, historical revisionists may have you in their crosshairs...

As a disclaimer, I realize the game is still pretty heavily European, but if additional representation is desired from other ethnicities and cultures, they should have a more solid historical foundation.  As far as it not affecting the game's playability, some people less grounded in history may take what they see in the game as prima facie proof of the past.  To avoid collectively dumbing down our own civilizations, we should attempt to present as accurate a version of it as possible.

Most of the time they seem to get the phenotypes about right. But I agree with you that the Cleo in Civ3 was just not accurate. I also agree that Darius is a bit peculiar. However, I didn't really think he looks African, so much as Arabian.

Do you recall the Arabian leaderhead in Civ3, cannot think of his name now . . . Ibn Akbar or something like that. Dang, just cannot recall.

To me, he had a similar phenotype to that which they are showing with Darius, which I'd say is just sort of generally "Middle Eastern."

The other thing to consider is that, some of the images of Gods and Kings from the earlier periods in the Mesopotamian if not Persian area show individuals with phenotypic features that are somewhat more "negroid" in character. I'm recalling a stele of Gilgamesh

Can you guys see that image I posted?

Anyway, while I agree Darius is not exactly an expected phenotype, he might not be that inaccurate. He does kindof appear like an Arabian or Middle Eastern look.

I see your point about the Middle Eastern phenotype being perhaps somewhat expansive.  But then why do Cyrus and Darius look like they are completely different races then?  They were from the same ruling Achaimenid dynasty so one would assume they would look somewhat similar.

By the way, in ancient times, I don't think Middle Easterners looked the way they do today.  Part of their ethnic makeup today stems from the Arab conquests which probably introduced a somewhat darker pigmentation.  Sorry I don't have any sources immediately to back that up, but I get the feeling most of the region was originally somewhat Greek or Mediterranean like in ethnicity.

Because of this, and the repeatedly overlapping and inter-mixing waves of migrations of people from various regions over the last 50 or 100 thousand years, it is frequently difficult to define anything like boundaries for particular human phenotypes.

The Middle East in particular, as a crossroads of the World is bound to have had a high rate of blending of people.