Top Ten Most Bloated (and Awesome!) Military Stuff Ever

As we'll later learn from this post, the one who invests the most in military technology and tools almost always wins. Yet, once this paradigm is adopted, it can easily go waaay to far. A prime example of this was the nazis, who were so overly enthusiastic about superweapons that they even gave birth to the nazi super science-trope. And that's really the whole point, fuck strategic and economic considerations; superweapons are awesome. I give you - the most blatantly bloated, advanced and pricey (often vastly overrated, sometimes actually rather efficient) military stuff in history:

10. The Maginot Line

Like basically everyone else, the french managed to die a whole lot in World War 1. Actually, they died so much that the whole country got a manpower shortage in the decades to come. This was seen as a strategic problem, for the french were not stupid - they realized that Germany would come back with a vengeance. Oh, wait, they might have been stupid after all, given how they choose to mitigate this problem. The defense minister André Maginot got the "great" idea to build a giant line, several kilometers deep, of fortresses, turrets, artillery, tank stops and stuff along the borders to Germany and Italy. This would allow the relatively small french army to withstand an attack, and buy time to draft older men into the army. In practice, it might have been one of the dumbest investments in history, as a): static defenses would turn out to be rather worthless with the new doctrines and technologies, b) the line didn't cover the border to fucking Belgium. You all know what happend next.

So, was the maginot line awesome? Well, a bit I guess. Expensive; definitely. Bloated? God yes.

9. M50 Ontos

This is a tank destroyer that was used in the Vietnam War. The US Army originally decided it was too absurd to be built, and cancelled the order. This was after firing all the guns at once during prototype testing knocked bricks out of nearby walls. The Marine Corps, though, realized this tool was to cool not to have, and ordered 297 of them. They apparently turned out to be rather useful during the war, even though they were used for infantry support rather than their original puporse (tank-raping), but the awesome design did have some disadvantages of course, otherwise it couldn't justifiably be called "bloated" - in this case, the thing had to be loaded from the outside, making the crew vulnerable to snipers.

So why was it awesome? Just look at it. It had not one, not two, not three...not four...not five...but six 106 mm recoilless rifles. Lest you not be confused by the word "rifle" here, we're talking about stuff so big that stuff a third of its size has to be mounted on turrents and wheels when infantry use it (for example the Bofors 37 mm). And again; six of them.

8. Schwerer Gustav

Ok, if the french has the Maginot Line, the germans needs something to blast their way through it with, right? That's where this baby came in. Except, the nazis didn't actually need to blast through the Maginot Line, as they could just walk around it. So yes; unnecessary technology; check.

The Schwerer Gustav was a gun so absurdly big that it had to be mounted on a train. The various european powers had constructed such cannons before, so of course the nazis, true to form, had to beat them all. The result was the largest calibre rifled weapon in history ever to see actual combat. On the receiving end was, of course, the poor, poor russians. We're talking shells this big. And still, for all its awesomeness, Schwerer Gustav was only actually used during the Siege of Sevastopol, spending the rest of the war being moved back and forth to places where someone thought it could be of use, yet it never was. I can imagine the talk at headquarters:

"Ok, so where do we need the absurdly gigantic railway gun?"
"Err...I dunno...maybe you can blast Leningrad with it?"
"When we managed to actually get it there, the siege would be long over"
"Oh, alright...use it against Stalingrad then?"
"Isn't that a wee bit overkill? We don't need that kind of firepower there"
"But...but...it's....awesome".

7. Lun-class Ekranoplan

Next to the nazis in terms of superweapon fetisch, the soviets put their vast resource base to good use in constructing some of the wierdest shit ever. Ekranoplans are pretty bizzare to begin with, being "flying boats" somewhere halfway between a hovercraft and an aircraft, vehicles that uses the so-called ground effect to basically float a few meters above the ground. That's awesome by itself, but the MD-160, the only Lun-class Ekranoplan actually built, was also very large (73 m, rivalling modern jumbo jets) and equipped with six missile launchers, pretty much silos really, carrying these babies for ground attacks. It's still around; rotting away in a town at the Caspian shores that's bleak, run-down and god-forsaken in that particularly depressing way only post-sovietic stuff can be. It's not pretty, but still, one really should look at these pictures (and this video, it appears about 4:40 minutes in) just to realize the awesome. A huge object similar to it was spotted in the Caspian Sea area by US reconaissance sattelites in the 60's and dubbed "The Caspian Sea Monster", but it seems they could never find out exactly what it was, making for some intriguing and awesome possibilities.

6. Timurid War Elephants

In 1398, When Tamerlane went, very literally, medieval* on the Sultanate of Delhi, he captured a host of indian war elephants that he seems to have appreciated to an almost fetischistic degree. Tamerlane had already combined horse archers, siege artillery and heavy tarkhan cavalry into steppe warfare's grande finale in history, so naturally, he just had to add the only thing (except chariots) that was missing among the most awesome stuff of pre-modern war. Accordingly, he had the elephants dragged all the way back to Samarkand, and later deployed them in the epic Battle of Angora against the Ottoman Turks and their sultan Bayazid, together with Tamerlane considered the greatest general of the age. Historians seem to disagree about how many the elephants were (but it's known that Tamerlane's army faced and defeated about a hundred elephants when they invaded Delhi) and to what degree they were actually useful in the battle, but that doesn't matter. In any case, the Ottomans were crushed, and how could they not be? They were facing mongol hordes with knights, and cannons, and armored fucking elephants! If not by superior tactics and/or numbers, Tamerlane would still have won on sheer awesome.

*"The killing and wanton destruction that characterized the Delhi campaign may be unsurpassed in history" - Vernon O. Egger

5. The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall had its origins in several different systems of defensive earthen walls between the Warring States of antiquity. Once the king of Qin had defeated the other states, he declared himself emperor and embarked on extending and joining together the different walls into a single, giant one. The human toil and misery this caused in the laborers became stuff of legends in China, and later chronicles echoes with hatred against the Qin emperor. A common myth is that the bones of dead builders became filling stuff in the Great Wall. More than a thousand years later, the wall had fallen into ruin and was barely a heap of earth, and was reconstruced by the Ming dynasty, in stone and brick, but spanning over a somewhat different area than the original wall. Both incarnations of the wall were of absolutely epic lengths and is generally considered among the greatest achievements of human civilisation, yet it can be debated how effective they were. The traditional view is that the walls were built to ward off the barbarians of the northern steppes; if that's the case, they were epic fail. While they might have discouraged lesser war bands, China has been successfully invaded by nomads from the north so many times it's almost absurd - Xiongnu, Jurchens, Tanguts, Mongols, Khitans, Turks, the list goes on and on. The wall thus stand solidly on the list of the most worthless defensive structures ever built.

A less common but interesting viewpoint is the theory that the wall were never intended to keep barbarians out, but the chinese in. With this line of reasoning, the idea is that the ruler's wanted to keep the peasant population of China from getting dangerous influences and ideas from the nomadic population of the steppes. Restrictions on free mobility has been a common feature in despotic regimes throughout history, so it's an interesting possibilty.

In any case, the wall is the very definition of epic, expensive, bloated, and awesome.

4. Korean Turtle Ships

The Turtle Ships were used by the Korean navy from the 15th century, and are especially known for their role in the Imjin War with Japan, where japanese warlord Hideyoshi tried to use Korea as a launching board for an epic assault on China. He failed.

Some role in his failure played this ship design, supposedly perfected by legendary korean admiral Yi Sun-sin. The whole design stemmed from the idea that, by covering the deck of the ship with walls and a roof, the enemy wouldn't be able to board it, but the awesomeness was soon increased by gunpowder; Yi Sun-sins ships had five different types of cannons, one of which was hidden in a dragon head at the bow, spewing fire from its mouth. Another variant of the dragon's head could launch a cloud of toxic smoke created from a mixture of sulphur and salpeter. Tradition has it that the turtle ships were iron-plated, but the evidence for this is weak, though they did have a shitload of iron spikes to further discourage boarding.

Yi's ships were intended as close-assault vessels; using sails and/or oars, they would speed towards the enemy ship, ramming it, and unleash a broadside of cannon shots at close range. Korean commander's especially favored targeting the enemy's command ship with this tactic; the Turtle Ships' resilience allowed them to plow through an enemy fleet straight for the command ship, and upon sinking this, would severely damage the enemy's morale.

Unlike most of the stuff on this list, Turtle Ships were actually really useful. Still, they were apparently exotic, advanced and awesome enough to become stuff of legends.

3. Tsar Bomba

Tsar Bomba is the nickname for AN602, a hydrogen bomb that the Soviet Union detonated in Novaya Zemlya archipelago in 1961. As the russians really liked big stuff, it was originally designed to have a payload of 100 megatons of TNT, which eventually had to be reduced to half once they realized that the fallout from the explosion would be a bit much too handle. To put this into perspective: the bomb actually detonated was still the most physically powerful device ever utilized by mankind, and shattered windows in Finland. The blast could have caused third-degree burns a hundred kilometers away, the mushroom cloud was seven times the height of Mt Everest, and the seismic shock from the blast could be measured even on its third passage around the earth. Getting the plane that dropped the bomb away in time not to be destroyed by the shockwave was actually an issue.

The Tsar Bomba was the culmination of a paradigm where precise bomb targeting was not assured, and bomb blasts accordingly should be large enough to destroy a target even if dropped five to ten kilometers away. The development of more precise ICBMs would soon make this paradigm obsolete, but even before that, Tsar Bomba might have been overdoing it just a little. At 1,4% the energy output of the sun.

2. The Cannon That Destroyed Byzantium

Absurdly huge bombards, great cannons designed to shatter walls, were very much in vogue in the 15th century. Especially enthusiastic about such stuff was the "Gunpowder Empires", one of which was the Ottoman Turks. In 1452, they stood ready to conquer Constantinople, something they had a history of failing with - despite that they had taken all surrounding lands, the city itself had defied them for a century. Constantinople's walls were stuff of legends, and it seemed they simply couldn't be breached.

At this time lived a little hungarian gunsmith called Orban. He had thought up a design for the biggest, baddest cannon the world had yet seen, and presented the idea for the emperor in Constantinople, who quickly decided he could neither afford nor needed such a thing.

Not very discouraged, Orban instead went to the turks, claiming that his cannon could "Blast the walls of Babylon itself". The sultan was all like: "Sure, but...can you make it...bigger?"

Forever proving that bigger is better and that military investment pays off, the Ottomans employed Orban and had him construct a cannon so absurdly big that 60 oxen had to drag it to Constantinople, where it blasted the epic walls to bits. The thousand year old Roman Empire thus came to an end, and while the Ottoman fascination for big fucking guns continued well into the 19th century, when they used the then ancient Dardanelles Gun to take a shot at a british fleet, Orban himself died a karmic death when one of his superguns exploded.

(No picture of the cannon remains; depicted is the russian Tsar Cannon, which is another gigantic bombard. Note the girl in the lower right corner for scale).

1. Battleship Yamato

Battleships were, in essence, gigantic floating platforms with equally gigantic guns that could be fired simultaneously, backed up by a vast host of smaller guns, mines, torpedoes, etc. Add to this the nice bow shape and sleek yet brutal look of a really large ship, a small nations' steel production's worth of armour, a couple of catapult-launched seaplanes and a crew counted in the thousands, and we have the closest to a Star Destroyer that humanity has gotten thus far. The faith in and prestige associated with battleships were immense in the early 20th century, despite the absurd amounts of time, cash and manpower that had to be invested in order to build even a single one. Yet, despite all this, and despite their sheer awesomeness, historians argue that battleships were never really useful; everything they could do, smaller ships and airplanes could do much more cost-efficiently. This view is further strengthened by the fact that there only was two real confrontations between battleships ever; the Battle of Tsushima and the Battle of Jutland. Battleships never accomplished much, other than wasting steel, lives, and money.

So yes, they were both unneccessary and overrated, a money-sink of epic proportions. And the most egregious of them all was the Yamato, the pride and flagship of Japan. She and her sister ship Musashi was designed with the philosophy that, as the americans had more than a 3:1 advantage on the japanese in number of battleships, Japan simply had to build two huge enough to compensate for that all by themselves. That's the spirit of awesome!

Yamato was pathetically sunk by american aircraft in 1945, and only got to fire her absurdly huge cannons on surface targets one single time. Yet, german battleship Bismarcks brutal destruction of british battlecruiser Hood a few years before had demonstrated what a battleship could do, and Yamato was bigger, better, and stronger than her. While the American Iowa-class of battleships was almost as large and much more technically advanced, the Yamato class was much heavier, and had 46 cm main guns, compared to Iowas puny 40 cm. With a great name, epic size and looks, and the biggest fucking guns ever mounted on a ship, Yamato stands out as the king of all battleships, and battleships were in themselves the epitome of expensive, advanced and uneccessary, being so awesome that they crossed the spectrum from worthless to great and all the way back to worthless. This gives them a firm place in history among the coolest of humanity's achievements.

Top Six Best Dance Scenes

Why top six? I dunno. Maybe I couldn't be bothered with more, as I've got to go to sleep and read an obscenely huge manga about autism? Or you could call it a really lame pun. It'll make sense if you translate it into swedish and think long and hard about the Death Proof-scene, at least if you're male and remotely heterosexual (or lesbian and really gay, what do I know?). Whatever. Let's do it!

6. Bizarre Japanese Tap Dance (Zatoichi)



Why? Dear god, why? I'm trying to picture to myself what Takeshi Kitano might have been thinking when he choose to end a movie this way, but no, I've got nothing. I can't really decide if this scene is awesome or awful, but no matter, no list of dances in films would be worth its salt if it didn't include this one.

5. Morticia & Gomez (Addams Family Values)



This copule has chemistry like no other. It's sexy, classy, and cool. Oh, and you gotta be impressed by the flames.

4. The Lap Dance (Death Proof)



Oh, sorry, I'm just gonna go fight a sudden urge to masturbate 'til I faint. Be right back.

3. Ballroom Dance (Beauty and the Beast)



Even if we ignore the fact that this scene broke ground as computer animation goes, it's still a masterpiece of mood, elegance and general visuals, and likely to trigger massive nostalgia-buttons for anyone in my general age group. The song is actually much better in the swedish dub, though, so I've chosen to link to that version.

2. Chunari, Chunari (Monsoon Wedding)



The indian civilisation achieved what will some day be generally recognized as the foremost musical culture in human history. This scene is not very spectacular as Bollywood coreography goes, far from it, rather, it's great because of how much goes on in the background, and how the eventual outbreak of mass dance works as a kind of resolution for oh-so-many tensions in the film. There's even a little love conflict begun and resolved during it, all through the wonder of SPONTANEOUS INDIAN MASS DANCE!!!

1. Beauty Dance (House of Flying Daggers)



Like India is probably the pinnacle of musical culture, the Tang dynasty of China was probably the pinnacle of civilisation in general - it's all been downhill from there. Of course, this shouldn't really make them beat India in a list of this particular kind, despite the sheer gourgeousness of the clothes and the accessories and the room and the floor and every little visual detail, not even with a song as beautiful as this (it's 'Jia rén qu', composed in antiquity by Li Yannian); India would still beat all the chinese could muster as dance scenes go.

You can leave it to Zhang Yimou to fix that particular shortcoming, though.

Rollspelsmonstren som Piruett glömde

Piruett har en lista med de 10 coolaste monstren i den svenska rollspelshistorien. Och visst, många där är helt spot on, men jag tyckte också att några...saknades. Framförallt vill jag vidhålla att Eon har koolare monster än DoD6 rent generellt, så jag ser inte vad tex runstenstrollet gör på listan, när inte ett enda Eonmonster är med. Jag tänker inte göra en helt ny lista, Piruetts är så pass bra, bara påpeka några jag tycker borde ha fått vara med.

Panthera (i Monster och Varelser samt Monster i Mundana)

"I början av vintern omkring oktober månad har pantherorna vilda parningsriter då flera flockar samlas i de nordliga, snötäckta vildmarkerna. Hannarna försöker locka över honor till sin flock genom vilda uppvisningsstrider. Det är även chansen för utstötta hannar att återvända och kämpa om en plats som flockledare. Vinternatten fylls av pantherornas skärande skrik och skenet från deras blågröna eldkvastar. De som lever i de nordliga ödemarkerna vet bäst i att hålla sig undan dessa nätter".

Okej, den är kalydonen fast ett kattdjur, som vi tidigare etablerat som den mest awesome av alla djurfamiljer, den är blodtörstig, liger-stor, jagar i flock, och har extremt brutala stats (såsom relativt psy 14, vilket basically gör den till Eons smartaste djur). Pantherorna fyller därför naturligt den här obligatoriska rollen som saker att slänga in när rollisarna blivit för bra och behöver tas ned på jorden (för tro mig, det händer även i Eon). Deras eld kommer från körtlar med en särskild vätska som blir settingens mest exklusiva parfym, vilket i sig är koolt. Lägg sedan till att pantheran är den enda varelse i hela Mundana som då och då käkar drakar till frukost, så har vi epic win.

(Eons drakar är i sig, som bekant kanske, något...über).

Hyggelmonster (i Eon III, Monster och Varelser samt Monster i Mundana)

Eons signaturmonster. En absurt aggressiv hjärndöd huvudfoting som lagrar resterna av sina offer i sitt skålformade innanmäte, vars frätande magsaft stänker ut ur käften när den springer. Det har kallats "rollspelshobbyns fulaste, töntigaste och i särklass mest ansträngda fantasymonster", vilket onekligen måste innebära att det är skitkoolt.

Jag låter dess look tala för sig själv.

Dödskerub (i Monsterboxen)

"Dödskeruberna ser ut som små människobarn, tre till sex år gamla, med ruttnande kött löst hängande på skelett av elfeben. De har rostiga vingar, gnisslande av järnfjäll. I vår mänskliga värld uppträder dödskeruberna vilset och förvirrat, ständigt gråtande och klagande. De är köttätare och kan i sin förtvivlan och vilsenhet anfalla allt som rör sig med sina stora klor och huggtänder av järn".

Att de här inte var med på Piruetts lista var faen kriminellt.

Svart Enhörning (i Monsterboxen)

"Somliga menar att de svarta enhörningarna är själarna av vanliga enhörningar som gått en våldsam död till mötes. Deras ondska skulle isåfall förklaras med att de är hämndlystna, Svarta enhörningar kan endast 'charmas' av manliga magiker med svarta sinnen".

"Den svarta enhörningen är identisk till formen (med en vanlig enhörning, Olas anm.), men den framträder för det mäskliga ögat bara som en massiv kolsvart skugga, en knappt genomskinlig ande".

Visst, andra har försökt få till mer originella 'onda' hästar, typ Eons seian, och visst, de funkar de med, men ibland är det kanske bättre att bara göra det lätt för sig. Svart enhörning. Så simpelt, såå koolt.

Och så har vi Kaoskardinal (i Monsterboxen)

Well, monstret i sig är kanske inte jätteawesome, posen till trots, men alltså, namnet...Kaoskardinal. Kaoskardinal. Mothafuckin' KAOSKARDINAL! Frukta.

Domherre (i Zonernas Zoologi)

Ni vet den här känslan av att ett trivialt jävla smådjur (den sorten som annars liksom bara intresserar avdankade tjocka tanter med fågelbad i trädgården) har ett oförtjänt häftigt namn? Monstret som uppstod ur denna känsla är det lyckliga resultatet av att man bejakat en naturlig nörddrift att få djuret att göra skäl för namnet, och voíla. Awesomeness ensues.

Drömfurstarna i Kult var också små mästerverk. Dunno om de kvalar in, dock.

Bokrecension: Jenny

ÅNGEST

Tamerlane!!!

Och på tal om inget, fatta the awesomeness som är den här statyn. Uzbekerna förstår sig på konst, uppenbarligen. Kan vi inte bara välta alla fula jävla statyer av osexiga kungar och poänglösa kulturpersonligheter, och göra som uzbekerna och smälla upp tyranniska medeltida massmördare i jätteformat överallt? En fem meter hög Karl Knutsson Bonde i betong på Stortorget, det vore nåt. En Ingjald Illråde-byst i Riksdagshuset...

Fast visst, vi saknar såna där riktigt fina tyrannical splendor-kungar, som rövknullar världen samtidigt som de tuggar på mattor och drägglar - och dessutom somehow lyckas vara kulturmecenater samtidigt. Vi har förvisso en rätt bra Caligula, Erik XIV, men Caligulas är patetiska...vi kan överhuvudtaget inte tävla med Östeuropa och Centralasien när det kommer till Magnificent Bastards. (Vi kan inte ens tävla med Grekland, fan...)

Och Timur är liksom sannolikt the greatest of them all.

Att vakna på fel sida

Jag känner att det verkligen är dags för nån form av uppdatering, även om jag egentligen inte har något vettigt att komma med.

Jag skulle tvättat idag; det blev inte så, för jag sov :/ Jag fattar inte -varför- jag inte lyckades vakna, givet att jag gick och lade mig i relativt kristlig tid, men men...*suck*. Nu får jag ingen tvättid på flera dagar, utom i morgon morgon, och då måste jag verkligen sova. wee. Jag som verkligen, verkligen behövde tvätta.

Jag skulle behövt gå till banken och sälja teckningsrättigheter på swebank-aktier också, men det kan jag lika gärna göra imorrn, så det är ingen biggie...det kommer nog ge mig runt 1800 spänn iaf, det är rätt schysst, fatta så länge jag kan leva på det...jag får rentav råd med nya Blade of the Immortal-albumet :D :D :D

Sedan skulle jag gått på en föreläsning om antik vattenteknik med Örjan Wikander, en fantastisk forskare...och därefter på arkeologpub med Lukas. Men så blev det inte heller, för eftersom jag vaknat på totalt fel sida förmådde jag bara inte uppbringa nån form av lust till nåt så socialt. Och nu sitter jag såklart och har dåligt samvete över det, eftersom jag alltid, alltid känner att jag borde komma ut mera.

Men, det finns bra saker också. Jag har kommit på en fantastisk idé till en roman, som jag kanske kommer berätta om senare...i vilket fall brinner jag så av inspiration att jag kanske rentav deltar i NaNoWriMo. Det hänger helt på om...

jag kommit nån vart på min C-uppsats då eller ej. Och den enorma brist på entusiasm jag tidigare kände inför uppsatsskrivandet har liksom blåst iväg; jag vill göra det här, jag kan göra det här.

Men jag måste fortfarande komma på ett ämne. Det är lite drygt. Jag har till måndag på mig. Jag tänker i banorna om att jag vill jobba antingen med mesoamerikanska indiancivilisationer (min nya fetisch), primärt aztekerna, eller med medeltida diktning/sångtexter (gammal fetisch), kanske Walter von der Vogelweides samlade verk tex. De är awesome.

Men jag har ingen som helst solid idé på teori/metod/angreppsvinkel. det har jag på andra ämnen, jag kläckte tex en asbra idé på att undersöka hur synen på Hernán Cortéz förändrats i Mexikos nationsbyggandeprocess, hur han liksom gått från hjälte till skurk. Eventuellt kunde man dessutom relatera det till hur Uzbekistan upphöjt Timur Lenk från folkmördare till nationalhjälte. Det kunde vara jätteintressant...

förutsatt att jag hade någon lust att jobba om det. :-/

Timur Lenk är alltid het förstås, och det är ett annat problem...en del av mig känner att jag borde skita i Mesoamerika och medeltiden, och göra något som rör Centralasien eller Kina, eftersom det ändå är vad jag vill inrikta min (väldigt) hypotetiska akademiska karriär på. Jag ska nog åtminstone undersöka om det finns något ogjort i mitt gamla favoritfält fotlindning, för liksom, att lååångsamt och plågsamt krossa fötterna på små, små flickor blir aldrig ute...

Important people in world history

I played Through the Ages with a few friends yesterday. It's a very good boardgame, although it's a little bit too abstract and mathematical for my taste, I much prefer more visual and straightforward, but still strategic, games like A Game of Thrones and the godawesome Twilight Imperium.

Still, Through the Ages is fun, but there's something that irks me severely. And I know I'm likely the only person in the world or so that gets disturbed by stuff like this, but this is my blogg, and thus I'll complain as much as I could ever want.

Through the Ages is so damn eurocentric. It's about building a lasting civilisation, from antiquity to modern times, and surpassing all other civilisations in terms of cultural dominance. To achieve this, you can use a lot of different cards like buildings, strategies, and so forth, and there's leader cards that feature historically important persons that aids your civilisation.

And almost everyone is european, and the selection of persons is generally dull and predictable. we have, for example, Aristoteles, Platon, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Isaac Newton, Barbarossa, Jeanne D'Arc, Winston Churchill (man what?), William Shakespeare...the few non-european choices that I remember are Hammurabi, Ghandi and Chinggis Khan.

So, I'm gonna, just for fun, put together a better list of suitable leaders for a game like this. A good leader should be both a colorful person, and one of considerable historical importance. In the latter aspect, I would say that both Churchill and Jeanne D'Arc fail, for example - they were important all right, but not spectacularly so. The choices should also be varied; both Jesus, Buddha and Confucius was extremely influental people of the ancient world, but having all three in a game with only about four-five leaders in each era would be kinda...boring. Actually, variety is what I'll pay the most attention to, both in regards to the skills and ethnicites of the candidates:

I would suggest:

Antiquity:
Cyrus the Great - the first ruler of a big, multicultural empire, and the one who invented the structure upon which many later empires were built.
Aristoteles is already in the game, and was a good choice, his ideas were fundamental for later thinking both in Europe and the Islamic world.
Augustus was much more important than the more famous Julius Caesar. Augustus laid the foundation for much of the Roman empire's achievements, which would have a lasting and utterly enormous influence on western history and culture.
Imhotep was a polymath (poet, chancellor, engineer, architect, physicist) during Egypt's third dynasty. So awesome was he, that he was elevated to godhood and worshipped as god of medicine and healing for thousands of years.
Buddha or Confucius could represent eastern civilisations and their ideas and thoughts. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, was also extremely important; he founded an imperial structure that lasted for two thousand years. His indian counterpart would be Ashoka the Great. Another asian that is generally considered to have been among the most influental people ever to have lived is Cai Lun, although he's not that spectacular as a person, it's more about a little thing: he invented paper. Still, he ranks a fuckin' seven on Hart's famous list of History's Most Influental People.

Medieval times:
Muhammed is number #1 on Harts list, I choice I would agree with. He founded both a major world religion and a major world empire, no one else has ever done that.
Avicenna or Averroes should represent islamic philosophy and science. While Averroes has been called 'the father of secular thought in Europe', Avicenna discovered the contagious nature of diseases, the concept of momentum in physices, and an almost improbable range of other important stuff.
Chinggis Khan and his successors conquered almost the entire world, which should speak for itself, really. I personally would attribute a lot of the mongol's successes to Chinggis' chief strategist Subotaï though, who outlived him for many years. Contrary to popular belief, Chinggis was long since dead when the mongol empire reached its greatest extent; his successor's achieved that partly due to the genius of Subotaï.
As for Europe, it is true that the middle ages have an undeservedly bad reputation, but it's likewise true that asian civilisations were much more awesome than european ones during this time. Still, if one feel the absolute need to include any european (for which, really, Averroes should otherwise suffice as he was from muslim Andalusia), I'd spontaneously vote for Charlemagne, who founded the Holy Roman Empire and unified Europe. I'm open for other suggestions though, just put a comment in.

There's not many, if any, artists that have been influental on history as a whole. Still, one or two should be included in a game like this, as it really is about cultural dominance. For the Middle Ages, I'd suggest Dante or Guillaume de Machaut, as I like them so much, but it's probably best to save the artist for the next era:

Early modern times:
I can almost only think of europeans here :/
Leonardo da Vinci was a colorful figure, as was Michelangelo. Neither of them was that influental, really, but we need some artist. The original game has Shakespeare, which is probably a better choice really, I'm just so fucking tired of him.
Isaac Newton is also in the original game, and deservedly so.
Vasco da Gama or Magellan would be better and more colorful representants for the age of discovery than Columbus, who's in the original game. Henry the Navigator or Zheng He would be more unusual but interesting choices, but the latter was medieval, really.
Lorenzo the Magnificent ruled Florence for a great part of the early renaissance, and was a very important patron of the arts and sciences.
As for the compulsory military leader, well...maybe Peter the Great? Shaka Zulu was certainly not very important in the larger perspective, but an interesting and capable person nonetheless.

Modern times:
The original game has Tesla (well, its a czech game), Churchill, Ghandi, Einstein I think, and a nameless 'Game designer'. I'd go with:
Simon Bolivar, the founding father of several latin american countries.
Cecil Rhodes, to represent capitalism and imperialistic thought.
Karl Marx was certainly very influental, but Lenin makes a better leader. I'd go for Mao though, as we want more non-europeans in the game. On the other hand, maybe Bolivar covers the 'charismatic leader/visionary'-part already, let's try something else:
As scientists/philosophers go, maybe Darwin or Freud? Louis Pasteur ranks very, very high on Hart's list, he could also be a good choice, but we already have a doctor, Avicenna, in the list.
Anyhow, last but not least, the game designer slot: Gary Gygax, the father of D&D, is the obvious choice here, as he've had a tremendous impact on gaming of all kinds, and thus nerd culture as a whole.

What about women?
Well, there's really a severe lack of women that have been influental on history as a whole. Still, the game should try to squeeze in at least one or two, I think, as I've already made many choices more based on ethnicity/variety/coolness than actual historical importance. A few suggestions:

Enheduanna, first writer known by name, priestess in Ur.
Nefertiti, queen of Egypt; a bust of her is thought to have influenced western standards of beauty, and she seems to have been co-regent with her husband Akhenaten, who might have been an alien too boot ;-D
Wu Zetian, the only empress regnant of China.
Fatimah, daughter of Muhammed.
Anna Komnena, byzantine princess of Byzantium :-), and one of the first female historians.
Aliénor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in medieval Europe.
Töregene, de-facto ruler of the Mongol Empire for a few years.
Two influental nuns were Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Ávila, the former a multi-talented scholar and composer, the latter a mystic and writer.
Isabella I of Castille is on Hart's list.
La Malinche, an amerindian mistress of Hernán Cortéz who aided in the downfall of Mesoamerican civilisation.
Maria Theresia, Holy Roman empress, a 'key figure in the politics of 18th century Europe'.
In the 18th and 19th century, there's lots of female writers and/or thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft.
In the 20th century, there's Golda Meir, the 'iron lady of Israel', Indira Ghandi, and others. As female scientists go, we've got Marie Curie, Marija Gimbutas (sorry, I couldn't help myself)...

Well. That's it. I'm open for other suggestions.

/Ola, bored now