idefix would make an excelent explorer (he's always sniffing out romans)
asterix become the new armour unit
and obelix the new howitzer (his menhirs fly over the city walls)

While at the university, i co-invented a race of tiny people who lived inside the computer, called bits (hey, it beats actually listening to the prof). I once started replacing the civ units with bits (and the cities with computers ... an XT represented industrial age cities, a unix workstation with 21" represented a modern city ... walled cities had the mcaffee logo on their screens)

sadly, i lost the GIFs :~(