I assume that the most of you know Rise of Nations. Therefore I would ask if you agree with me in the following statement:
EE1 requires more strategic skills than Rise of Nations.

There are several parameters to my statements.
One of the major is the time it requires to raise an army. In EE1 it takes very long time, while in RoN, most units can be trained in a very short time (not as short as in C&C games, but close to). If you loose your army in RoN, you can raise a new in about 5 minutes. You can't unit-spam your enemies in the same way in EE1, because it takes much longer, forcing the player to thing more strategically.
Another parameter is the bigger unit diversity in EE. EE have more types than RoN (3-4 times as many types infantry for example, not to mention the whole new types of units in Digital age; robots). And not at least, bombers (airplanes) in RoN deal ridiculous little damage. In RoN, you wont care if your enemy send a bomber against your platoon. But in EE, if the enemy do the same, and if you not manage to shot It down, you are screwed...

So, I think that EE1 require much more strategic ingenuity than RoN to prevail.

That's odd because I consider myself lazy but I adore EE and really don't like RoN at all. :P

Hmm, how can that be? Different tactics?

While I love EE, it being a traditional RTS means it is ultimately very simple. You build up and you attack. If you have more then to win, end of story. There are no politics, economics, or placement strategies, just build and attack build and attack..