Just finished this game and it's terrific! Excellent story, very likable main characters, great gameplay even better than any Commandos games. I highly recommend it to anyone having enough patience to beat it. It's worth it! It really is.
GOOD THINGS: Gameplay is rich in ideas: diferent nations with their own unique mechanisms and "god powers" (all realistic not actually a work of God), which are ok even for those who dislike them (you can sometimes kill 20 out of 200 army men so not a big deal), wonders, but just in last age, two types of gameplay: long empire builder with units actually turning to go somewhere and typical skirmish, large armies and units with abilities, GREAT CAMPAIGN where you rarely have a level where you do your typical skirmish stuff (gather, build, train army, destroy) with convincing voice acting and no lazy cutscenes (which are actually pretty long for it's time) and very nice map desing (again, not some lazy stuff), good graphics, not excellent but really clear and easy to read, ok music, it matches but I personally never searched for it on youtube to listen to after the game. Nicely thought small mechanics like woodcutters cutting all the trees even when one patch of them is gone they move to another, huntable animals which reproduce (unless you kill them too fast) etc. BAD THINGS: not enough gold, there are some of it but lack of market makes it hard in really long matches, shorter ones are fine, AI likes to fortify heavily, on water maps it can get teadious. TL;DR Great potential and really cool concepts that are original even today, really clean historically accurate game which lacks market, resounce trading and doesn't feel as epic as some of todays RTS games
