So far, I'm not impressed with the game. By the way they were marketing this game, I was expecting it to be as good as AOC. From what I've played of the demo, it's AOM injected with a bit of AOE.
Like AOM, AOE3 units have no "feel" to them. Units just change classes and don't have many (or any) visible phyiscal changes.
I dislike the home city feature. It just doesn't add depth like it was supposed to. I'd say it's definitely more broad than it is deep, and it's a natural turn off to RTS players that prefer to "earn" everything by playing rather than just having them given for free. HC is going to greatly affect strategy, but some experts will end up finding a few cards that play well with certain strategies and, as history would suggest, a series of patches will follow to correct the so-called balance errors.
Summary: I'll wait for the retail version before writing this in stone... It appears that ES has made a great game for the casual gamer and that the hardcore gamer has little to like about this game. AOC remains the pinnacle of Age-series achievement, and to ES's credit, it would be damn hard to put another masterpiece like that. If ES wants to re-produce the satisfying gameplay of AOC in one of its upcoming titles, they should seek out some AOC experts for playtesting/balance.
I hope someone at ES hears me I speak for almost every currently-good AOC player in this post. Even if we end up disliking AOE3 we will always love you for creating the first four Age games, and we hope that some day you can make a fifth game worthy of our love [This message has been edited by Cath_Orion (edited 09-07-2005 @ 11:47 PM).]