For example:
In AoK, when you assigned villies to collect wood, sometimes they would say "choppin." My dad noticed this once when he was playing and we laughed at how random it was. Not that it was just that they were saying it like that, but they almost always said utterly incomprehensible things anytime else, so it was cool to hear them say "choppin" if they were going to chop down wood. Go listen to it, it's quite funny.
When you assigned villies to collect from domesticated animals around your TC, and they began herding them, the villies whipped out their shepphard' staff thingies. Such detail, ES could have just made them bump into the sheep.
I remember when I first played AoK (far later than many of you first played) and I noticed that my villies were able to walk around on the dirt part of my TC, the part that was actually part of the building graphic, and also that they could walk under the awnings on the sides of the TC. After being recently weaned off Galactic Battlegrounds, this was quite extraordinary to me. This wasn't a detail in any other RTS I'd played. Not that this has any effect on gameplay or many people's attention, it's just nifty.
The graphics of the opening sequences. I don't remember the opening of AoE (or even if there was one) becasue I haven't played the game in years. In AoK (or maybe just Conquerors?), the seige in the opening movie was awesome. I'm sure a lot of people remember the opnening of AoM, the huge, beautiful, man vs. beast battle that looked incredible.
The music. I'm not sure everyone takes the time to just halt their villager conveyor belts (so to speak) to appreciate the great job done on the music in all the Ao games. The original tune for AoE, enhanced for AoK, and the can't-get-it-out-of-your-head theme of AoM, as well as the new and improved, more epic version of the original for AoEIII.
Please post your observations. I'd like to know of some more miniscule details that helped to make these games great, so I can look for them and love the games even more.
"If one is to understand the great mystery, one must look at all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi."
Official Head Hauncho of the AoE3H Dating Thread, as decreed by Custergrant
[This message has been edited by Heron (edited 09-19-2005 @ 10:20 PM).]