I m a big fan of AOE series, I must say. I was waiting a long time for the release of the third part, but was very dissapointed!
AOE 2 is one of the greatest strategy games ever, it's still fun playing it, but this one, pffff, personally im a great fan of strategy games, but at AOE 3, I got bored after 2 days of playing...that's it...
No feeling of beeing very powerful after all has been researched and maximized, and very little strategizing. I mean, a good stratege must be able to defeat the much larger enemy with few but better equipped and commanded soldiers. No such thing here!