Hella Yeah!
Black and White the original had the same idea, however it was very offbeat of human culture. Instead of having your villagers fight the enemy, you had to throw fireballs at their city until they surrendered. Being evil was almost impossible, for your culture would most likely all die. Black and White 2 fixes these problems and raises the bar higher for Black and White 3. (hopefully this will come someday) In BaW2 the culture feels spot on. People age, live lives as you see fit, and die of old age eventually. BaW2 has a military you can use to fight off enemies (trust me, not many people like the Greeks apparently) and it seems more natural than most rts games actually. You just place a tent, specify what size platoon you want and unemployed males pick up the sword/bow and are ready to do some killin'. However, your best war machine is your creature, a giant animal that you can use from everything from farming to keeping citizens happy, to eating those citizens, or killing enemies. The creature must be taught how you want it to act, so you can reward it or slap it using the mouse, depending if you like or dislike its behavior. And while you are waging war, no worries, your culture will usually sustain itself, and no more lobbing fireballs till' you puke ;)