mmm then again I didn't really like the AOE trilogy. They were good for their time, but got boring real quick. Add to that they never actually did expand on it (no space age, no sciencefiction (not including AOM as that is associated with historical belief), no enhancements (always stuck to 4 ages most of which were similar with the only main diffrences being new buildings and types of units)) it just made it really hard for me to keep playing, exspecially since historic and medievil games have been done to death in my opinion. Which is one of the reasons why Freespace2 is still one of my favorite games and I have been playing it since I was 6 (11 years now (wow has it really been that long?))
You may be right there, however microsoft did have a hand, a big hand, in all of it.
I understand a lot of you liked Halo Wars and the AOE series, and i respect that, but with me I just have played too many games which are too similar from microsoft. I meen its like comparing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds to AOE2