I figured I would make this thread for two reasons. One I loved the first two AOE games but I dunno about this one. It says it's free to play and it's definitely something I am interested in but it also has these civilization packs that looks like they are going to make you pay for most of the civilizations you would want to use.

Can any one give me some advice on it?

Second reason I made this thread. For general discussion of the game.

Played it in the Beta. It's just like any MMO, except its in RTS form. I played for a few weeks, and the best thing I could gather from it was customizing your capital city to look neat. Other then that, the missions are boring, and you gather items from quests that you apply to your troops so they get bonuses. It was ok for a while then the repetitiveness of MMO's set in. At least for me

Meh, not a fan of MMO's at all. Was hoping there was a single player part of the game. I was thinking it was just a per match kind of thing. Is it a persistant world kind of thing where you just have one city?

Well on that note is there any RTS games similar to AoE and AoM in terms of gameplay?

Other than rise of nations, empire earth, and total war...

Well the quests you do are like single-player missions against the AI.... You can also battle players in the PvP arena for XP and gold and such.

Yeah its persistent. People can visit your city where you construct different kinds of shops that offer various items and if the players buy from one of your stores, you actually get the money. Or you build things like lumbermills and smiths and such and they produce raw materials like wood or iron/bronze/etc even while your offline which are needed for building new buildings or items and such.

Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1/2 are good RTS. WC3 is my preference but is a little dated. Still pretty good, active community though.