>>724906221
This game had an amazing atmosphere, from the opening and the ost, to the cold color palete and the wind effect on the trees. Coming from AoE2 I was blown away when I realized I could tilt the camera to see the sky, and some campaign sceneraios would even have day-night cycles.
That said, I always felt they fumbled the aesthetic for the later eras, industrial and contemporary looked boring and sterile compared to prehistory, classical and renaissance and space era was unimaginative. Pretty much the only good things about those eras were the sail ships and the mechas respectively. All the wonders being greek or ancient didn't help.
Because of this most of the time I would just stick to prehistory-renaissance rather than go all the way.