AirBrian said:
I would think they'll stick with the unit mix and formations and keep the god powers out since it is an Age of Empires game.
BTW, what's Rome:TW like?
It's a TBS civ game combined with a RTS basically all resource gathering and strategic decisions get made in turn based and the actual attack plays out in real time. Really nice as you're completely focused on combat when you start the fighting. The combat happens fully 3D, you control a group of units (80 spearman for example) instead of single units and this leads to the possibilty of HUGE fights, I've had 1000 on 1000 fights for example, and I only had 16 groups to control so it was really streamlined (You're limited to either 16 or 18 'groups' of units, don't remember). Assuming two sides are evenly matched and one side hasn't completely outhtought the other (if side A is cavalry heavy, and side B is chock full of spear infantry, then side A = punkd), then the name of the game is manoever. You have to work to make sure your units are attacking the right opposing units and the opposition does the same (keep cavalry away from spearman, keep your range units away from mellee etc.), and you have to set up flanking manoevers. Flanking is DEVESTATING in this game. If you can get your cavalry to charge infantry from the sides then they go FLYING and they drop like flies. Hell it doesn't matter how many spears the infantry has if you charge them from the flanks (or better yet behind). Tieing up your infantry with thiers and then sweeping with cavarly is a bread and butter strategy.
Morale plays a big role, overmatched units will eventually leg it, less trained units will run quicker.
Sieging cities is the same except the battlefield is completely different. You have to knock down a gate or a wall with siege equipment and basically your army squeezes through the gap while the defenders can mass infantry to hold you off. Defenders have advantage, but attackers have plenty of ploys as well.
Edit: Slo is right, the tactics don't vary greatly so you might get bored quickly playing against the A.I. I enjoy playing the RTS though because you can still pull of crazy stuff like tempt a huge mass of infantry into charging my light cavalry, have light cavalry run backwards, causing the invaders to run right down the middle of the rest of my army which promptly clamps down on 'em from both sides. Stuff like that. Romans are of course overpowered in the game. Decent to good in everything + godly infantry.