AoM had potential, but was ruined by poor implimentation.
For anyone who played it, I am sure you are well aware of how retarded the combat AI is. Send some melee units followed by archers in attack move against an army and the result is over half the melee units walk around at the start not fighting despite being in range of an enemy and the archers will just walk foward until they get attacked by which time melee units eat them up. Units with abilities like madussa were only ballenced because the AI was so dumb it would stone the same unit multiple times and waste cooldown. Units would just stop mid movement and the most retarded of places (trade routes especially).
The oponent AI was also really retarded. Often they would break down for no reason at all (stop trying to do anything). They varied substantialy in difficulty depending on race (norse being hardest and egyptain being weakest). They also loved sending their titan to chase after a lone unit which could easilly kite it allowing you to kill it with huge armies completly safely.
The god abilities were cool, but were poorly designed. Some single charged were far too weak compared to others. What was missing were being able to recharge some of them for favor, resources, time or only 1 active effect followed by cooldown.
The engine was crap by itself... In large 8 player games panning to old parts of your empire caused a large number of frames to be dropped (like 60-120). Visual effects were generated despite not viewing the area in question yet did not decay until viewed (causing poor performance when panning over highly active trade routes after not doing so for a while). Multiple crashes and bugs were never fixed.
The game being old is not an excuse. Older games had much better combat AI.
