What's the big fuss about it?
It's a standard AoE type of game, where you get villagers to gather food and wood, mine resources (silver) etc.
The map is kind'a oblong (i.e. elongated circle), where about 1/3 is water from whence your colonists supposedly came from and you have a ship parked (caravel) which can fish and bombard. On the map, there's forests, silver mines, huntable animals, Indian habitations (you can build outposts so that you can befriend the Indians), etc.
There are many units (Cossacks type) Muskateers, archers, dragoons, ships, priests (healing), etc.
The buildings are simmilar to AoM, TCs, upgradable Towers, Castles, farms (plantations) etc.
Then, like AoM, you can advance to a new age (when you have the resources) where you pick one of two kinds of leaders (military focused, or economy) and you receive either some economic resources, or units, and you gain access to more units and buildings.
Also, you have various Techs according to level-age you're at, which help out gathering rates and mil units fighting abilities.
The different things are basically three:
1) the treasure sites, where you can acquire the treasures~obviously (money=gold) and which are guarded by some type of hostiles (crocodiles, bears, some gaia units)
2) you have a Metropolis off map, a European city which provides some resources and units that get shipped to your colony, according to the age you are and the type of nation and leader/age you selected to advance into.
and
3) experience is gathered from having set up a trade route along a line of outposts, and also from fighting and stuff.
This is like some kind of AoM favour.
There's also some other minor new stuff, that don't make such a great difference in order to be mentioned, like some carts that are shipped from the Metropolis and used to create Castles, forts, Town Centres, etc.
Errr, and that's about it...
This is my impression from playing the tutorial, a couple of Random Map, and the first mission of the campaign game.
Of course the game iss interesting and the graphics are pretty good (you need a 1.4 processor to run, as well as a good graphics card) and I see that it has enough "space" for designers to create stuff.
Sorry, I'll stick with AoM for at least another year, as I feel that it's not done as a game yet.
best regards
George
the Elder
"imagination is more important than knowledge."
Albert Einstein