They've changed quite a bit from the other games. They say they took out a lot of micromanagement but ,at a first glance at the world map, it sure doesn't seem that way. In the old games each region had one city. Take over that city and you've taken over the region. Now each region has a city but also forts, farms, schools, docks and other various buildings that can be destroyed or captured (presumably). I literally have just started up a game, felt overwhelmed and too tired to figure it all out, and exited the game. I'm sure I'll get into it when I'm more rested and ready to but on my learnin cap.
However there is one aspect of the game that I was totally caught off guard by. I never expected multi-player to be anything I'd be interested in but they've done a great job with it. I played last night with a couple of Dwarves (Glarm and Undac) and we had a blast for hours. We'd just setup quick battles on land or sea with us vs the computer. It was carnage.
In one land battle, I ended up having nothing left but five artillery units but we still won the fight. In a naval battle. Glarm's ship was being boarded by the enemy. Undac, seeking to be helpful, decided to fire a full broad side cannon barrage into the mix. It would have been fine had he not (apparently) ignited the kegs of gunpowder on the enemy ship. It created quite the spectacular explosion. Glarm's ship, being right next to it, lit up like a torch that had been dipped in gasoline. His little doods didn't even have time to jump overboard.
So, I'll try to get into the single player campaigns a bit sometime soon and I'll come back here to give my opinion of that portion of the game. I can safely say though that the multi-player portion is quite fun if you are up for some fighting.
Also a quick note. If you tried the demo just be aware that it had lots of issues graphically and otherwise that seem to have been pretty much ironed out for release. However one of my friends did lose a couple of saved games that he had put quite a few hours into due to some bug. So waiting for a patch might not be a bad idea.
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As Lasseter emotionally summed it up, "At that moment you know that no one's thinking 'Well this is just a cartoon. This is just a bunch of pencil drawings on paper or this is just a bunch of computer data.' No, these characters are live and they're real."
