I don't mind Age of Empires, but I think there's more engaging RTSs to be experienced out there. I mean; with all of of the different "civilisations' the games offer, in the end they all have more similarities than differences. Seems like Microsoft and Ensemble chose quantity over quality in this case.
The idea of balancing different sides in an RTS by making them practically the same was something they did back in the 90's, and that concept was eventually buried by games like StarCraft.
I don't mind Age of Empires, but I do think that the developers need to be a bit more creative in future if they want to stay competitive in the games industry.