Looks like the demo for Age of Empires III is now available from the homepage (or here’s a direct link if you’re too lazy to navigate). I’m slightly intrigued by the lovely new graphics, but as always am fearful that the gameplay will be more of the same “race up the tech tree, pump out units, then fling them at each other”.
Time will tell.
Update: Oh wait, apparently AOEIII has a great new gameplay innovation called “physics”:
Age of Empires III is the first RTS game to use the Havok physics engine which means ragdoll physics for units when they fly in the air after a cannon comes into their range and tons of objects going up in the air when a weapons cache blows sky hgh.
I’m sure that will more than make up for the pointy-clicky-tech-tree-fest… 
Surely it can’t be any worse than Empire Earth 2……
Hard to say. Sure EE2 set new lows in craptacularity, but what more can they do to make AOE any different?
Wow. How is that a ‘new feature’? Myth I, Myth II from Bungie were RTS games that included a full 3d battlefield and a physics engine for all kinds of things. Anybody remember those angry explosive throwing Dwarves?
Age of empires 3 is really a great game.
Thx for this link.