Hey Mark!
I think I can help you out with a "war story". Sarmis is holding a mini tourney of it’s own and it started last Sunday. It was the best game of ROR I have played to date. When I say best, I’m not talking about my performance, but the quality of the game. Keep in mind that I am no expert. I’m average at best on a good day.
The teams: The Brotherhood (Parmenion & me) vs. "the team that need no name" (Leander & Lynx)
The settings: Default, Huge Med. Map, pop 150.
Civs: Phoe & Hittite vs. Phoe & Hittite (LOL!! I thought this was funny how it worked out) Parm & I had briefly discussed a "strategy" and which civs we would pick before the game and then we find our opponents have decided on the same.
Anyway, game starts and our "strategy" goes out the window. I’m Hittite and decide I’m gonna tool rush and tell Parm he can "take the seas" (nice of me, huh?). My scout crawls around the map over to the other side of the Med and drops a barracks. By the time I’m tool I have two barracks up. I started pumping clubbers and getting upgrades. You might have already guessed, my tool attack was late, man it is a long way around the Med. I end up attacking Leander, who was Phoe. I end up killing a few peons and knocking down a few buldings. Because I was late he was walled in pretty good. I even make archers at my forward base hoping to harass him behind his walls. No good. I can’t find an opening, so I figure it is about time for me to concentrate on Bronzing. I leave the few archers I have at my forward base and gather up my axers and send them on a suicide mission in the direction I think Lynx will be. I got lucky. I couldn’t have picked a better place to send them if I could see where to send them. My axers roll into Lynx’s town right into a gaggle of peons. However, by now she is Bronze, so they don’t last long with CA shooting at them, but I at least got a few peons out of the deal. In the mean time Leander starts raiding me. DOH!!!! My tool attack must not have scared him too bad. I make a few archers to deal with it and place some walls while I’m going Bronze. Once Bronze I start pumping out some Cav back home and I find his forward base. Meanwhile, my forward base is under attack by Leander. To make a long story short we end up killing each other’s forward base. Leander just would not let me get a cluster of Cats together. His camels would keep coming in during an attack and surgically remove them for me. While this is going on there are Naval battles going on all over the Med. Parm gets a good push on Lynx in Bronze and manages to Iron first, then his Triemes clear the Med. So, I finally enter Iron and we have the sea. I start throwing to together an Iron force of Cats, ele’s, and HA. I’m grabbing the stuff as it is made at and near my starting base and sending it on the long hike over to Leander. Leander promptly catches my slow ass Cats by themselves with Camels and kills them. DOH!!! Step back, build a few more units and move forward again, this time under a little more control and with some peons to build a forward base. Fighting erupts around my new forward base and at a few isolated pockets I find of Leanders where he has walled in small areas for peons to work in. I finally push him off my forward base only to march a short distance and find he has a base not too far from it. We fight some more there. I kept changing my unit mix to try and get an edge and Leander kept coming up with the counters. I make ele’s he has priests. I make Scythe he has eles. It was a really fun game and Leander and I just kept banging heads and exchanging positions. Parm was making headway with Lynx, but then Leander had to go. A "real life" commitment (work related) pulled him from the game. We got started late because Parm had a "real life" commitment (inlaws visiting). So, now we have to do a rematch since we didn’t finish. DOH!!! It was a great game. I was on the edge of my seat.
It is still a fun game Mark!!! Honest. Maybe it is because I still feel new to the game and I didn’t play AOE. Anyway, look us Sarmis people up when you’re on the zone. We have a blast!