I have been playing DM for quite some time now. why do I play it? partly because I enjoy it, and partly because Im much better at it than I am at RM.
DM, at least in upper skill levels is far from chaos, it is a mix of speed, Superunit Knowege, multi-tasking, and lots of teamwork, and controling land.
Speed is just finding out a few build orders that suit your style, and applying them in fast expansion, or rush tactics, which is not that much different than using set RM strats, such as Tool Rushing as opposed to booming.
Superunit knowlege is as ender said, knowing which combos are the most efective, and knowing exatly what to do when your opponent switches tactics.
Multi-Tasking is definitely at its peak in large pop DMs, where you have 100 military units, and 100 villagers, keeping your army up to strenght.
Teamwork, from what I know, is much more important than in RM. First, most games are Iron starts, which means you have shared vision. Second, since you have so many units at your disposal, it is easier to make joint attacks. DM also brings out each units weakness, since battles involve such large numbers. Since every unit does have its weaknesses, and NO one civ has the ultimate unit combo in its self, teamwork dealing with complimentary units is very efective. An army of Choson Legions and Hittite Cats can walk through ANY defense, and almost any other combo....bring along cho villagers to set up towers, and your almost invincable.
Killing villagers is not the basic strat. In RM, almost all strategies come down to either having more villagers than your opponent, whehter by building more, or killing his off. In DM, strategy revolves more arround land, which gives you places to build, as well as res, instead of villager slaughter
If play AoE for its historical aspect, with the building of great empires, DM fits in in a surprising way. Think of it as the famous battles between 2 armies, as opposed to empires. In those acnient battles, there were definitely large numbers of troops, Villager raiding was NOT the way to win (like RM play) Stratigic strikes to gain land played an important part. Feints and diversionary tactics are also probably more common in DM.
Im not knocking RM, because it definitely has a lot of good points, but So does DM, as long as you just look past the surface.
For those looking for a balenced RoR, DM is much more balanced than RM. From what I have seen so far, Choson, Hittite, and Carth are all about equal, with civs such as persian, Greeks, and Roman not far behind. More combined armies are comon in RoR DM, with AEs, which naturely make priests more powerful as well.
Dhamon
Team Sudden Death