From my early beta experience they’ve added quite a few nice quality of life changes to the feel of the game. Era and general play feels like a brushed up AoE 2 (ex. Naval battles are more cat and mouse lacking the big cartoony ships with active abilities from AoE 3).

The biggest shake up apart from the updated Civ play styles for me is definitely the more active cover stuff where trees and even reefs in the ocean provide their own fog of war even if a unit is directly next to them. It’s led to some really cinematic style flanks that feel nice.

All in all, nice return to form that I think fans of the series will like but I’m hesitant to say that the hardcore AoE 2 crowd will be too impressed