Well I d/l the demo yesterday when I got home from work. Played that for about 5 min and then went and bought the game. Next thing I know 5 hours had disappeared. This is as close as I'll probably get to a MoM successor. I have to say the game is fun, and it does suffer alot from the "just one more turn" problem.
I'm playing on normal difficulty on a large map with 4 opponents. I'm not having any real problems so far, as I'm easily plowing through one of my opponents at the moment. I guess it helps that my second city I built has minotaurs, and I'm attacking him with 5 of them decked out with like 5 upgrades and a few spells. I'm still surprised he's killed one of them (damn all his wizards). Really can't wait to get back home to continue the fight (damn work).
The game does seem to be lacking some polish though. I wish there was a stats screen. It would also be nice to know if my spells that I was researching led to other spells, or is the new spell I can research just randomly chosen? The spell book could also use tabs to organize spells into catagories, as it seems to just be one long scrollable list, that gets ever longer as you play the game. A city, army and maybe an enchantment overview screens would also be nice.
I do like how they decoupled buildings and units, and you can do both simulatiously (something most games like this dont allow). I also like how you get 1 building per population unit, and the buildings are all useful. I'm also a fan of the no tax management and population happiness management. If I need more money, I just devote more of my buildings to ones that make money (banks, markets, etc). All this lets me focus more on creating and managing my army. I also like how all the citys have hit points and a ranged attack. That way I dont have to sentry a unit in every city I build, less it be immediately taken over by roving barbarians (monsters).