Creative Assembly is really hitting their stride with this one. The injection of story into the Vortex campaign really fleshes the momentum and makes the end game more interesting than just painting the map or dealing with horde spam. Each of the races play drastically different. The game can be challenging but easy to pick up. It is definitely more "arcade" like than the historical titles. While the minute details of economy might be "dumbed down" compare to others, there's a lot more going on all around you from corruption to rogue armies to events.

Beyond that, CA has constantly been updating the game, adding more content both free and paid, and isn't abandoning it any time soon. There's easily hundreds of hours of content to cover even without paying for a DLC. If you do end up getting them all, it's just insane how big and varied the game can get. Mortal Empires campaign is overwhelming.

Finally, the modding community is top notch. CA has been supportive the the modders which is a plus. If there are things you want to tinker or change, there's probably a mod for it. Though this isn't to say vanilla isn't worth your time. It certainly is. I play a vanilla campaign after every update while waiting for my collection of mods to update.

I've played quite a bit but still feel like I have barely scratched the surface.

Creative Assembly is really hitting their stride with this one. The injection of story into the Vortex campaign really fleshes the momentum and makes the end game more interesting than just painting the map or dealing with horde spam. Each of the races play drastically different. The game can be challenging but easy to pick up. It is definitely more "arcade" like than the historical titles. While the minute details of economy might be "dumbed down" compare to others, there's a lot more going on all around you from corruption to rogue armies to events. Beyond that, CA has constantly been updating the game, adding more content both free and paid, and isn't abandoning it any time soon. There's easily hundreds of hours of content to cover even without paying for a DLC. If you do end up getting them all, it's just insane how big and varied the game can get. Mortal Empires campaign is overwhelming. Finally, the modding community is top notch. CA has been supportive the the modders which is a plus. If there are things you want to tinker or change, there's probably a mod for it. Though this isn't to say vanilla isn't worth your time. It certainly is. I play a vanilla campaign after every update while waiting for my collection of mods to update. I've played quite a bit but still feel like I have barely scratched the surface.