I like one of the other users, didn't find Age of Empires all that much fun. I had major problems with bugs when I first bought it that the patch didn't fix entirely.
I'll give it props for the concept and I really enjoyed the history aspect of it though.
I'd give the designer's props for taking the RTS genre to a new level and away from what Civilization had done.
My fun factor on this game came from playing different cultures and seeing what it "might" have been like to watch them grow.
But, alas, all this was for naught as my system crashed around the game too many times and I had to retire it.