OK I finished playing the Persian campaign. After you customize units, they stay as templates which you click on to train units. Before I thought that you were customizing individual soldiers and there was some sort of button I couldn't find to mass produce them.
EconomyOverall I think it has a good balance of resources, and a good amount. The most interesting aspect of the economy is without a doubt that you maintain your army with food like real life, instead of just "buying" units with food. Its a very clever idea that, so far as I can tell, will be the biggest limiting factor in making large armies. While you can make as many farms as you want, they are quite big (especially Persia's) which means you might run out of room on the map. I sure did. Gold mines are actually gold mines on which you have to build a refinery/sifter. Its very realistic, but again, it takes up a lot of space. Three or four civilians are allowed to work on it, depending on your civilization. While some previews said that gold will hold you back, I don't think the same. The gold gather rate is sufficient to equip warriors just the same as the wood gather rate is sufficient to build whatever buildings you may want. The hard thing to manage will be the food. I suspect it will take a skilled player to keep the farms safe from raids while keeping enough of them to maintain your army.
Military
The battles, while not as organized as Rise and Fall's, are not nearly as scrambled as the trailer made it seem. Ranged units stand back in an organized line and fire on whoever you tell them to, or whoever is in range. Hand to hand units go up and fight eachother leaving a battle somewhat like this | || | The archers are in back supporting the hand to hand units while they rip eachother apart.Environmental factors and traps
Well, the traps are as fun and devastating as they promised. You can roll rocks down hills and build spike pits that can be fairly lethal, though I suggest putting them on manual if you think you will remember them. The AI that you can have do it for you can often trigger it early, or trigger it when your own units are on top of it, which hurts them as well. Wind and fire can be absolutely crushing... I had the misfortune of the enemy setting fire to one of my farms (but not killing it since my army drove it away once I got there). The fire spread with the wind and set fire to about 10 farms before I finally got all the workers to stop using them and repair them. It was really annoying since the wind would reverse and relight farms I already fixed. It can be a truly lethal and effective strategy that should not go without consideration.Performance/Aesthetics
The performance was just fine on my system, where everything is near the recommended except that I only have 1 gig system RAM. I was running about 30-35 FPS with fair graphics. Some have said that screens and trailers for RaF made the game look better than it is. I would say its the opposite for Ancient Wars: Sparta. The game looks great and runs well.Possible Problems and suggestionsSize of buildings: As I have said before, the buildings are really large, which is nice, but it makes even the biggest base very cramped. I'd dare you to try making two or three barracks and archery ranges!
Make unit class more obvious: It was easy enough to tell ranged units from close combat infantry, but other than that it gets hard. It would be nice if we could tell easier whether they happen to be javelin throwers, slingers or archers. If they are swordsmen, axemen or whatever else is the game. That, however, is not nearly as important as us being able to tell the units that have secondary weapons apart from units that dont. I guess part of that difference can be made consciously by the player by using different shields or something, but if there was something external it would be great. If you have mixes of ranged, not ranged and then both and for whatever reason you want to switch some, it would be great to be able to locate the ones you can switch easier.
Make the effect of food more visible: While there is the food count up on the right corner telling whether you have enough or if your people are starting to starve, some other indication would be nice. I'm not saying changing the unit models because that would be hell to code and its to late for anything like that anyways. If we could know who the food is affecting and how much, like maybe have a food/morale counter on the unit stats it would be easier for us to make informed decisions about food. Right now I'm wondering if it would be good to get more units than you can support just for a raid. You will lose troops at the raid so you would reach carrying capacity, but would your troops fight so poorly that you would rather have 10 less? Its impossible to tell, but being able to would be awesome.
Thats about everything. If you have any questions or ideas just let me know.
"It seems to me the humour of Sails is so dry you could strike a match on it and it would be the humour that caught fire." - Friend of Old