We played RoR with three players against 3 AI bots on the Mediterranean map. We started on standard AI, then played moderate and hard. One of the players is a good AoE 4 and AoE 2 player. The other used to play a lot of AoE 1 and Galactic Battlegrounds. I play mostly AoE1, but also AoE 2 and 4. We had to get use to some of the changes (we did not use trade carts), and lost the first few games. However, our play improved, and we beat moderate and then the hard AI. Here were some comments and suggestions by the players.
As for bugs, the only one that someone noticed was that the priests did not automatically heal all of the time. This has been reported by others.
One player was not used to a 4 population cap on houses, but as an AoE 2 player, that was to be expected.
The two other players thought the archer civs were a stronger choice. They commented that horse archers and Minoan composite bowmen were accurate and lethal, and had an advantage over infantry. One player switched from the Greeks to Minoans and had a lot more success with masses of composite bowmen. I asked the players if they think archers should be nerfed, and they said that instead of nerfing them, some balance changes should be made to make other units stronger against them.
There was a comment that priests were more difficult to use, other than as healers, because the AI targets them. I thought that the priests were fine, and the Theocracy tech is really cool.
Another comment was made about towers being a bit weak with the 200 pop cap. We all thought they should be buffed a little, because they are correspondingly weaker facing large groups of units, and a buffed tower could be more useful against rushes early in the game.The Town Centers, of course, do not shoot arrows. It was disheartening for one player to see massed archers take out Babylonian towers.
One player did not like the 60 unit cap on group size. He wanted to mass more units under one hotkey.
All in all we had a great time. The games were intense and very enjoyable. The priest bug needs to be addressed, and some balance tweaks should be considered. We played continuously for a total time of 6.5 hours, and everything ran well.