While my counter-arguments might have been incisive, I'm sorry if you felt personally attacked, Mindmaker. It was not my intention.
I don't mind incisive arguments, but that last line just wasn't needed. It was a kind of "Stop being hysterical/unreasonable!", which I'm certainly not. Talking as if a stranger on the internet was an open book to you may come of as arrogant and condescending.
No offense taken, but I thought I'd rather let you know.
I could adress many of your points like the arrow thing (Rome Archers are only effective in masses, have 8/120 fight vs 8/120 and see how long they'll take and Dominions relies on massing units and even then you'll have turns when 40 archers they hit absolutely nothing), the room thing (in earlier you had a little room to back off, which was useful, while in the newer games the maps pretty much ends where you units start) and as far as movement vs. range goes I don't see much to deny, if you have the game still lying around somewhere you can reinstall and see for yourself. Yes, 36-40 MP cavalery could reach the backrow at it's second turn, but your slow 20-24 MP footmen would need longer which left ranged units with pretty good range some time to fire.
But we might be getting a bit too specific here.
Well anyway, I've seen a couple of good things as well.
The random map generation is prettier and a lot less messy and the game removed the annoyance of neutral units coming from nowhere and destroying your nodes (although I don't approve of them making the map features Civ-like, needing them to be in your sphere of influence.
Also there seems to be some interesting new map features.