It's not a bad review, and really the 15min thing on one turn did not surprise me. It sounds like it was just a bugged turn. I remeber MTW1 did that every now and then, you'd just have to reload your last auto turn and play from there.

It makes game sound good, however I take all reviews/previews with a grain of salt. I remeber hearing MTW2 reviews and being iffy then playing MTW2 and enjoying it greatly. So until I sit down and play empire (or a demo of empire) I'll just take all this reading as fluff :)