Ensemble Studios how I miss you.... I have a theory that Microsoft dismantled this once great powerhouse of RTS in order to free up resources to invest in Kinect technology.

AOE 3 was pretty good, it just mixed things up too much from the technically perfect AOE2. There is a quote from someone from Ensemble admitting such. About 1/3 of the game was tinkering with new ideas such as the ship goodies coming from your homeland based off that odd card system.

Ensemble however was so good at RTS that they somehow managed to make a decent RTS for a console (Halo Wars) which is saying something considering almost all RTS on a console (AKA not on mouse and keyboard) are unplayable to begin with.