I think that they've officially killed the series for me at this point. THE HORROR:

The developer's questionable sense of taste and humor is also on display in the visuals and sound. The overall graphic design of the game leans toward the cartoonish, with a brightly colored palette that often renders units in pastel hues more appropriate for a teen girl's bedroom décor than an army's. This at least helps make buildings distinctive, as splashes of color let you tell one civilization's settlement from another at a glance. Of course, there are basically only three of them, so it's not like you've got a lot of architectural styles to memorize. The audio component of the game soars well past cartoony and into stupid. Units acknowledge orders with nothing but cheap jokes. Knights make snarky little comments about "being right behind you…way behind you," and usabari camel riders crack jokes such as "I am like a camel fart--loud and dangerous." As you can tell by these winning examples, the lines in the game aren't funny. And they're much less amusing after you've been forced to listen to them a few hundred times over the course of a skirmish. Troops seem to get stuck like skipping records at times, too, and often incessantly repeat the same dialogue every time you issue a move command. This just makes a bad situation even worse.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...g=tabs;reviews