Hated it at first because of the significant changes that were made from the original, but I eventually embraced the additional challenges that came with it.
You can't march an army around without a General, and you can only have so many Generals/Admirals throughout your empire, so you have to use them/spread them out wisely. The biggest gripe I have is that you can't build walls around all of your cities, only the larger ones. So regardless of how built up your smaller cities get, a moderately sized army can walk right in and take your smaller cities in one turn.
Still a great game, much more difficult than the original, and obvioulsy much better graphics.
