The voice acting in AoE 3 really annoys me - all those really poor attempts at British accents get on my nerves. I've only played the campaign (never been any good at multiplayer RTSs - more of a TBS and FPS man) and it's a big improvement, though they still fell into the old traps of having the same old scenarios - hold out for X minutes then go destroy the enemy with your reinforcements, etc (granted, even StarCraft did that, but at least the plot was better
). Can't speak for the multiplayer. The game still plays a bit fast for me, but I'm not a big fan of the series, so you might like it.