[sector24]

You also recruit everything (armies and commanders) by bidding like you would buy mercs in Dominions. A MP game with human players could be really awesome, but I imagine most of the "strategy" would be resolved during the bidding process. Once all the really powerful units are purchased the unlucky players won't have much to look forward to.

There is virtually no random element to combat, so usually you know if you're going to win or lose a fight before you engage. The computer does not seem to purchase many praetors (commanders for your armies) or use combat cards so their legions are often inferior to yours and the battles are pretty one-sided. It's pretty easy to crush the AI on every conceivable metric even in the short demo.