I played an unhealthy amount of AOE 2: Conquerors. The fall semester of my sophomore year in high school I played that game on the zone for about 6 hours a day. I recorded all of my games and would watch them to find mistakes if I lost. Then I stopped losing. Then I decided to get rid of the game because my weekends consisted of 1) get home from school around 4 on Friday 2) play AOE 2 until 3-4 in the morning 3) get up at 10-11 Saturday 4) play until 2-3 Sunday morning 5) get up at 10 and go to church 6) get home at 1 and play until mid night.
I didn't like spending that much time alone with my computer, the only way I could stop playing was to get rid of the game, so that is what I did.
The screen shots and videos of AOE3 look awesome. It will be mighty tough for a game to take the place Rise of Nations currently holds in my gaming agenda though.