This is going to be short for lack of time.
I have 4 problems with this real-time city building and strategy game:
1. The painted art looks a bit low budget or like it was rushed. It looks like something I would paint on a good day, except I am not a very skilled artist. I know this is a very small complaint, but there is a huge painting glaring at you at the main menu screen and then you have to pick out of several painted character icons...and it just distracts. Although it does give the game a home-cooked feel, which has its own appeal I guess.
2. The music has a terribly low budget feel and pulls you right out of the game. I'm sorry that I have to refer to myself again, but I have had only limited experience with making music with orchestral samples and yet I am convinced that I could do a better job if given enough time.
The music does not fit the Roman era mood and the instruments are blatantly fake. If you are using samples you should learn how to mask the computerised effects. And then there is one track that always cuts out suddenly towards the end.
3. The game is really fast paced, as I suppose many such games are. You cannot adjust or stop the time, but if you click escape and click on options then you can continue to play the game in paused mode and that is how I played most of it because playing it at its normal speed it is ridiculous. It sets a very arcady and challenging tone, which is ok if you are into that sort of thing.
4. Things are not explained enough. There is a tutorial, but it does not explain enough how the buildings' area of effect works. Also, many of the buildings do not explain what they do until you research them via the research tree, but why would you spend time on researching something if you do not know what the researched building will do?
That's for the bad. Now for the good. The graphics of the actual game are pleasant and the building of Roman towns is fun. You can play a main campaign, multiplayer or start on one of several locations in the Roman empire under different conditions, and just build your Roman city and wage war on neighboring towns.
In short, Grand Ages feels like a really good game...that was built by one person. It is like that same person made the paintings in a hurry and put together some music as well, but spent most of the time on modeling and coding the city-building so some sacrifices with the quality had to be made due to the time pressure.