Oldie - but not so goldie

The 10 year old strategy game is of course what nostalgics and the price is a bargain.
Nevertheless, I can the many very positive reviews here do not connect.
RON inclusive "Nations & Patriots" is very complex and confusing with its many expansion and development levels - even for an old game strategists like me. Clicking on everything to develop. What does not work, but however you get clues as to what is missing currently, and which resource is still too scarce. Even the tutorial is ok.
It seems to me, under the claim to include the whole of human history into the game, suffered the one hand the design of the building. You can see all kind of look the same. Total me the contours of the objects are too vague. For a game that has under his belt already 10 years. Although the graphics resolution is set higher in order to increase the texture quality, but the objects are thus -logischerweise- (too) small. Ungemoddet also sees the landscape pretty boring. The mouse handling leaves something to be desired. I have the mouse commands re. / Li. Click swapped out of habit. Unfortunately, it came regularly before that after a command issued, if I then re. Mouse button pressed to neutralize as it were, for the next command, which then but did nothing more farmers / citizens. In the fight controlling units is very fiddly. In addition, the firefights are disappointing because graphically very thin compared to the same old games like Command & Conquer or AoE. And just because I RON measured.
I have the impression that the game developers at the time were unable to decide whether they should develop an economic simulation, or a strategy game with final showdown. The come-out compromise is neither one thing whole. Less game content, meaning less development stages, nations and civilization stages, instead more graphical detail and more program-tweaking would have the game done better.