Each race has access to their race-specific special / military unit.Unit upgrades are not permanent - no gold means you can only recruit base units, no higher level ones.
Use Gold to upgrade your military units ( gold bars per unit ).Gold bars are not used as a building material.Towers can only be destroyed by warmachines.Each race uses "pig farm to meat production" for their mines food requirement.Getting new settlers via residences is done in 10, 30, 100 increments thus quite fast.War ships do not exist, only ferries and transport ships are available.Geologists are recruited from "normal" settlers and need no tools thus easy and fast searching for resources is possible however cannot be converted back into "normal" settlers.Pioneers are recruited from "normal" settlers and need no tools thus easy and fast tower-less expansion on the map is possible ( especially against the AI ).Builders and diggers can only recruited via a percentage-based setting and cannot be reverted back to "normal" settlers once done, so one needs to be careful not to use their "last hammer" for a builder instead of the tool smith.Healing of units can only be done at the Healer's Quarter.Military fighting power comes from acquiring gold bars and / or gems ( for Egyptians only ).Each race has access to the same unit types.Unit Upgrades via mana are permanent once completed.Use mana to upgrade military units by offering race-specific beverages ( beer, wine, etc.These lists are obviously not comprehensive but those are things from the top of my head - I might miss a couple of things. Other than the graphics there are actually a fair amount bunch of differences to both games.