what made AoE2 so good? also is aoe2:de worth it as some one who owns aoe:de?

Aoe2 is one of the greatest RTS games of all time hell one of the greatest games of all time, its the only game my dad ever plays i mean he plays atleast one whole game every day sometimes upwards of 3 and games of aoe take like 3 hours (with 7 opponents) so thats something but what made AoE2 so great? i would like to know what you think it is but to me its: How would i explain this, So one day several years ago (like half a year) i was playing aoe2 and as always playing turks and i had about 40 Janissary lined up ready to go nuke some one to hell and back and i go to select them i make a box around them and let go of the mouse button only to realise that i could not controll all thoes units simultainusly and then i typed "Black Death" in too the chat and won, what i find so fun about these games is controlling tons of toops marching them to an enemy and making them take de L, and so when i realised that could not do that (at least in the amount i wanted) i was dissapointed and i cheated my way to victory

sorry for any bad english and it this wall of text was just unreadable heres my point

what makes aoe2 so good compared to aoe1 and other rts

what makes aoe2 witch for me is controlling "hundereds" of troops and taking them to kill my enemy(s)

and is aoe2:de worth getting since i own aoe:de?