Not really. The author mentions "the game is to be understood as an abstraction" as a potential caveat, and then immediately dismisses it with "but I don’t think it goes for Age of Empires."
I don't really get this. It's not like what the author has to say is contingent on displaying it as a failure of Age of Empires. And it really is just over-interpreting the game. No, converting a unit with a priest is not some sort of cultural genocide, this is a game simplified enough so that it can run on a Pentium. How can there be cultural genocide when the simulation is too crude to even include any hint of culture?
Yeah, the article is mostly legitimately interesting facts about historical empires. Framing it around alleged shortcomings of the Age of Empires video games is unnecessary and obtuse.