How might the DLC change the existing campaigns?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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New DLC coming, everything pointing to a break-up of the Indians civ or the addition of new Indian sub-continent civs. This got me wondering which of the campaigns might undergo changes (as we saw in the previous 2 DLC’s).

  • Prithviraj is an obvious one, regardless if the break-up the existing Indian civ. I think this will give much more variety to many of the scenarios where the player is only fighting against other Indian players
  • Tamerlane 4 (Sultan of Hindustan) will probably also change, probably by changing one of the enemies into a new civ.
  • Francisco de Almeida 4 (Estado da India), may also undergo changes as there are 3 Indian civ enemies and 1 ally (the Hindu pirates).
  • Bayinnaung 1 (The Burmese Tigers), has Prome as an Indian civ. If a new Bengali civ is in the works, this will definitely change.
  • Suryavarman 4 (Challenging a Thalassocracy) has the Chola as the current Indian civ. Given as this is the eastern side of the subcontinent this could change as well.

As a campaign bro, I am excited for any potential changes. What do you gals/guys thing?

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I have a post about this if you want to check it out

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So yeah, you hit every single one. I am embarrassed I did not see this before

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Bengals also appear in last mission of Prithviraj campaign… i think they are called Sena

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No need for embarassment. The OP question also intrigues me. Not so much for the current “Indians” as enemies or allies in other campaigns, but for the Prithviraj campaign.

So far, the leak seems largely correct. When the DLC has indeed 3 completely new civs and a rework of Indians as Hindustanis, then Prithviraj should be a Gurjara campaign (because they cover North-Eastern Hindu realms while Hindustanis then will represent the Muslim realms of Delhi Sultanate and Mughals).

That means, an already existing campaign changes to a completely new civ. Because they cannot take away already existing game content, does that mean that everyone will be able to play Gurjaras (campaign) for free? (in addition to reworked Indians=Hindustanis)
Or will Prithviraj be still playable as Hindustanis until the DLC is purchased (and then switch to Gurjaras)?
Such a situation has never occurred before.

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That’s a really interesting point. My first thought was to keep the Hindustanis in the Prithviraj campaign, but you’re right that it would not be historically accurate (something AOE seems to have in mind in regards to AOE4 and their community posts).

I think this would be a great solution. The most similar precedent would be when the US civ in AOE3 was playable for free for a time. As a free sample it might lead many more people to buy the DLC

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Just found this amazing Reddit comment which I wanted to share:

"Let’s go over the issue from the beginning.

First, it’s usually thought that the current Indian civ, aside from easily replaced flavor like leader list & wonder, with its camel & gunpowder focus, is entirely based around states created by Islamic conquest, i.e. Delhi Sultanate, Mughal Empire, and everything in-between.

The Prithviraj campaign, on the other hand, has the player control a Rajput kingdom that resisted said conquest. To reflect that, during the campaign the player can’t even research the UT “Sultans”.

To rectify the situation, the community’s two commonly suggested top priorities are to add a Bengal civ and a Dravidian civ, the later usually called “Tamils”, to represent the very distinct cultures and military traditions of northeastern and southern South Asia.

Next to them, the 3rd place suggestion is usually either a Gujarat/Rajput civ for the northwest, or another Dravidian civ, usually the Kannada people (Kannadigaru).

And now we have a possible leak of the new South Asian civs posted on this subreddit. The leak shows us models of UUs that are consistent with official teasers, which cannot be easily faked. So either the leak is 100% real, or its author had access to real portraits of new UUs. The leak shows a pattern similar to the suggestions:

** The Elephant Archer becomes a shared regional unit. This seems pretty much confirmed by the “unupgraded” Elephant Archer in the teaser.*
** The original Indian civ is renamed Hindustanis.*
** A Bengali civ and a Dravidian civ are added, though as been criticized, the latter seems to be another awkward umbrella that has to try to cover all four South Dravidian cultures: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam (Kerala), Kannada (Tarnataka).*
** The third addition is the Gurjaras, apparently using the word as a broadest general term for northwestern India including the Gujarati and Rajputs.*

If the leaked scheme can be trusted, they’d probably have to change the player civ in the Prithviraj campaign to the Gurjaras (or whatever the northwestern civ is called), for the sake of keeping civ identities straight. If they do that, I think all AoE2DE owners will have access to Gurjaras, while keeping their access to the original Indians/Hindustanis, raising the number of “basic” civs in DE to 36.

You would then buy the new DLC to access the 2 new civs of Bengalis and Dravidians, continuing the pattern of DE DLCs. The 3rd new campaign would be for the newly vacant Hindustani.

(Come to think of it, we may also see them do that to Dracula if the progress of adding popular civs ever moves onto the Vlachs/Romanians.)"

That would also explain why we can’t find a Gurjara nor a Hindustani screenshot. It simply doesn’t exist because Hindustani and Gurjara are going to be base game South Asian civs.

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That makes sense! I personally think there will be a Dracula-type, 2 civ campaign. Based on the posts that have been hinting towards expansions on Sage of Empires I think there will be a campaign allotted to an existing civ (my guess being Chinese or Japanese based on the post, though campaign map-wise, it would make more sense for the Persians to get one)