What do you guys think?Price of this is also good too i liked it.
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As i inspected my only concerns are axe throwing horses and warrior units that heal.These two type of units might be broken.I hope they come out balanced.
Also i hope yatai will get a villager pulling him while it moves around.
Edit:Also i always forget to mention but traders looks like carrying dirt when i see the resource elephant i thinked why cant trader’s load look like this.
I’m a fan of variant civilizations (unless they’re JD or ZXL), so I quite like this DLC.
I wrote this in another post, but I think it would have been good to create a new civilization like Kalmar Union, using the Macedonian Dynasty’s Varangian units. It felt like a wasted opportunity.
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and ballista’s with area damage, that’s going to be making sweet combinations. i’m so hyped for the Macedonians! finally we get a nordic(like) civ 
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I hope it comes balanced
We also have some unannounced features being teased on the new civ pages:
From the Tughlaq Dynasty page:
Wild life variation! Black and brown sheep variants are confirmed!
Only 2 1/2 hours until we get more info from the xbox gamescom presentation!
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We’re going to have the Xbox @ gamescom broadcast start in 15 minutes, I’ll try to grab as much information when it starts happening and share that in this thread. You can find the stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P45cJ2HdFh4
In the meantime, Valdemar has published some videos with his opinions on two of the variants coming in the next DLC. Pretty in-depth, has some solid takes on how they will play (supposedly had access to early builds), worth watching.
Macedonian Dynasty (Byzantine)
Sengoku Daimyo Clan (Japanese)
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Final update to this post, they uploaded the interview on their official channel:
The first section of the interview is about The Crucible, there’s a lot of pictures so I broke them down into 3 sections:
Crucible Selection Screen
4 scenarios to choose from:
playable using any civ:
8 difficulties to choose from:
perks can be enabled or disabled in the selection menu (didn’t catch anything on what that would do other than enabling/disabling them)
perks can be refunded for the same cost that you buy them for (allows you to change up a strategy at will)
Medal List shows the medal received for each difficulty, the civ you did it with, and the time you defended for:
Conqueror Mode. Increases challenge, is toggleable, adds a significant challenge on top of the difficulty setting. Only way to receive the Conqueror Medal AND Monument (!!)
That’s it for the menu screen, onto the gameplay.
Perk List
There was one more row that wasn’t shown, could have been 1-4 there, so we have a total of 17-20 perks confirmed
In-game
Loading screen shows a Mastery to accomplish for scenario (this appears to be different from the optional random objectives), has xp and crowns as reward. Pretty standard stuff here:
They mentioned on stream that there would be over 50 boons !!
Boons are not the same as perks, perks are what we upgrade using the crowns currency in the selection screen. Boons are offered periodically throughout gameplay, above we see that they can be active abilities, passive unit buffs, or lump sums of resources.
For the boons that are active abilities they show up as a button (has a binding) that you can press to activate the ability:
Scenario starts with standard stuff, 1 tc, 6 vils, 1 scout, and a wonder to defend:
Also seen there are the optional objectives, which are randomized for each playthrough, they spawned in about 7 seconds into gameplay.
“Some of the boons are strictly positive, one of the boons is called ‘Call of the Wild’ that bring all gaia to you from across the maps. Other boons have a trade-off, for example “Golden Parachute” gives you a steady stream of gold BUT you lose all gold mines on the map.”
“We really incentivize going and exploring the map. We have these optional objectives, points of interest, so you might be wandering the map and see a crop circle. You might see a coliseum and see a champion unit, that if you defeat joins your forces.”
They only gave this section 5 minutes, so I don’t have as many pictures to share. Pretty much just the Golden Horde:
Golden Horde
As we knew from the civ page, the Golden Horde does not have the ability to pack up their buildings. We can see on the minimap that the Golden Horde has the ability to construct walls (unsure if stone or palisade). This plays into their variant identity of having rapid mobilization of units to enable aggression on the map. They are incentivized to build a fortified base to fuel their armies.
The Golden Tent is the centerpiece for this faction, has upgrades and units that are trained using stone:
The Golden Tent is also where the Golden Horde ages up, below you’ll see the age-ups that they chose all the way up to Age III:
Here we can see the two Imperial Age choices:
And here are the units that they can now rapidly produce from Golden Tent with the Stone Armies age-up:
Next we have Edicts, which are technologies that can be researched at the Golden Tent with the cost of stone:
It appears that only one edict can be active at a time, when activated the Mongol hawk screech sound plays as they send several glowing birds in different locations (not sure if direction or location is determined by anything)
Stockyard edict being shown here, gives fortified outposts (has 5 garrison slots) an influence radius to give Stockyards passive gold while being worked. Pretty massive, enables a Mongol turtle playstyle
They briefly mention the Tughlaq Dynasty, specifically that there are 3 new elephants in total. Something I think most of us knew already.
They took time to mention that all of the new variants are going to have unique units, techs, buildings. Their stated intent and focus is to have asymmetrical gameplay and design, bringing our total civ count to 22. Maintaining asymmetry between 22 individual factions is pretty difficult, and it looks like they’ve accomplished that.
They have gameplay at the gamescom booth, features a demo of the crucible as well as the ability to try and play the Tughlaq Dynasty and the Macedonian Dynasty. Hopefully we can get some feedback from people on youtube who made the journey to gamescom and are able to share their feedback. From what I’ve seen cameras are allowed in the booth, so I’ll try to keep my eye out for that on my socials.
They also did a shout out to the fans, talked a bit about their dedication to the game. Not for nothing, but they are passionate about this game and want to make something worth playing and talking about!
That’s it for now. Lots to digest, I’m sure there’s stuff I missed. Feel free to add whatever that may be!
Huge update!
Looks like someone got a good 48 minutes of footage of the new DLC at Gamescom (from youtuber Trash Can Inc.)
Worth watching all the way through, but some highlights that I observed were:
Tughlaq Dynasty
- Worker elephants are universal drop offs, cost (25 food 50 wood), spawn instantly without needing to be first in queue
- As of this build there are no drop off buildings, elephants only!
- All economy upgrades are researched at the elephant, take 5 seconds to research, cost 20% more to research
- Landmarks are the same appearance and name, but have different functionality
- No mosques in Dark age (Castle age instead)
- Raider elephants are a horseman replacement, require 2 pop and are considered a light cav unit. Keeps the same bonusses… They move at 1.6 move speed!
- Legendary Forts are buildable starting in Feudal (we knew this), but their health scales by age and cost is decreased using Compound of the Defender (!!)
Macedonian Dynasty
- There are no Olive groves or aqueducts (pretty easy to assume, since silver replaces olive oil)
- Varangian Arsenal replaces the blacksmith and has all new technologies, WAY MORE UPGRADES!
- Like Tughlaq Dynasty, landmarks share the name and appearance of their original counterpart but have all new functionality. For example: Hippodrome spawns a buffed horseman unit periodically while still functioning as stable. Golden Horn Tower is a defensive landmark with 15 garrison spaces, regularly produces crossbows.
- Varangian Stronghold replaces barracks and is available from Dark age
- Varangian War Camp behaves similarly to Ottoman Military School, toggle a unit type and it will spawn as it generates tickets from units lost in battle
- Runestones are built by infantry units (same ui space as rams), gives nearby units increased damage
Sengoku Daimyo
Was not playable during Gamescom, but was opponent in The Crucible (does this mean that each scenario is themed with a specific opponent? Time will tell). Going to focus on what is not available in the civ page.
- Matsuri acts as an early market, spawns the Yatai which gathers food without consuming food from deer and boar (which is why they are revealed on spawn for this faction). Sends a trader back to Matsuri, think of protecting these trade lines like the pilgrims for KT.
- New cavalry unit called the Yari Cavalry, acts as anti-cavalry cavalry unit.
- Their archer unit is the Yumi Ashigaru, nothing of note here (same as Japanese archer from what I can tell)
- Kanabo Samurai does in fact deal bonus damage based on the max hp of the unit it is attacking. Elephant counter incoming. Base melee damage is 2, bonus damage is 8% of the max HP. (!!!). Has no melee armor, 1 ranged armor.
- Onna-bugeisha were NOT seen in this build, may be Japanese base civ only unit. Kanabo Samurai is likely designed to replace them.
- Have not seen anything about Onna-musha being available. They may have another unit to act as anti-armor ranged specialist, this may be why they have early gunpowder.
- Landmarks are half the same, half different. For example: Koka township gains abilities on the landmark to reveal an area and create a shinobi ambush (unknown what this means at the moment). Temple of Equality reduces cost of Ikko-ikki monks by 50%, looks like they get the one monk type (not confirmed, but no other monk type found at the moment)
- Daimyo manors cost wood and stone, start at 100w 100s and double for each built.
Golden Horde
Similar to Sengoku Daimyo it was not available to play. All we have is the in-game tech tree. I’ll try to only highlight things that were not available in their civ page.
- The only landmark is the Golden Horde tent (we knew this already, but just confirming)
- Edicts are used exclusively (from what I can tell) on the reinforced outposts as an influenced area around them. Since buildings cannot move players will have to think ahead of time for their strategies when placing buildings around their outposts. This may create some really unique base layouts, and offer readability to the opponent. (I’m very excited for this)
- Expandable limit on Ovoos, they generate 70 stone per minute when the stone node is not depleted, 60 when they are depleted (think malian pitmine). This is huge.
- Mangonels have increased movement speed and attack speed
Very glad someone had the forethought to record this video and break it down piece by piece. It’s genuinely worth a watch, I highly recommend it. Pass this dude a like while you’re there.
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Honestly I think this DLC is full of missed opportunities.
First the four new civs. They are all “Variant Civs”, which have bad reputation among players that they are lazy and cheap compared to “proper” civs. And in the case of at least the Macedonian Dynasty (and Knights Templar) they don’t seem to have much in common with their “base” civs, A couple of new buildings and voice and you have a “proper” civ. Why take the backlash Microsoft?
The other elefant in the room: No campaign. I often hear from devs that lots of Age of Empires players only play campaign, sometimes up to 50%. I don’t know if the ration for AOE4 is so different to a campaign not being viable. It seems like the devs are negelting a big part of the playerbase.
Instead we get this roguelike mode that still has to prove how much variety it really has, not just on paper. And its also only singleplayer, not coop, which would make sense and has been requested many times. After all, a large portion of SC2 playerbase was only in the excellent Coop-Mode.
All in all, this DLC, like the last one, seemed like missed some opportunies, especially for players who aren’t to the competitive side of the game.
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Bro i dont agree with that they still have the same landmarks.I wish they would changed landmarks too.Then it will be a good variant.
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