In 2021, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition received its last content update. No more improvements and bug fixes afterwards.
Since 2023, we have Return of Rome as a remake of the original AoE. But except for ports of four campaigns, and the recent introduction of Regicide mode, there has been very little new content since the mode’s launch, in stark contrast to the tons of new stuff that the base game has received ever since.
In its current state, the AoE1 part feels unfinished - again. I made a list of things I would like to see added or changed to make RoR feel “complete”. Note that this is not about adding civs or completely new units, it’s more about rounding out what we already have (or had in a previous version only).
I’d be happy if at least one of the following things was realised.
- Port the remaining six pre-Return campaigns, namely “Yamato, Empire of the Rising Sun”, “Reign of the Hittites”, and the Rise of Rome campaigns.
- Add a Historical Battles campaign that covers the seven civs that were never playable in a single official scenario before. Those are Assyrians, Choson, Lac Viet, Minoans, Persians, Phoenicians, and Shang. Of course, a full-fletched campaign for every civ (about 35 scenarios in total) would be better, but that’s illusionary, I fear. Seven new scenarios appear to be reasonable, with intro/outro slides, dialogues, new heroes and all.
- Implement the upgraded forms of the Axeman, Slinger, Scout, and Camel Rider. The unfinished units appear in the dataset, so they obviously planned such upgrades. Naturally, spreading the new upgrades among the civs will require balance updates.
- Add ranked matchmaking.
- Replace all blurry assets with non-blurry ones.
- Continue improving animations of the unit models. It’s obvious that this process was halted midway through. For example, the Long Swordsman is given livelier animations (albeit with a jerky idle animation), while the Legionary still has the somewhat stiff movements from AoE DE.
- Make more assets from the base game, including Chronicles, available in RoR, if appropriate. Since the release of RoR, a lot of graphics were added to AoE2 that are unavailable in RoR without modding. Nature objects, like trees, animals, and rocks, are “timeless” and should be available in RoR anyhow.
- In the base game, there is a History section with information on all civs and more. Nothing like that is in RoR, but the original AoE had it in the form of WinHelp file and manual. These texts could be reused for RoR, so the histories don’t have to be written from scratch (except Lac Viet). It would require new illustrations, but AoE DE and Return of Rome campaign art could be reused in many cases. Slides of a new Historical Battles campaign would also come in handy.
- No longer use masculine grunts for the attacking female Villager, and no horse sounds for the attacking Camel Rider. Regarding the latter unit, I wouldn’t be against completely reworking its model. And the right sounds for the donkey-driven Trade Cart.
- Give a unique skin to Queen Zenobia in place of the male Camel Rider sprite.
- Give the female Shepherd’s sprites from Chronicles to the RoR counterpart (the base model is the same). Distinct sprites for the male variant would also be nice while we are at it.
- Make the Mirror Tower shoot heat rays instead of ordinary arrows again. In its current state, the name “Mirror Tower” doesn’t make too much sense.
- Fix the Discovery unit. It uses the wrong graphics and is bugged, yet this unfinished object is available in the Scenario Editor. I’d be fine with a pure eye candy object, flags popping up can be realised with triggers.
- Add back Blind Lame Priests, Whales, tame Lions and huntable small (North African/forest) Elephants.
- Regarding cheat units: Update the Dragon’s currently monochrome sprite (its icon shows the real thing). Give back the unique robotic sounds to Zug 209. Make Nuke Trooper and Winsett’s cars shoot actual rocket projectiles again, and give Attack Ground ability back to them.
- Reintroduce “pow” and “jack be nimble” cheat codes. Replace the BabyPrez with something non-controversial with the same stats, e.g. a motorcyclist (Baby’s grown up) or an elephant on a tricycle shooting with its trunk. And if humans as projectiles are problematic, use only animals. There was even an event mod for the base game featuring capybara projectiles.
Things that are not a “must”, but would be nice to have, too:
- Co-op versions of certain campaigns/scenarios. For example, the Lac Viet scenario would most certainly feature the Trung sisters, so Player 1 would take the role of Trung Trac, while Player 2 would be Trung Nhi.
- Unique wonders. Would require 13 new buildings. The Temple of Heaven would be moved to the Scenario Editor (it was built about 2400 years after the Shang dynasty’s end).
- More unique skins for heroes, or at least unique icons.
- Give unique attire to the bowman of the Elephant Archer unit, which was the case before AoE DE started reusing the Composite Bowman model for said soldier. And the Armored Elephant was more distinct from the War Elephant before DE, with chains (similar to the Elite Battle Elephant’s) and an elaborate pattern on the blanket.
- Port the embellishment objects of AoE DE that didn’t make it into Return of Rome so far (rocks, grass clumps, stone paths, etc.).
- East Asian regional skins, especially for Bronze/Iron Age units. For the most part, the unit models were clearly made with the ancient Mediterranean world in mind. With their current sprites, Choson Legionaries and Yamato Centurions aren’t that appealing, immersion-wise. Not that Aztec Champions and Inca Arbalesters are better, but still.
- The somewhat strange units Mercenary and Invisible Demon can be largely recreated with triggers, but why not have them in the Editor again.
- More AoE1/RoR-themed player icons. The few we have are all event-related.
- Implement unused/hidden/unfinished stuff from the original AoE, like the more naturalistic Discovery, the Volcano, the Traitor (fighting Artifact), and the Space Ship (new cheat code).
- Descriptions for heroes and cheat units like in AoE DE, as I had suggested here.
Should there also be new civs (with dedicated campaigns), architecture sets, and trainable units one day - even better.
Thanks! 
