Ok, this time…we need to talk about this game and DLCs. But first, tiny bit of speculation:
Most likely this is Alexander the Great. It’s a year after Battle for Greece, and we know it’s coming. So this is the most likely candidate. However, it’s no proof.
Alright, with the fun out of the way…let’s begin.
AoE2 is not in a good way. Dismal DLC after dismal DLC (Not you Battle for Greece, you’re great), with the last one breaking the community cleanly in half while breaking the very core concepts of the original game. NONE of this was necessary, steps could have been taken to avoid this and still achieve a product that fulfilled its goals. But now…the devs/FE really need to show they are actually capable of steering this ship.
This of course won’t happen if it’s a Chronicles DLC, as we know it’s a different team. However…things are not rosy here either.
I am NOT comfortable with this. Both in a sense of “I don’t want to support a company laying off its best staff” and am not comfortable with the games future.
But instead they fired the level designers for Chronicles.
The 2nd Chronicles DLC (because that’s definitely what this is) will probably be pretty good, but at this point that’s the exception and not the rule. The entire franchise is in a pretty sorry state. They cancelled the AOE3 DLC. They failed AOE2 with V&V and 3K.
Unless something drastic changes, in the future a new DLC announcement will provoke fear, not excitement (particularly now that Chronicles devs have been laid off.)
For a long time I held hope based on Dynasties of India that the devs had a chance to do something that explores furtther the medieval world in an interesting way. Despite all I complained about the Caucasus civs, Romans or the lack of proper DLCs I always saw at least some value in everything they did since then, until the Three Kingdoms fiasco.
We finally got our return to clasic new civ and campaign DLCs and somehow the devs managed to ruin the slam dunk that a medieval Chiba DLC would have been and probably dooms China to never get a proper DLC exploring the medieval peeiod
I was able to look past the worsening civ designs and increasing use of gimmicks I didnt like because I love what the game is capable and I liked a lot of the stuff they did in the past. Right now I just dont know if I trust them to deliver anything interesting agaib
I’m thinking Macedonians (which would also represent Antigonids and probably Lysimachus) Egyptians/Ptolomeys, and Selucids as the three civs, because the 3 acts of the campaign would probably be Philip fighting against the Greeks to assert Macedonia’s hegemony, Alexander’s conquest, and then the Wars of the Diadochi
Or perhaps since the Wars of the Diadochi are multiple seperate wars, perhaps Alexander’s conquests, then one of the parts of the Wars of the Diadochi from the Ptolemaic perspective and another part from the Selucid perspective.
It really sucks how they treat everyone unfairly, both the playerbase and their best employees, this franchise is beyond terribly mismanaged, and unless whoever are at the wheel make synapses between their neurons, the game will die. At this point, if we want to speculate about DLC, we should think up some ridiculously bad ideas, I have no faith anymore but at least it’s fun.
Probably Mauryas/Indians/whatever they wanna call them and either some Balkan civ like Illyrians or Thracians, and the Scythians. Assuming the DLC focuses just on Alexander, but if it goes beyond that then Ptolemies, Seleucids and Epirotes could be an option.
I don’t think so. The Egyptian campaign was pretty short, and the Ptolemy army wouldn’t have been that different from the Macedonian one. No really point to adding them at this stage.
Meanwhile, you NEED a South Asian civ. Otherwise the latter half of the Alexander campaign can’t be finished.
Thats the problem. We need Normal civs. Has the art pf the design been so damn lost!? Its like watching your child kill puppies and being told “its just to be interesting!”
Yes, I also think it’s going to be Chronicles of Alexander/Macedonia, but given what happened recently with CaptureAge, I see it as difficult, or at least complicated…
Earnest Yuen, Bert Beeckman and Adam Insgreen…
Yes, they’ve been making bad decisions over the last two years and a half… they were doing relatively well until 2022, but since they released Return of Rome, they’ve been taking wild stabs and in the middle of it all, the whole mess of canceling the AoE 3 DLC in January to focus on saving Retold…
Yes, this TTK DLC was originally a Chronicles DLC, but they decided to include the Jurchens and the Khitans to be able to sell it as an AoE 2 DLC and that hits the game’s design approach that has always been there since its origins, since it is like a half-cooked DLC…
We might still see some medieval China if they give campaigns to the Jurchens, Khitans, and obviously the Chinese
Seleucids and Ptolemaics (or directly Egyptians, which you can then use in a campaign for the rise of the Roman Empire)
Yes, it could also be Nanda and Mauryas for the next Chronicles of India…
Of course, it will be a Macedonian campaign with the prologue being Philip II conquering Greece alongside Alexander (there you include the Athenians and Spartans as enemies) and then the entire Alexandrian campaign against the Achaemenids in revenge for the Achaemenid invasion of Greece (aka BfG), then you would have the Wars of the Diadochi, first from the Seleucid perspective and then from the Ptolemaic perspective (you would even see several repeated missions like TTK)…
Yes, but I don’t think they’ll include Epirotes because that would be touching Pyrrus of Epirus and they already did that in Return of Rome, that’s why I think they’ll end before Pyrrhus’ campaign… the campaign could end at the Battle of Ipsus (where Pyrrhus’ campaign starts) in 301 BC or the Battle of Corupedium (outside Sardis)…
Pastures are completely fine now after last patch. The other two are conceptually fine but imbalanced, will get there in a year or so. Mounted trebuchets are probably the only flawed unit in this DLC.
