Hello everyone!
As we all know, DLC is coming to our game “Lords of the West” introducing 2 new civilization - Burgundians and Sicilians, 3 new campaigns, 16 new achievements.
New campaigns
New briton, burgundian and sicilian campaign.
Game files suggest that 2 of those campaigns has 5 mission and 1 campaign has 6 missions.
There is also new unknown campaign named in files “camp10” with 8 missions and one more file that suggest we will be able to play all challanges added to the game ( e. g. Mongols, Barbarossa Brawl ).
Civilization rotation
New lines in “strings” file suggest that civilization rotation is coming to AoE II DE.
IDS_POPUP_CIV_UPGRADE_SUBHEADING "Available Civilizations Rotate Weekely."
IDS_POPUP_CIV_UPGRADE_TIMER "Next Rotation In: \n%sdays %shrs %smin %ssec"
Demo AoE II DE
IDS_POPUP_CIV_UPGRADE_TEXT "Upgrade to the full Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition to unlock unlimited access to all Civilizations, all campaigns, all multiplayer feature, Skirmish versus AI, and more."
It suggest that new “Upgrade” DLC will be added. It means that there will be demo version of the game.
Also intresting thing that lines are named “CIV_UPGRADE”.
It also may suggest that player who don’t own new Lords of the West DLC will be restricted in multiplayer to limited civilizations in “civ rotations” to have a chance to play Burgundians and Sicilians without dlc.
++++Edit: Just found that new images of campaign signs were added. They are grayed out signs of existing campaigns. It probably means in demo will be not have acces to some ( most of them ) campaigns.
4. More civilizations
In small review page of new DLC we can read:
“Lords of the West—the first official expansion to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition”
The first official expansion. That’s clearly mean we will get more new DLC with more new civilizations.
5.Battle Royale Tournament/Event
New hidden profile picture it suggest new event around Battle Royale.
This looks like HD way to play DLC civs without owning the DLC. At HD there was also a civ pool which you could use if you dont have the DLC to play in rooms in the lobby with DLC.
If they introduce thinigs like this for ranked it will be terrible in my eyes, so i hope this will be only the case for the lobby and that they think of something else for Ranked games.
This looks like DE without DLC vs DE with DLC. This dont really looks like a demo to me.
“Unlock unlimited access to all civilizations”, “skirmish vs AI”
Why DE without DLC would block skirmish vs AI ?
Also just found out that they added greyed out buttons to the game. They are named “>campaignname<_disabled”. Seems like disabling campaigns for demo version.
This is the problem that we really don’t know how it will be working.
Maybe campaigns of the DLC are locked. But in game every existing campaign ( Joan d’Ark, Barbarossa, Tamarlane ) got disabled sign. I see no reason to disabling all campaigns for vanilla users.
Maybe the game is gonna be free to play for quickplay only, with severely restricted civ pool, as a form of demo. If you want the full game, you buy it.
The cam10 folder we found in the anniversary patch is actually a new campaign called “civ challanges” and seems to be similar to the “Art of War” scenarios. It consists of 8 scenarios (the following are texture reference names but still kind of meaningful):
While the Barbarossa Brawl replaces the Mongol Raiders scenario, don’t worry; we’re working on a home for all the scenarios and leaderboards in the future!
line from the patch notes of update 40874 but it could be related to these challenge scenarios.