Some of the things that should be addressed (as of may 10, 2025)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Given the fact that the developers apparently read “all”, if not most, threads, let’s make this thread to give them a general idea of the current state of this amazing and captivating game, which has survived for decades, in order to further improve it. Of course, there may be many more things, which I am sure will be highlighted in the comments

  • Move 3 kingdoms (Wu, Shu, Wei) and their respective campaigns to a chronicles-like tab. If not, at least rebrand them as civilisations in some way.

  • Remove trainable heroes from ranked play and do not add them back in the future - including toggable special technologies like we see in heroes in new campaigns..

  • Update some of the 1 time unique technologies, such as the first crusade (Sicilians) or the flemish revolution (Burgundians). There are tons of options, such as the first crusade would instead reduce the training time of units, or give charged attack to some units, or increase their attack/hitpoints etc. Flemish revolution could do something like that, too - but transforming villagers into flemish militia does not make sense at this point.

  • Add regional units for original and European factions, as well as some factions (Huns) could receive existing regional units (Steppe lancer…) edit: e.g. unique ship for italians/spanish, or making caravel a regional unit for them.

  • Add unique voice lines to Khitans and Jurchens, Ideally split Khitans into Khitans and Tanguts.

  • Add a separate architectural set for 3K, as well as move e.g. Huns or Khitans to central asian architectural style, for example - there are way too many civilisations using east asian architecture, and only 2 civilisations that use central asian architecture.

  • Finish up the current game with more campaigns (5 scenarios) for civilisations that currently have no dedicated campaign that properly showcases their strengths, and is not a tutorial campaign (William Wallace, Art of War) or a scenario within another campaign. These civilisations are: Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Vikings, Mayans, Koreans, Magyars, Slavs, Romans, Khitans, Jurchens and Celts. For Celts I think 2 more scenarios added to William Wallace campaign would suffice. But there is nothing really where Celts can be properly showcased in single player, apart from a very simple Falkirk).

  • Keep giving us DLCs, but listen to the feedback. Don’t utilize the “customers do not know what they want” attitude - we do know what we want, and an experiment here and there is perfectly fine. But experiments all the time, while ignoring our requests, is not good at all. We all eagerly await African or American DLCs, too (Tlaxcalans, Zimbabweans… Mapuche).

  • Add a ranked ladder for Return of Rome - return of rome is a nice concept - if it does not work out, it can always be removed, just like “battle royale” concept or, ranked empire wars and ranked deathmatch.

  • Port existing campaigns in aoe1 to ror - a lot of negative feedback comes from the lack of original campaigns in return of rome. Modders have been able to port all of them within days, so that should not take much anyway. Additionally, new campaigns for existing Return of Rome civilisations would be very welcome, but preferably after the standard aoe2 civilisations get their own, dedicated ones.

  • If the 2 aforementioned points work out well, more civilisations for Return of Rome could also be nice.

  • Try not to add bonuses like “units generate food” or “building a dock adds food” There are tons of possibilities for unique technologies and civilisation bonuses, such as archers get +1/+2 attack in castle/imperial age, archers move faster (bonus and a unique tech), all archers get extra armor (melee, pierce, both - bonus or unique tech etc) wood lasts longer, stone lasts longer, gold miners generate stone along with gold, cavalry moves faster (unique tech), archers train faster, infantry moves faster (unique tech), x unit attacks faster/gets charged attack, ships move faster (unique tech) and so on so forth.

Suggestions from fellow aoe2 community members:

  • More coop scenarios/campaigns added slowly, over time.

  • We could get some new music in the future as well, and perhaps even architecture sets, if some of the existing ones get too convoluted.

  • Water rework - make water important and fun to use - too many people ignore it nowadays (oysters?)

I hope that the community agrees for the most part. Of course, I will be more than happy to add any other points into this list, but don’t forget to like the post if you generally agree - it certainly helps if the devs see that:)

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I agree with most of the list. The only one I don’t mind are the situational eco bonuses, it’s fairly clear they are not intended as a workhorse bonus and are supposed to be weaker. Some bonuses are strong and define the civ, others are just here to balance a little bit, and you’ll probably not get out of your way to cheese said bonuses.

I could quickly get greedy when it comes to architecture sets. My list is currently :

  • Northern European : Vikings, future Saxons
  • Roman : Romans, Goths, future Vandals
  • Byzantine : Byzantines, Bulgarians, Armenians, Georgians
  • Western Steppe : Huns, Cumans
  • Eastern Steppe : Mongols, Khitans
  • Medieval Chinese : Chinese, Jurchens, Vietnamese. Arguably Koreans
  • Andean : Incas
  • Ancient Chinese : 3K

I’d also move some civs from one style to another existing one (Bohemians & Magyars => Central European, Persians => Central Asian…)

It also blatantly lacks some civs, notably : Celts (that you may or may not split between Gauls and Britons), Germans, Scythians, Harapans (Indus Valley), Sea Peoples, Hebrews.

Other missing features : unique voices & wonders, maybe giving civs UUs and UTs.

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Agree some of the suggestions.

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I don’t see what you find objectionable with these. We already have similar effects in game (Keshiks generate gold while fighting, Chieftains UT for Vikings, Pole’s Folwarks, Ethiopians/Dravidian age-up bonuses, Spanish 20 gold bonus, etc). They also aren’t game-breaking in any way (the food generation is slow for Tuntian and +65 food for military buildings is strong, but seems less impactful than Persian’s +50f/w start for the early game). We also already have an extra archer armor bonus (Italians - went from UT to civ bonus).

It seems somewhat arbitrary to me to suggest gold miners generating stone but to hate units generating food. I also recall the Pole’s stone mining bonus being a bit controversial when it first came out.

I personally am fine with the hero units for the 3k civs. They certainly aren’t a balance issue right now.

There are some recent changes that I do like: new castle/monastery skins are a very nice addition to the game, for example.

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The main issue is the precedent, and while the 3K civs are very… focused in time, other civs would lose in versatility if heroes were introduced.

Easy example, the Franks who cover the full timeline. Logically you couldn’t have Charlemagne fight both the Huns alongside the Romans and the Britons 1000 years later. Pick any single significant historical figure the Franks had, I guarantee you it’s the same issue, we don’t have any single immortal who played a significant role during the full Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance periods.
(that I know of)

So at least renaming the heroes into a generic name would mitigate the problem.

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Just bin them.

Auras are a pain to keep track of on top of all the other stuff going on anyway.

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It says “try not to add them”, it does not say “remove them”, “do not add them”, “game breaking” or “hate”. It’s perfectly fine if you disagree with some of the points I made, and to have a discussion, but there’s really no need to make up your own arguments, which you present as someone else’s, and which you then debunk. I also feel like it’s more like you don’t want to see what I found objectionable - and it’s not really these bonuses/unique technologies, but their nature.

Any technology or gimmick can be balanced or tweaked, so that’s not the issue, but take a look at the spanish bonus - it was generally disliked. Other bonuses, like Keshiks/Vikings generating gold when killing enemy units/villagers, Poles getting gold while mining stone, resources lasting longer, farmers/lumberjacks generating gold, or even relics themselves have one very important thing in common - the “work” aspect. Keshiks and Vikings need to actively engage to generate resources, villagers need to actively work to generate resources, the map needs to be explored and the relics contested and garrisoned to generate resources…whereas these special bonuses in mind do not. If there was a bonus e.g. destroying enemy farms generates food, attacking enemy farms depletes their food and adds it to the player, destroying enemy buildings generates gold, units can gather resources etc, it would have the units working.

A bonus like army generates food while doing nothing, 1 time start game bonuses (start with x extra wood/gold), researching a technology grants x gold/wood/food etc, are just too weird, especially making a new technology that pushes the bonus nature even further. We have plenty of unexplored bonuses that are in line of current bonuses. But I agree, it’s not that big of a problem yet, so i’ll move these bonuses down down down down the line.

As for the Italian archer bonus - again, that’s not the point. Burmese get an attack bonus for infantry, and Aztecs get an attack bonus for infantry as a UT - the difference is that the Burmese get it staggered per age, and Aztecs have a more powerful one, which needs to be researched. Italian +1/+1 bonus can be reused as e.g. +2/+2 bonus as an imp technology, or it can be used as a +4 melee armor as a tech, or +1/+2 melee armor in castle/imperial age - or it can have similar, balanced, values.. Also, archers can fire faster can easily be made a UT, with a faster fire rate than ethiopians get for free.

Well, you can then make an argument why other civs can’t get their heroes? Why do only some of them have the ability to train heroes? Again, it’s not the balance issue, but the spirit of the game issue. We’re getting a chimera with aspects of other games in ranked multiplayer and tournaments, instead of sticking to the game’s spirits and separating other games’ acpects into other mods.

I certainly agree with the skins, hence why I praised the game in the first paragraph and did not insult anyone, especially the devs, in the post;)

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That would solve the problem.

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  • Add more scenarios to V&V. Just a single one is a joke.
  • Add new music to soundtrack. Newer civs are lacking new tunes. At least the Indian ones should get some.
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I know a guy who could maybe help with this.

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I hope the production team understands that the simplest solution is to separately place the Chronicles Civilization forces into the new PVP server
This way, not only can we do whatever we want in the future, but we won’t affect each other anymore. Everyone will be satisfied and there will be no more arguments.

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My fear?.. Devs really take in count the high noise chinese player base are making about 3K civs and remove 3 fun civs from the game just to keep them happy about time frame.

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It’s not about time frame , it’s about three civil war factions being presented as civs which they aren’t. And these Chinese fans are right, because they know best how cringe and wrong it is to make Wei Shu Wu civs in this game.

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How would you feel about having a separate Capetian, Valois and Bourbon French civs? While Franks stay unchanged

Or imagine that we get new Roman civs representing every quarter duringbthe Tetrarchy

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I don’t think it’s good to get more modes like ROR or Clonicles. AOE2 data will be bigger while some players wanna play only feudal wars. Devs should remake AOE1DE for its game style inspired ROR and Clonicles.
However I don’t sure whether it’s possible. Moreover it means loss of getting additional AOE2 fans (they will become AOE1 fans).

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Nah, they won’t do that. That move would be more controversial since they sold the DLC with the premise that these civilizations would be in the ranked mode. They may rework them, ofc, but I don’t think they’ll remove them. Forums are delusional for expecting devs to move these civs to Chronicles or remove them. Reworking them is probably the only good middle-way solution for both sides.

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Well they will if enough people are calling for it

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No, they won’t, or perhaps this wording should be better: there won’t be enough people to convince the developers to move them into Chronicles. Those people should be the ones who bought the DLC, their numbers should be the majority, and they should campaign specifically to move them into Chronicles. I don’t see such a campaign, only minorities from the forums or Reddit want this, but mind you, these are small communities. In other words, don’t be delusional. They won’t be in the Chronicles; they sold these civilizations for the ranked mode as well. That was the premise, and many bought them for multiplayer as well.

In other words, the only feasible way to satisfy both sides, if that’s the goal ofc, is to rework them. What’s going to happen is that forums or Reddit will still cry for a while, then they’ll forget, and the developers will just balance the new civs. In other words, no substantial change and 3K civs will remain in the game. People here think that they represent AoE2 more than many, but no, they don’t. They’re just loud.

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No I don’t think it’s the minority. Nearly 50% of steam review of the DLC is negative and that’s 50% of people who bought the DLC. Very few people actually want them to stay as ranked civs

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this 100%
(some random characters)

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