While some of us were preparing for the console release, others started to work on the biggest content update in Age II: DE history. This update will bring the largest number of fixes and changes ever seen in a single update, with a massive number of balance changes, quality of life improvements. and more.
Quote from the latest patch notes.
What do you think do they mean by this?
Largest content and largest balance update. It doesn’t sound like they are talking about a DLC here.
Are the content and the balance two things that happen to be released together or is the new content used to rebalance the game.
Like new bonuses, technologies or even units are added for balance?
The biggest means bigger then the new content (outside of new Civs and campaigns) in the Definitive Edition (Supplies), The African Kingdoms (Siege Tower, Fire Galley, Demolition Raft, Arrow Slits and Arson) or even the Forgotten Empires (Castle Age Unique Technologies for ever civilisation).
Theoretically if it’s actually “the biggest” then it would be bigger then The Conquerors with the new units Halberdier, Hussar and Petrad, new technologies Caravan, Herbal Medicine, Heresy, Theocracy, Thumb Ring, Blood Lines and Parthian Tactics. But The Conquerors, the Definitive Edition and The Forgotten Empires are paid updates but you got the features from those other DLCs for free if you had the base game.
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They promised that popular mods would be turned into setting in their road map so that’s likely the QoL they are talking about.
Water being reworked seems more likely then big changes to land based gameplay.
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Also is the biggest Age II DE update, not from all Age II.
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Oh yeah true.
So maybe it’s comparable with the free content addend in The African Kingdoms.
DE, not HD 
Also, 20 chars
I know.
But that could still mean that it’s about as big as African Kingdoms, which was bigger then an DE update.
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Honestly I don’t care to guess. People here love to speculate and imagine what some new update might be like (as showcased in the Return of Rome threads), but the devs have yet to release anything to justify that kind of excitement. They have yet to clean up the mess from the Xbox port (despite briefly releasing a patch which purported to do just that), and Return of Rome will likely be delayed past its intended date. Against that backdrop, can’t really get excited to chase some shiny new promise of some vague cool thing the devs plan on adding someday.
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“…with a massive number of balance changes…”
This is the most interesting part for me.
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“Content update” makes me think they’ll add new stuff, but I doubt that’s the case. Unless they’re adding the new DLC on the same patch. I dunno, we’ll have to wait until it releases Soon™.
It sounds like the patch is separate from any DLC update, so it will be quite interesting. I wasn’t playing when African Kingdoms was released, but was the Water update there included in the release or did that come later?
The water trifecta system was probably the largest change AoE2 has had to date, so it’ll be interesting to see what new stuff they can come up with. A second water rework would be nice. ;p
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Bro has no hype. 11
With their current approach to Return of Rome DLC, I’m not getting any hype either.
Last year got very slow after the release of Dynasties of India because they were busy working on the Xbox port.
But porting the game to Xbox is a very different skill set from creating new content or balancing the game. So the people that couldn’t work on the Xbox port worked on other things in the background.
That could have also been things for RoR or even AoMR but that is likely made by a different team.
Sure, but the people who weren’t on the xbox port have had 2 months shy of a year to work on these mysterious “other things.” Which could indeed be very cool and expansive, but once again we return to the reality of having no meaningful communication beyond the “announcing of announcements.” Any possible “hype” is starving in an information famine.
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That is true but it always has been like that.
AoE4 also didn’t manage to build a hype because there was nothing until half a year before release.
They are pretty bad at PR and marketing somehow.
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It’s not PR its more like hush hush.
Maybe there will be unique castles for everyone* 
.
*One civilization from each architecture group would keep the standard castle.
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Of the whole saga or RTS in general in fact… tell me an expansion that will put you 16 civs and 10 campaigns in one game…
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Keep your expectations low, it is better to be surprised than to be disappointed.
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Yes, I know… at least we know that the dlc will have the 16 civs and the 10 campaigns of AoE 1 DE…