Writing this to process some thoughts about the game and things.
Most of these are just speculation/personal thoughts
This has been a big example of the Ernest Hemingway quote “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly”
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There has been signs but I think with this to me its clear that we have passed on to the other side of the slope on the Age of Empires boom/ revival that began with AOE2 DE . The recent AOE 2 Battle for Greece DLC was probably the peak and now we are in the down slope, probably until the promised wave of AOM contents are finished ( Chinese +1 more, which are promised to be just part of the main game).
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The fact that this news was released on Chinese New Year, and also with not really much update on the AOM Chinese update itself (which I kinda expected to be when its released) signals to me that even that is not being developed as expected, meaning the development timeline for content updates being done inhouse might be longer in the future (longer then it already is)
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Given that, I also suspect that updates that are not effectively already sold ( like AOM) are on shakier ground, so things like a planned expansion in 2025 for AOE4, which is much vauger then even the AOE3 DLC and that the last things to be delivered will be AOM related.
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The Battle for Greece DLC does I think give a glimpse of the possible future direction, but not one that will be coming anytime soon, with the main developers effectively just managing whats left and any content development is outsourced to effectively modders. Reason why I think not anytime soon is mostly thinking they will try clearing their existing pipeline before moving to a new model ( anyone who has ever seen a restructuring knows its not the cleanest process)
So this announcement does mark the end of the AOE Boom and does change everything about the franchise that has been going on for the last (welp look at that its been like 6 years already).
But in a way it changes nothing and we are back to where we were before DE, but with a decent bigger content library and stuff to work with. There are things that would set AOE3 a stronger foundations for things to come (better modding tools and maybe community updates) but we have to see what can be done, or we go back to just modding the games directly and see how that goes.