The next AoE2 DLC – what we know so far!
Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here. In case you
didn’t happen to catch the news, there was a big announcement today that the next Age of Empires
2 DLC is going to be another installment of the single player focused Chronicles series centered
around Alexander the Great. The topic of this one wasn’t really a surprise. And after how well
the first entry of Chronicles was received by the single player community, this was pretty obviously
coming at some point, but we now have a release date of October 14th, as well as a trailer,
screenshots, and more information about what it entails. So, let’s take a look at everything we
know so far. First off, the three civilizations are going to be Macedonians, of course, along with
Thrace and Puru. Thrace is an interesting one, as in the grand scheme of Alexander’s conquest,
they weren’t that powerful, but were his first test as a leader. So, through them, he established
his early credibility, and narratively, I think it makes total sense. There’s a definite
Greek style to the architecture and units, but maybe a bit rougher around the edges and more
adapted to their hill country. The description talks about the Romia warriors and generating
gold from combat being a unique quality. They seem to have an infantry and skirmisher focus
and are mostly there for young Alexander to beat up on. Though apparently they get one mission of
their own where you get to play them firsthand and get their perspective on things. The second new
civilization you’ll encounter is the Puru as the Indian stand in. They have an elephant and archer
focus. And since these civs will never be in ranked, they can have some fun with the elephants,
which almost look like elephant lancers to me. I love they’re creating brand new architecture sets
and not just reusing the Indian architecture set from the base game. The third civ, of course,
has to be Macedonians who combine ultra-long pikes with strong cavalry. And the trailer shows
a couple of different cavalry units throughout, as well as those two core units fighting together.
The big picture is this is a single player focused DLC much like Battle for Greece with 18 missions
16 of which you play as Alexander and historically would have gone through the order of fighting
Thracians Greeks Persians and then Indians like the first Chronicles DLC. They’re embracing the
idea of customizing your run and making lasting choices that affect later missions with 16 bonus
units to unlock and four bonus techs that you can use in later missions based on what you choose.
I like the idea of having a limited number of options from units you encounter to mix and match
in your armies. And they sort of did the same thing in Battle for Greece. Though in that case,
it was mostly just picking your bodyguard units, if I remember. And I’m glad to see they might
even be expanding that idea, which I think adds a bit of replayability. It really feels
like the first Chronicles campaign was setting the stage for this one, as they can reuse the
Greeks and the Persians again. And in a way, this allowed them to go so large in scope the
second time. The trailer is pretty fast-paced, but we’ll freeze frame on a couple of interesting
shots. They seem to show recognizable historical battles at times. Starting off, we have a
battle here between the Macedonians in purple and Thracians in green with a Thracian unique unit
holding their distinct historical weapons called the Falk. While on the other side, we see some of
Alexander’s companion cavalry flanking in addition to a unique twist on the bombard cannon that’s
a bit more period appropriate. In the next shot, we see what might be from the mission where you
play as the Puru, which they describe as giving an Indian perspective on events leading up to or
involving Alexander’s attempt to conquer them. In addition to elephants, it seems like camels
are making a comeback and adding more cavalry diversity to the campaign. The next shot shows
us Macedonians fighting the Puru, this time with their unique archers shown. These are apparently
bamboo long bows, which they describe as devastating. So, if you like archers, this may be
a save you want to try in single player skirmish, even outside the campaign setting. Another shot
answers a question I had going into this, which is how they’re going to handle thieves, and was sort
of an infamous chapter in Alexander’s early legacy and worth covering, but not necessarily important
enough to make their own civilization. These units actually have the Theban symbol on their
shield. So, there may be Athenians as a baseline, but come with a custom unit to make them distinct,
which I think really speaks to the level of detail here. If you have any historical knowledge of
what’s going on, you’ll probably catch some of these sorts of things. And if not, you can still
enjoy the gameplay and learn more about history’s most accomplished 32-year-old of all time. We
also get another twist on an older siege unit with a unique style of onager. Again, these are
just really nice details where they could have gotten away with a regular looking onager, but are
trying to make things more visually interesting. A few other moments that jump out probably from
the campaign include Alexander storming some beaches of a river against the Peru which have not
just their bamboo longbows but a unique infantry unit as well and then probably straight from the
campaigns but might be the battle of Gaugamela. This is the big one against Darias III where by
winning this battle Alexander secures a huge part of the Persian Empire. This is probably only a
small part of that battle and just Alexander’s detachment, but was obviously going to be in the
campaign somewhere as maybe his most famous battle and certainly the Alexander movie went all out in
showing it. We also have a nice shot of the Lancer elephants. And again, since this is all just
for single player or unranked custom lobbies, we don’t have to worry if these units are balanced
or not since they’ll never be in ranked. The devs are incredibly clear that all these civs are for
single player only, and none of the three civs are going to be in ranked. If you’re only into
multiplayer, then this DLC has no effect on you other than continuing to fund balanced patches and
keeping the servers up. If single player is your focus, then it’s 18 new missions following in the
footsteps of Battle for Greece. If that was any indication, this should have high production
quality narration, new music, new mechanics, and more choices and unique units to experiment
with in single player than your typical A2 DLC. This is all coming out in just under a month and
is $15 US, though is currently 15% off through a pre-order. If you enjoyed the last one, this looks
to be a similar experience and level of quality. The Last Chronicles DLC was surprisingly good and
actually the highest rated Age of Empires DLC on Steam as far as I know. So, there’s definitely
an audience for this and so far looks to be the follow-up I think fans were hoping for. I’ll
of course be covering it a bit more once it comes out. But that’ll do it for this one. Thanks
for watching, guys, and I’ll see you next time.
Official announcement: https://www.ageofempires.com/news/pre-order-chronicles-alexander-the-great-for-age-of-empires-ii-definitive-edition/
I think anyone paying attention knew the next DLC would be Chronicles: Alexander the Great, but today we get to take a better look at the new units and civilizations. It turns out it includes Macedonians, Thracians, and Puru (Indians).
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Background music from Epidemic Sound: http://www.epidemicsound.com
Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition