AoE4 Summary & Review: Dynasties of the East DLC
Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here. It’s been
a while since we’ve had any Age of Empires 4 content on the channel, but next week it’s getting
its largest DLC since 2023, and I have some early access, so we can take a look. It’s called
Dynasties of the East and adds new variant civilizations for Byzantines, Japanese, Delhi, and
Mongols. Variants in AoE4 keep some of the core bonuses and most of the voices, architecture,
music, etc. of an existing civilization, but then add or take mechanics in a slightly
different direction. For this video, we’ll do a quick summary hitting the highlights of all four
new variant civs and then take a look at a new game mode this DLC introduces. Instead of adding a
historical campaign, we’ll jump right in with the Macedonian dynasty, which is the new variant of
Byzantines. The core Byzantine civilization uses cisterns, aqueducts, and a special fifth resource
olive oil for mercenaries, but that’s all replaced with silver as a different fifth resource for
the new variant, which you get from mining gold or stone at a 5:2 ratio. The other major break
with Byzantines is instead of mercenaries, the Macedonian dynasty revolves around Nordic themed
Varangian units with three buildings in that vein. First is the Varangian arsenal, which replaces
your blacksmith and university. X inside of this building costs silver which you get passively
while collecting gold and stone you were going to get anyway. The next building is the Varangian
stronghold which replaces your barracks and in addition to normal barracks things lets you train
a basic archer and night line or at least a Nordic themed equivalent. In addition to the convenience
of that one building being almost a one-stop shop, these units also have special abilities you
can activate while fighting. One particularly with a Nordic theme is the runestone ability
these have to place stones on the ground and pump up your unit’s damage and speed for a short
amount of time. A third notable building is in the Varangian war camp, which basically recycles your
troops. You select what you wanted to produce, including naval units if you place it beside
water. And as you lose units, you get one free one from this building when you’ve lost six times
that unit’s value on the battlefield. Of course, in addition to all these Varangian units, you
still have your regular crossbow and horseman line at the archery range and stable, but I get
the sense the civ is a way to indirectly give players a Nordic civ without having to create an
entirely new architecture set for them. That said, there are still Byzantine elements here. For
example, the Roman and Greek fire texts, making your siege leave patches of fire with each shot.
In terms of landmarks, going up to Fetal Age, you can pick between an economic building that
helps your farming and works as a monastery, versus the Hippodrome, which works as a free
stable and gives you access to higher tier cavalry units. Going up then into Castle Age, you
have a choice of an economic building that gives charges for other buildings to work faster versus
a defensive tower that creates free crossbowmen periodically. Imperial Age then gives you a
choice of creating batches of higher tier elite cataphracts by paying silver or ability to recruit
other civilization siege units. They’re classified as a one-star civ out of three for difficulty
and have a Varangian silver and technology focus. The barracks replacement having an archer and a
cavalry unit definitely streamlines things to some degree. Though considering the unit abilities you
have to micro and the fifth resource to manage, there’s still some extra mechanics you have to get
used to. If you’ve been calling for a Norse civ, but still want to mix in some cataphracts or
mercenary units for the late game, then the civ might be for you. Moving on, we have the Sengoku
Daimyo as a variant for the Japanese. This is the only three-star difficulty civ being added, which
I think comes down to two complicated mechanics that I’ll try to highlight briefly. This civ
actually departs a fair bit from regular Japanese, dropping the bannerman and town center upgrade
focus and instead you have what are called daimyo estates to represent this period’s feudal
waring between clans. You have three options of clans here with a focus of infantry, archers,
and cavalry and have to pick two, which you select by building that clan’s estate. You level
up the clan for each of their estates you build, but can only have one clan reach level three and
the other up to level two, with the third then being locked out. These estates increase the
production speed of nearby military buildings, create daimyos that act as a commander unit with
an aura, and then the clan level adds its own bonus on top. For example, having three estates
for the infantry clan lets infantry created from barracks beside those estates have deflective
armor that can periodically block incoming attacks. Regular Japanese, of course, get that for
all their samurai, but you have to work a bit for the clan bonuses and plan out your buildings to
maximize things, hence the three-star difficulty. Though when in doubt, just put your buildings
close together and spam a bit of everything. Your economy then mercifully keeps things pretty
simple at first, giving you the farmhouse, which works as a house and mill together, as well as
the forge, which works as your golden stone drop off point in addition to being your blacksmith.
You also get the hunt collection tech for free and can also see the location of deer and boar on
the map from the start of the game, which becomes even more relevant when we get to their second
unique mechanic, the Matsuri and Yatai. Again, broad strokes. The way this works is your market
is also a universal resource drop off point. So you can put it between a gold or stone pile and
a wood line. You then train Yatai food cards and you place these beside natural sources of food
where it’ll start passively generating food for you without using it up on the map. A bit like
a shrine in Age of Empires 3. Here I’m getting 50 food per minute from seven deer and a sheep
in range without using those up. Though you are limited to just three of these plus one per age
up, so you can’t completely cover the map. And you also can’t double them up on the same location.
After a few minutes, your Yatai then sends a trader back to the market that drops off more
food, plus levels up the market, giving nearby villagers a collection boost. Basically, use
markets as drop off points and put your passive resource cards on deer or boar, and they’ll do the
rest. Well, you can see a lot of synergy here with knowing the location of hunt from the start of the
game. Other than that, a few other notable things are your monks are more combat focused and heal
nearby friendly units only while they’re fighting, so they’re good to mix in, but they can’t heal in
between fights. The crossbow line is then replaced by the Ashigaru, which are a mix of a hand cannon
and crossbow. You also can’t build castles until Imperial Age, and your castles cost 300 extra
wood, but are a little tougher than usual and fire higher damage rockets, so your mid game defenses
are a bit lacking, but late game you have some pretty satisfying explosions. As for landmarks,
feudal age gives you an economy one that increases pop cap and heals units around it, or you can
have a building that reveals specific points in the map and can spawn ninjas. For Castle Age, you
choose between a religious landmark that works as a temple and boost your warrior monks versus
an economic landmark that gives you a way to essentially farm infinite gold from the safety of
your base. In Imperial Age, you then have a choice between a landmark pumping up your daimyos, making
them cheaper, versus another that works as a castle and reduces future castle costs by a third.
So, you have to decide if you want a more unit or fortification focus. Overall, it’s a pretty
straightforward civilization outside of the daimyo estates and market mechanics. Though, I also think
the ceiling for the civ is higher than regular Japanese if you can use those things to their
potential. Next up, we have the Tughlaq Dynasty as a variant of the Delhi Sultanate. Some things here
will be quite familiar, like infantry building walls and forging bonuses at the expense of taking
boar. Where the civ radically departs is instead of Delhi’s free techs that solely research, tulip
have 20% more expensive techs that research almost instantly. So at least in that regard or almost
the exact opposite. Instead of a tech focus, their main emphasis is then on elephants and forts. To
start with elephants, they use worker elephants as a drop off point and the place to research eco
techs as elephants are of course very smart and their ability to research is really underutilized
by the other empires in the game. These don’t take pop space. They move around with a wood line as
it’s used up and can even garrison during a raid with the downsides being a little more expensive
than usual and also when you build one they have to walk from the nearest town center or fort where
they’re trained which takes a bit of extra time. Simplifying things a bit, you’re then missing eco
techs for specific resources like a wood upgrade. And instead everything you drop off to an elephant
or town center is the civ give 5% more resources to start with and you can use text to get that up
to plus 20%. As for their fort focus, they build a unique version of keeps available as early as
feudal age and then individually upgrade those forts with governors. There are six of these to
choose from which can be assigned to an individual fort for free, giving either global benefits or
something for that fort and the surrounding area. If you lose a fort, you can then reassign the
governor to a different one. And for example, one of them lets your town centers work 15%
faster, up to 50% faster if you upgrade that fort to level three through additional attacks.
Though the governors give impactful bonuses, but it’s about 1,500 stone per fort to get them to
that level cap. As for units, you have quite a few of these standard ones, but then add in an extra
elephant flavor. Your anti-archer horsemen, for example, is replaced by a faster raider elephant.
You have the war elephant is your heavy cavalry. The ballista elephant replacing the springald,
and the healer elephant in addition to the regular imam. These have two riders who can then heal two
nearby units at the same time. As for landmarks, in feudal, you can choose between pumping up your
elephant attack speed or getting early access to healer elephants at a discount. In Castle Age,
you choose between a building with a lot of extra techs you can research, and remember you research
them extra quickly, or a defensive landmark, reducing the stone cost of future buildings,
making all those fort and governors cheaper to get up and running. In Imperial, the options are
a building that immediately gives you a top tier governor bonus or some food and gold generated
for each governor you have. So you can really see that emphasis on elephants early and governors
late. They’re classified as difficulty level two, presumably because some of the governors and
fort locations have ore effects that you have to anticipate, but the game plan of making elephants
and having universal drop off points that can move with your units keeps things out of the three-star
level. And finally, the fourth new variant is the Golden Horde as a new spin on Mongols. In terms
of overlap, they still have the Mongols lack of houses, better traders, stables in dark age,
and no castles. But what’s new is they dropped the nomadic theme, having fixed buildings they
can’t move. They can research the Imperial Age, and their military units are trained in batches
of two. It sounds OP, but they cost twice as much and take double the training time until you get a
tech later on. So, it’s only an advantage in the late game and it’s actually a slight disadvantage
early on since you have to pay for two units up front and wait for both to train. Instead of a
starting con unit, your scouts then all have the scouting falcon ability. Though, they still have
great scouting early, just not with that one unit coming back over and over. For another small
twist, instead of the pasture, they then have the stockyard, which is basically a farm for four
units at once and works as its own drop off point, simplifying your economy in that respect. The
ovoo then works similar to usual, but you can build an extra one each time you age up. These
generate your stone which then works a little differently for golden horde the Mongols as it’s
primarily used to buy units at the golden tent. This is your single landmark similar to Abbasids
where your aging up happens here essentially like researching technologies instead of building new
landmarks. It can also create a unique con unit with a stone cost that buffs units around it. And
you can also train bodyguards for him which have a very unique effect of redirecting damage from
the con to themselves. The golden tent also has an edict in the bottom row to give different
bonuses such as letting your outpost increase the work rate of military buildings around them
as one example. Those outposts are then slightly beefier and called fortified outposts costing
a bit of stone in addition to wood and don’t have the regular Mongol bonus of faster movement
speed around them. As for bonuses when aging up, your options at the golden tent for feudal are
between reducing the cost and buffing up the con and bodyguards of that building versus free
military buildings you can place to speed up your early rush. For castle age, you then have a choice
between increasing heavy units armor and passive wood generation or an extra ovoo and better stone
production. In Imperial Age, you can then either get a further stone discount on those special
units and better stats or free gold generation from fortified outposts. They’re described as
having an aggression, cavalry, and horde focus, and I can’t disagree with any of that and are
considered two star difficulty. Those are the four new variant civilizations in broad strokes,
but there’s a bit more included in the DLC. First, there are eight new maps, including the AE2
classic Mei. New maps aren’t necessarily something you’d buy a DLC for, but are always fun to try
and add a mix of choke pointy, very open, and different degrees of waterplay. More significant
and something worth talking about for a moment is there is no campaign in the DLC. Sultan’s
Ascend had eight missions. The most recent DLC, Knights of Cross and Rose, cut that down to four
standalone historical missions. And this DLC walks away from historical single player modes entirely.
Instead, it adds a new Crucible game mode, which has a lot in common with the gauntlet from Age of
Mythology or Roguelite games if you’re familiar with those. And the basic idea is there are four
maps with all of them playing out as a defend the wonders scenario where you win by surviving 25
minutes for bronze, 35 minutes for silver, and 45 for a gold medal. The twist is that while you’re
playing, you periodically have a choice of extra bonuses given to you, ranging from free resources
to unit or building buffs, extra range on archers, that sort of thing. In between runs, you also
get perk points you can spend to permanently give yourself advantages on all future runs.
For example, starting with extra villagers, free buildings, stat bus for units on top of the ones
you’re randomly offered to choose between each run, combining a progression system with something
random each time. The result is it’s only four unique maps, but you can play them over and over
on increasingly high difficulty settings as you turn whatever s you’re playing into a superpowered
version. This is a whole gaming genre that’s very popular. And while this and variant sibs feel like
they were probably motivated to be as efficient as possible with developer time and make the game
cheaper to produce, I actually think this new mode is a huge success as Crucible is way more fun than
AoE4’s campaigns, which I don’t think were bad at all. There are even some objectives to accomplish
around the map for extra advantages, forcing you to venture out instead of just turtling. Though,
it’s a well-implemented version of the idea and is the highlight of the DLC for me. In terms of an
overall review and if you should get it or not, it’s hard for someone else to tell you. If you
play multiplayer AoE4 a lot and are excited about new saves, then this is four new ones to
play around with, and they all seem very strong. If you only do single player, I’d still say the
Crucible gives at least as much as a typical AoE4 campaign for replay-ability. And if you really get
into it, the ceiling for how long you can grind it out is very high. I also look at it as do you
want to support the game or not? as DLCs will let them keep servers running and continue periodic
patching and balance changes. So, of the $20, think of it as 10 going towards just keeping
the game going. That’ll do it for this one, though. And while this is not the start of
me covering AoE4 again regularly, I like to keep you guys in the loop about what else is
going on in the franchise and give my honest opinion of early access content when I get it.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.
The latest Age of Empires 4 DLC “Dynasties of the East” comes out next week. Let’s see an early preview of the four new variant civilizations and the new “Crucible” game mode in place of a campaign. The DLC comes out November 4th.
0:40 Macedonian Dynasty
3:16 Sengoku Daimyo
6:53 Tughlaq Dynasty
9:41 Golden Horde
12:00 New maps
12:19 Crucible Mode instead of a campaign
13:58 Overall review
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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition