Gaming Age of Empires II - Definitive Edition | Expansion announced

[Lyricist]

Now whether you think a Definitive Edition should get further expansions is one thing. But the other thing is: Age of Empires II is still alive and well.

Age of Empires II - Definitive Edition, which was released in late 2019, has been announced to receive a new expansion pack featuring 2 all new civilizations once again.

The Burgundians (cavalry civilization)
The Sicilians (infantry civilization)

The game has been very popular since its innitial release of course, but has also seen a rebirth of popularity since the release of the Definitive Edition which features most of the community content quality of life improvements from over the years, as well as some all new gameplay features. Also the Age of Empires II esports scene is steadily growing with multiple tournaments per year that each attract tens of thousands of viewers across multiple streamers. Some notable streamers are TheViper, Hera, MembTV, and T90Official among others.

Here's my earlier take on the current set of civilizations:

Spoiler

Aztecs (faster military production)
Berbers (cheaper cavalry)
Britons (longer range for archers)
Burmese (elephants and ranged cavalry unique unit)
Bulgarians (has a smaller version of the castle available)
Byzantines (stronger buildings, cheap counters to everything)
Celts (faster infantry, strong siege)
Chinese (start with more villagers, can do everything well)
Cumans (can build an additional town center in the Feudal Age)
Ethiopians (food and gold bonus when reaching new age, siege and archer civ)
Franks (stronger cavalry)
Goths (horde-esque infantry waves)
Huns (no houses, cavalry and cavalry archer civilization)
Incas (start with an extra llama, good tower rush potential)
Indians (no knights, but heavy camel cavalry)
Italians (archer civ with bonus against cavalry)
Japanese (infantry attacks faster)
Khmer (all about elephants and scorpions)
Koreans (free tower upgrades, archer and siege civilization)
Lithuanians (knights get bonus attack from collected relics)
Magyars (stronger cavalry)
Malay (reach next ages faster)
Malians (fast long range infantry unique unit, can do everything well)
Mayas (ressources last longer, cheaper archers)
Mongols (scouts have better line of sight, strong unique unit)
Persians (war elephants, cavalry civilization)
Portuguese (gunpowder civilization)
Saracens (better market buy and sell rates, archers destroy buildings)
Slavs (crazy good farmers, cheap and strong siege units)
Spanish (team trading bonus, cavalry and gunpowder civilization)
Teutons (bonuses for towers and castles, infantry and siege civilization)
Tatars (spawn extra sheep, cavalry archer civilization)
Turks (free gunpowder, scout line is better at raiding)
Vietnamese (stronger archers)
Vikings (free economy bonuses)

 

[Massive Spanner]

I used to love it and got it and play the odd "noobs only" game online and just get absolutely annihilated by these sad cnuts who clearly aren't noobs and can build an army in about 10 seconds and own the whole map. It's quite shite tbh that they don't have a better matchmaking system because it is still loads of fun if you play with people aren't your skill level.

 

[spontaneus1]

I used to love it and got it and play the odd "noobs only" game online and just get absolutely annihilated by these sad cnuts who clearly aren't noobs and can build an army in about 10 seconds and own the whole map. It's quite shite tbh that they don't have a better matchmaking system because it is still loads of fun if you play with people aren't your skill level.

There is a ranked queue which is much better if you want to play people of your own level.

 

[Pexbo]

I used to love it and got it and play the odd "noobs only" game online and just get absolutely annihilated by these sad cnuts who clearly aren't noobs and can build an army in about 10 seconds and own the whole map. It's quite shite tbh that they don't have a better matchmaking system because it is still loads of fun if you play with people aren't your skill level.

Yeah I had the same. Before I could get enough resources to protect myself, some wanker had already boxed me in with a wall around my camp. The speed at which they gathered resources and built was very very suspect.

 

[krautrøck]

More like Rage of Empires amirite.

 

[Ramos]

How i loved that game back in the day (1999 or 2000 was it?).

AoM was pretty cool too.

 

[Lyricist]

Definitive Edition, as @spontaneus1 has mentioned, has a ranked queue, that ranks your around players of your skill level. You just need to play 10 games first, to get a rank. Might take a little bit, but once the game knows your level, you should get well balanced games every time.

Also there's now an Art of War Single Player section that basically gives you a rundown/teaches you most of the meta advancements that happened within the player base in the last 20 years. If you do those a bunch of times, look at some build orders, and then play a couple of games in the ranked queue, you should be releatively fine. It has a steep learning curve though and obviously to get to that level, you need to have already devoted a bit of time.

 

[Massive Spanner]

There is a ranked queue which is much better if you want to play people of your own level.

I think we tried this before a few times and you'd be waiting absolutely ages for a match. Was weird, doesn't seem like the game has a lot of concurrent players even at peak times.

 

[Lyricist]

More like Rage of Empires amirite.

How about Age of Vampires?

 

[Lyricist]

I think we tried this before a few times and you'd be waiting absolutely ages for a match. Was weird, doesn't seem like the game has a lot of concurrent players even at peak times.

It definitely does have many players. But it may have a hard time matching you against players of "similar level" if all of your ratings are very different or you don't have a rating yet.

Sometimes the queue takes 30 seconds, sometimes it takes 6 minutes or so. But when it takes longer it allows for more difference in the average ratings of the 2 teams playing against each others. So it's generally best, if it finds you a game quickly, so it's not a blowout for either side.

 

[Organic Potatoes]

The steepest part of the learning curve for me was not moving around the map with WASD.

 

[spontaneus1]

I think we tried this before a few times and you'd be waiting absolutely ages for a match. Was weird, doesn't seem like the game has a lot of concurrent players even at peak times.

Weird that, I'd say my average time is 2 mins or so. As for playerbase it's doing better than it has in years. Broken back into the mainstream recently.

 

[led_scholes]

https://www.gamingbible.co.uk/news/age-of-empires-2-streamers-70-hour-match-20220211

That's mental. Surely it has to be some kind of a record. Evidently, someone dropped at 100 hours.

At 50 hours they were going strong;

 

[adexkola]

Free smoke for any challenger on here once I get my rig set up