Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition: DLC Overview

A Standard DLC provides 2 (or 3) new civilizations and 3 new campaigns. Apart from providing a campaign for each new civilization introduced by the DLC, every DLC also provides 1 campaign for a civilization from the base game that didn’t have one yet.

Below is an overview of all the Standard DLCs and what they have to offer.

* The campaign for the Gurjaras is playable without the DLC, so the DLC still only provides 3 new campaigns.

The new civilizations are playable in Multiplayer. You can play as the new civilizations against human opponents who don’t have the DLC, and you can also get matched against them in ranked matchmaking. However, as the game is well balanced, this does not give you a competitive advantage. Even if a civilization is considered strong by online players at the moment, chances are it will get nerfed in the future.

You can’t really go wrong with buying any of these DLCs. A good way to determine which ones you want to buy may be by simply looking up the new civilizations on the wiki[ageofempires.fandom.com] and go for the ones with the civilizations that appeal the most to you personally. If you are a campaign enjoyer, you might want to know that generally, the campaigns from Dawk of the Dukes are considered to be the best by the community, though they are all close to each other in terms of quality.

With a New Game DLC you are essentially buying a new game that uses the Age of Empires II engine. This means that you get to play a game with its own civilizations and technology tree that are distinct from Age of Empires II, but that still has the same ‘feel’ as Age of Empires II. The New Game DLCs are the following.

Return of Rome is a remake of Age of Empires I that borrows many of its new mechanics, such as gates, from Age of Empires II. Though the remake does not feature all campaigns from classic Age of Empires I, it adds 3 entirely new Age of Empires II-style campaigns.

In addition to providing a remake of Age of Empires I, this DLC also provides the Romans as a playable civilization to Age of Empires II. This civilization is distinct from the Age of Empires I-version of Romans. Just like the new civilizations from the Standard DLCs, the Romans can be played online, including in ranked play.

If you are the type of person who would consider buying Age of Empires I: Definitive Edition, then I recommend this DLC for you. If you are not that type of person, you might still want to buy this DLC for the new campaigns or for the addition of the Romans civilization to Age of Empires II. However, in that case you could also just buy a Standard DLC instead, as they offer new campaigns and civilizations, too.

This DLC focuses on single player content set in classical Greece.

This section will be updated once the DLC is released and properly reviewed.

A Cosmetic DLC provides only cosmetics and no gameplay. There are three Cosmetic DLCs, all of which provide a list of animated profile pictures:

• La Hire’s Dry Humor Animated Icons
• Joan’s Marvelous Moving Masterpieces Animated Icons
• Barbarossa’s Barrel of Pickled Goods Animated Icons

Consider buying any of these DLCs if you want to support the developers.

This DLC provides single player content only in the form of campaign missions.

The campaigns from this DLC are in a different style than the campaigns from the base game and from Standard DLCs. The missions tend to be long, take place on very large maps, utilize novel mechanics, and often change the technology tree of the civilization you are playing as. The community is divided on this DLC. Some like the novelty and scale of the new campaigns. Others criticize them for being a slog to play through and argue that the DLC doesn’t provide much new content for its price, at least compared to other DLCs. For this reason, even if you are only interested in single player content, it could still be the case that you will enjoy other DLCs more than this one.

This DLC allows you to listen to the game music without having the game open. This works in the same way as for other Steam games where you can buy the soundtrack.

It’s free and allows you to play with enhanced graphics, if your computer can handle it.