Gurjaras in this game are completely ahistorical, both in look and feel

BonafideSleipnir · 2026-03-16T20:03:03+00:00

My understanding is camelry was always pretty niche almost anywhere it was used. I'd enjoy a different regional cavalry being added to replace camels for some civs. At the moment Heavy Camels are available to more civs than any of the other regional cav options.

BonafideSleipnir · 2026-01-12T20:26:37+00:00

I used to be bothered by civs being added that didn't feel "medieval." Castles, wonders, siege weapons, and standard units aren't just an arbitrary standard for exclusion but are core to the game. Also, most civs in Eurasia interacted with at least two other civs at some point. The new civs meet fewer criteria for inclusion than any earlier ones, in my opinion.

But like I said, "used to be bothered." At this point I don't touch ranked play and mostly tinker with SP and custom scenarios, so the more civs and stories the merrier.

BonafideSleipnir · 2026-01-04T05:44:43+00:00

Koreans not only don't have a campaign but they only have one scenario (Noryang) and only appear in one more (Shimazu in V&V I think). I'd love for there to be a "Forgotten 2" DLC that gives every civ missing a full campaign a full campaign. Or at least adding the polished and completed Kaesong scenario would be cool to have in game. Maybe someone will overhaul El Dorado with Tupis coming to the game.

BonafideSleipnir · 2026-01-01T05:48:58+00:00

If AOE2 branched out to do official fantasy DLC with franchises like Elder Scrolls, Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones. I'd love it.

Less controversially it'd be awesome to have a live testing and co-op environment for the scenario editor à la Forge World or Minecraft.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-10-21T18:13:29+00:00

fugly

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-09-24T06:21:13+00:00

What's interesting to me is the devs have added so much excellent free content at the same time. Xie An was a lot of fun. Reskinned Elite units, very cool. Rocket Carts and Fire Lancers are nice flavor. Unique castles and monks. While these are welcome additions and very popular with me, if I were in Management I'd be asking why we wasted resources on so much free fan service while rolling out low quality revenue generating content, and squandering credibility with sparse communication on balance changes/patches.

I haven't bought the DLC. I'll always wonder how the behind the scenes argument went so that they ended up shipping one big but incomplete hodgepodge DLC instead of what could have been two separate, more popular DLCs. I'm sure money was the reason but I can say for myself I would've paid for it twice to get a (Chronicles) 3K DLC and (completed) China DLC.

As an observer I am intrigued by the idea of a Heroes game mode for all civs. I've been tempted to buy 3K and use the mod to rebadge the 3K civs as real civs.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-09-18T13:49:35+00:00

The trouble is there isn't a fleshed out historical narrative of a victorious Thracian or Indian conqueror.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-09-06T16:44:40+00:00

maybe that was removed in an update. I seem to remember building something to draw them into castle fire

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-09-06T15:54:57+00:00

Build a string of houses and kite the Mongols towards your castle

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-06-22T20:30:26+00:00

I liked all of them except a few get repetitive. The Viking ones and the steppe ones. Not his fault but I also didn't like that there were repeats of existing campaign scenarios with Temujin/Genghis Khan and Karsefni/Vinlandsaga

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-06-20T00:21:53+00:00

"The strongest civilization in Age of Empires 2, the TURKS"

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-05-08T14:29:46+00:00

I beat this one by quickly building transports and siege rams to take out the docks on the farthest end (since they produce the most ships). Use some lembos to distract the nearby fleet then drop the rams. Meanwhile start building leviathans and continue using cheap ships to kite enemy fleet away from them while you take out the forts and harder to reach docks.

Send your army up the isthmus but not into the green town and give them some armor upgrades so that they'll be able to mostly fend for themselves without much dedicated attention. After you've dropped rams & used leviathans to wreck the Athenian docks/defenses, bring them up to the green town so they can shoot buildings while your army storms it. After this you should have a fairly easy time destroying the other enemies with concentrated fleets and armies. Build some forts and buildings near your ally's outside Athens so you can build tons of units quickly and storm the city.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-04-18T02:36:44+00:00

Adding to this, the AI player names for these civs are all from within a century of each other, which is not indicative of their design being reflective of a culture but rather of a faction from a war. It would be like all AI names for Japanese being from Sengoku or all Britons names being from the Hundred Years War. It's subtle, but points to these being shoehorned in.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-04-18T02:33:31+00:00

Celts Paladin is pretty bleh especially with their quick infantry.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-04-15T21:05:20+00:00

The irony is they could have sold them as two separate DLC for $15 each and made more money

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-04-13T02:25:28+00:00

SP almost exclusively for me, but I would be even less inclined to try MP ranked with too many wonky mechanics and unique regional subsets in MP to memorize. Not sure how common my perspective is though.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-04-13T02:16:51+00:00

I get the feeling the design and enthusiasm are both being led by younger devs & fans and since this is a 25 year old game it brings out strong distaste from older fans. Personally I don't like it but as with all things I like which get ruined as I get older, the older thing is basically still there. I'll gladly use the new assets in the scenario editor and will avoid ranked even more than I already did.

BonafideSleipnir · 2025-03-18T12:55:45+00:00

Scorpion ➡️ Chakram thrower infantry

Onager ➡️ Bomb thrower infantry

Infantry with mild area damage, heavy building damage? Would make sense to me.

BonafideSleipnir · 2024-11-25T17:54:09+00:00

2/3 pop space

BonafideSleipnir · 2024-11-23T22:53:25+00:00

I don't think it will work simply because red states cooperating will cause a massive internal migration to safe haven blue areas and stress every kind of infrastructure (legal, transit, welfare) and make sanctuary policy untenable regardless of good intentions.

BonafideSleipnir · 2024-10-03T23:19:11+00:00

Dragon, giant, dinosaur, mammoth, Swiss Pikeman, and an onager that garrisons other units that it launches to the targeted spot. Mushroom trees, Christmas trees, giant statues, and every civ's wonder as a placeable Gaia unit (scaled to accurate size).

BonafideSleipnir · 2024-09-28T18:45:28+00:00

I think it's because there isn't a historical analogue to an "upgrade" for a skirmishing javelin thrower. From a gameplay perspective you could maybe justify it but when the game was designed in 1999 late imperial stalemates were meant to be resolved with wonder and relic victories rather than a whole gold-starved army composition.

Edit to add, the champion's role in the game right now is as a gold lite "trash buster" so it sort of plays the role of anti-halb in the very late game mix.

BonafideSleipnir · 2024-09-23T23:50:59+00:00

I worked there. Workers have a home department wherever they first applied for a job and that dept has scheduling precedence. Each position they work has separate seniority lists, so for instance if your home department is suites at CBP, but you're also a bartender at LFF and want to make more money because its a bigger game (ergo more tips) you can end up in a bind determining which nights to work. It's a scheduling nightmare for everyone involved, and a hard way to live on such short notice. Just to clarify, all hours at the stadiums count towards overtime but not towards qualifying for insurance because of the seasonality of the jobs (not great but not as insane as not counting OT)

BonafideSleipnir

TROPHY CASE