Age of Empires II

RM 1v1 sample: 6,388,699 games. Overall win-rate leaders: Romans 54.3%, Tupi 53.2%, Bulgarians 52.7%. Most played: Mongols 5.7%, Franks 4.9%, Persians 3.6%. Elite slice: Byzantines 79.1%, Chinese 77.7%, Tupi 76.6%.

AoE2.ai is tracking 45,573 RM 1v1 players. Top five: #1 TAG_MbL_ 2,903, #2 VIT | Hera 2,903, #3 wR.Lucho 2,885, #4 Oni.Vinchester 2,884, #5 TAG_Sitaux 2,849. Longest hot streak in the sampled top ladder: 抖音ique (64 wins). Best sampled win rate with 300+ games: VIT | Hera 74.9%. 0 of the sampled top players have played in the last 24h.

I’m not against DLCs. New civs, campaigns, and gameplay content are important ways to keep AoE alive. A good DLC can bring players back, create new strategies, and help the game continue to grow. The Viking Sagas is also a very strong DLC theme. Compared to the previous two Ranked DLCs, the Viking theme is much easier for players to connect with and fits naturally into AoE. If the previous two Ranked DLCs didn’t exist, The Viking Sagas would probably receive a much warmer reception. However, the issue isn’t The Viking Sagas itself. The issue is the order of priorities. The previous two Ranked DLCs are already part of AoE2. Once a DLC is released, it’s no longer just a product sold at launch. It becomes part of the game, and the devs have a responsibility to continue improving, balancing, and supporting it. Players aren’t against new content. They just want existing content to be properly maintained. This leads to a DLC idea: The Empty DLC A DLC with no new civs, no new campaigns, and no new units. Of course, that wouldn’t make much sense from a business perspective. But I believe there’d still be players willing to purchase it, especially in today’s AoE2 community. Because they wouldn’t be buying “empty content.” They’d be supporting a message: “Please invest more resources into improving the game we already have.” The Empty DLC: More time for balance adjustments Better support for existing civs More testing before major releases Improved mod compatibility Empty doesn’t mean nothing “Empty” doesn’t always mean a lack of value. Sen no Rikyū (千利休), a cultural figure of the Sengoku period between the eras represented by AoE2 and AoE3, showed that empty space can have meaning. The same idea applies here. The Empty DLC wouldn’t add more content. It would create space for better balance, testing, and long-term support. Empty doesn’t mean nothing. Sometimes, leaving space is what allows something to become better. The Viking Sagas can be a great new chapter for AoE. But th