The Conquerors is still the GOAT Expansion.

Forgotten empires really revived interest in the series. Seriously it's crazy how much buzz it created

If you count AoC a DLC with all those QoL features (ship formation, vill auto working after construction, etc) I think it would be fair to count all the DE features in the Last Khans "expansion" like auto farm reseed, vill waypoint and many many more

Maybe Forgotten empires civs etc are not relevant too much but the impact of that DLC is really deep and it's the reason why we have aoe 2 DE and everything we have today.

Return of Rome - "This felt like a DLC that had no clear audience" *awkwardly raises hand* I loved it..........

From a single player standpoint, Return of Rome is incredible. I get that most people don't care about AOE I but the new campaigns are genuinely good and even the remakes of the old ones are pretty enjoyable. In terms of purely amount of content, it is top tier. And while the roman civilization for AOE 2 is kind of weird, it is nice to see it in the Alaric and Atila campaigns and at the very least is extra content for the multiplayer people. Victors and Vanquished on the other hand is extremely hard to defend given that most of its content is just expensive payed mods and that's all the content really.

what a pleasant surprise to see this on my feed this morning -- thanks! My own favorite DLC was Dawn of the Dukes because of the compelling story telling accompanying solid polished content. While V&V was reviled, it did point a new way forward, namely focus more on developing campaigns as the center piece of a DLC rather than introducing totally new civs. The devs should try to produce something akin to the magic of the campaigns of Dawn of the Dukes. And I think the obvious place to do this is China -- given the long history of the Chinese civ during the Age of Empire time line, I could see one or more DLCs focusing on different Chinese dynasties with perhaps variations on the basic Chinese civ content depending on the dynasty. But it cannot be simply reworking of existing custom campaigns or based on the work of one dev (no matter how innovative that dev is).

Eh, I'm gonna break a lance in favor of Return of Rome. It actually offers us a way to play AoE1 without the obnoxious pathfinding of AoE1 DE, as well as some other nice QoL enhancements. True, it adds almost nothing to AoE2 itself, so if you're only interested in AoE2 it's an instant skip. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that RoR was trying to do a very particular thing and it did it's job well enough even if many people were not interested, whereas V&V was also trying to do it's own thing and it was considered a massive overpriced disappointment even by those who WERE interested in the idea.

with the balance changes that came with African kingdoms, I would put it atleast in A tier. No longer needing a castle for Unique ships and slingers/condos. Camels no longer taking Anti ship damage. Are the big ones

6:57 imagine if that feature was added today in light of the farm dabate lol

I remember reading through the old Ask Sandyman thread years ago, and the only reason Koreans were added was because a Microsoft manager came into the office one day and ordered them to add Korea as a civ. It was based entirely on the fact that StarCraft was super popular in Korea, and so MS wanted to try to appeal to the South Korean market by adding them. They were a relatively last-minute addition (Ensemble had never intended to add them), which may explain why they're not that interesting. Not also they have no campaign, just a one-off mission with Admiral Yi.

Ornlu clearly forgot about the greatest AOE II DLC. Joan's Marvelous Moving Masterpieces and La Hire's Dry Humor Animated Icon Packs! Truly S++ tier content.

RoR had potential but it was destined to be dead when it launched without ranked ladder matchmaking

my personel list for Definitive Edition expansions: 1. Mountain Royals 2. Dawn of the Dukes 3. Dynasties of India 4. Return of Rome 5. Lords of the West 6. Victors and Vanquished Especially Return of Rome with the possibility to play a great version of AoE 1 is imo underrated, its only "downside" is there is not that much for AoE 2, but it does perfect what it wants to accomplish. The latest DLC is sadly a huge drop in quality and it feels unfinished. Mountain Royals gets my NR.1 for the mulecarts, they are just awesome

The Last Khans is part of the DE, you cannot have DE without The Last Khans so I think they should be grouped together

Nice Ranking! I like Sicilians very much though, they fit in a hole in the European roaster (feudal France, med civs from various times...). I also welcomed very much central asian civs.

26:10 has anyone been around long enough to know what Teuton death stars were?

I went to rehab in 2009. Then didn’t game for a long time because I was so obsessed about non profit work. I remember doing a delivery to massechusets in 2015 and finding out there’s African expansion coming to Aoe2. I had no idea the game had a revival and that even my ethnicity (Slavs) were added to the game. Became a fanatic and been playing aoe2 ever since.

We don't talk about Tariq

Ahh.. As someone who last played (properly) in AoC(until i bought it and started playing in Dynasty of India), you going through the changes, explains alot! Sooo much new stuff has been added since then. All I did at that time was just being confused by all these new things. "Whats this? I dont rememeber this being a thing.. Have I forgotten THAT much???" 1111

I've seen real arrow slits in existing castles. They should be OP. Perfect firing spot. The same castle had crenelations too. There's a reason these are still standing today (the one I was at literally looked like it was built in the last decade while actually built by the Norman's in the 1100's, very well kept up, still operational). Do we need more content? Heck yeah!. Otherwise, we're going to be watching only your new Tier list videos (well done as they are) forever. Ha ha.

Anyway, what about SWGB? Expanding Fronts, kind of Forgotten mod, has recently released a version with campaign fixes. That game deserves love, altough not an Age of Empires, same engine and very similar gameplay

The Forgotten might be my favorite. Those insane RPG scenarios are so memorable

When all the work you put in the fandom-wiki editing and creating content pays off. Congratulations to the fandom edit team. 👍🏽

Dawn of the Dukes is easily my favorite of the DLCs with it adding some of the best campaigns and some of my favorite civs to the game. Now here's a tier list idea I know Ornlu will never dream of doing for obvious reasons, a full scenario tier list for every single campaign like he did with historical battles. I could see that done one of two ways, either he does then all at once and gives us a several hour long tier list video, or he groups them up by civs and gives us individual videos based around each civ that has campaign scenarios.

i noticed that a lot of arguments dont resonate with me cause i never played AOE2 in multiplayer , still a very nice tier liest ornlu

Ornlu about the DLC that introduced Poles: "it felt in general a lot more polished"

To all single player custom campaign players please check out my custom campaigns. "The Legend of William Wallace." "Dawn of the Maya - The Sons of Chak", "The Qin Dynasty", and for any Game of Thrones fans, my personal favorite "A Khaleesi's Journey." Ornlu do a playthrough 😂. -Thank You- Sneebly

Thanks!

Damn, time really flies

17:00 - I wish this tech was better, something on par with Bloodlines & Thumb Ring.

Return of Rome feels like the one who got away. I loved AoE1 in AoE2 engine, but after a while you just won't find anyone playing it. Team games were super fun in my opinion once you got (re-)adjusted to the different mechanics AoE1 has (such as some powerspikes overshadowing everything else at certain points in time). I get why it happened, shame nevertheless.

If and when you go back to Custom Campaigns, I highly recommend the community version of Ismail of the Safavids. It's the hardest campaign I have ever played easily

"the charge mechanic for the coustillier was very unpopular"...and very bugged!

Ornlu be up late at night scheming about new tier lists. Also my favourite DLC will always be Dynasties of India. The civs I felt were not as bonkers as Lords of the West, but still interesting. I do wish we had more DLC in India later, as the overall design concept of them in the tech tree and what you can do with them is really unexplored. Having so much content outside of Europe, after multiple DLCs set there felt really refreshing. P.S. Mountain Royals also botched the Persian re-work, so it loses points for me. Give them the Central Asian architecture dammit!

I think Return of Rome suffered due to part of it leaking, and the devs/mods cracking down on it. Speculation was RAMPENT about it, and people over-hyped themselves/talked themselves into different directions that there was no way the DLC was going to go. And so when it was released, a lot of people were always going to be disappointed with it.

Thanks for doing this. I think ranking the expansions makes a lot of sense. I do wish you would have made it clearer for new players which ones you can/should actually buy. Also Dawn of the Dukes is S-tier for any campaign only players. It’s by far the best designed/polished DLC and is the benchmark for campaigns post-DE

Hello everyone! Still as a map maker (full of enthusiasm))) the first thing i really need in new versions is more objects in Editor to make the maps more lively) I have no idea why don't they add misc like ruined towers (pretty cool they added ruined castles tho), carts (we have only the broken one XD), weapon racks, market stands, torture things like stocks, cages etc.

Considering how you considered The Conquerors as an expansion, I think it's fair to consider the entirety of DE for the ranking. Outside of that, I agree with most of the placements, though my opinion is mainly from a single player perspective 😅

African Kingdoms was my favorite expansion ss it brought me back into the game and the HD Edition. Also I really like the focus towards less well known (from a Western Perspective) civilizations and historical figures. And I personally enjoyed Yodit, Sundjata and Almeida more thsn the Dawn of the Dukes campaigns. :p

As a kid, I asked my dad to gift me AOE 2 with conquerors expansion that comes in 2 CDs. Instead, I got Age of Kings + another CD containing some PDF and videos of AOE 2 creators. At that time, I was like Oh God No!!!!

I think the tierlist is pretty fair, especially since it's your opinion and I'd mostly agree with it. But is V&V even classified as an expansion? It is so bare-bones it feels so weird to rank in this tierlist. It isn't really labeled as an expansion anywhere on the steam store page (Although it is on the wiki), just referred to as a collection of community scenarios. But then again if they think it is worth expansion prices, it can be judged as one.

I don't know if this is because I'm a quite casual player or not, but I actually loved all of the DLCs, except for VaV, because I don't have it. To be fair, I started playing the game a few months after DE was released, but I enjoy all of the civs. My favorite though... gotta be DotD, with TMR as a second.

I'd bump Dawn of the Dukes up a few places based mostly off how fun the campaigns are. I even go back to them now and then. But I do agree that the civs were gimmicky or OP, especially the UT Scutage for Sicilians

I think V&V, whilst not for everyone, was a reasonable investment for its core target demographic (people who just want to play single player campaigns) but RoR was just bad.

Westerners still not satisfied with Magyars and Lithuanian because what they want since the release of HD is the winged hussars. So that's why they released new DLC for the poles so that we can have the winged hussars.

Bro why are you not making any video of aoe iii

Romans civ might not be very fun, but the 5% bonus feels so so so so smooth and I love it to death

The main reason I buy the DLCs is to support the game's development, but still get something out of it. Overall I agree with your list, but I think the forgotten expansion helped revitalize the game in terms of bringing the community back together after almost a decade of no support from Ensemble

It feels bonkers to me that several age of kings civs don't have official campaigns some 25 years after the release of age of kings.

Despite being a bit wonky I still think The Forgotten kinda deserves B tier, castle age unique techs are pretty big imo and having the new architecture sets with the new civs was also a good precedent

If you count all features which were implemented due to the conqueres expansion you should do the same with the last khans and aoe2 DE. It’s pretty much the same and I’m sure there is absolutely no doubt that DE is the best thing what can happen to the franchise 😍 However good video for me personally I would rank lords of the west bit higher and Indian down to C (for me it was the least enjoyable DLC beside Barbur he was great). Big hopes that the next DLC would be just a dlc adding campaigns (6 missions per campaign) to existing civs like Magyars or Slavs (and no I do not Count Dracula). Thx and all the best

RoR is an interesting one. Objectively it has the most content of any DLC.....but most of it wasn't asked for by anyone. I like to believe that aoe1 was going to be losing support so RoR was a way to have aoe1 live on.......maybe that was the case.....maybe they just wanted to monetize aoe1 for a third time. V&V....the content itself is inoffensive if low effort upcycling. The bait and switch marketing however absolutely thanos snapped my trust in the devs. Of the last three DLCs, two were quite controversial, and only one was just ok. Not a great track record as of late.

Based on what it actually is and the amount of content it carries, 'Return of Rome' is S-tier; bottom tier renders it the most underrated by far.

do a wk tier list

The difference in difficulty for campaign levels in mountain royals based upon difficulty setting was very well balanced. The campaigns were very good overall, but the balance allows different types of players to enjoy the campaigns. The Persians though, they were put on the Lance Armstrong/Barry Bonds diet in terms of improvements. It is not perfect, but it is much better for a classic civ. The mule carts though, i often get annoyed with them. personally, i think they would maximize profits and player satisfaction if they just put out a cheaper campaign only dlc for existing civs. Enough civs for now. they need to fine-tune them a bit more before adding anymore chaos to the balance. It is ruining balance and the more civs, the more possibility for unintended balance issues resulting from balance fixes. perhaps modify a civ slightly IN A CAMPAIGN as they have done before. make campaigns. go forgotten empires route and go find the talent that is already making and even first used certain identifier characteristics in mods before the official campaigns did. these individuals should be welcomed. they know the game as it stands as good as ANYONE THERE IS, period. Spending your own free time working with no budget to produce a campaign made after learning through the editor etc is dedication and that is what FORGOTTEN EMPIRES WAS ABOUT. IT saved the game from becoming starcraft 2 to use a ROUGH comparison. There is no excuse for making Filthy appear as if he was shafting anyone. the guy has done so much for the game and that is why they exclusively used his material for the latest DLC. Campaigns require time and care to make. One person should not be expected to blast out new complex scenarios and refine existing material alone. Anyway, I enjoyed Mountain Royals a bit. I somehow did not get to enjoy the SERIOUSLY OP MONSPA on release smh 42:10

I think it could be balanced a bit more. lords of the west is leagues above return of rome and V&V. this is a difficult list to do. if it is impact and significant, forgotten has to S tier, but if not, then i'd also go B or C. You could do a short follow up if you rethink it. this is a complicated thing

I am waiting for another real DLC, with new civs and campaigns.

to many more DLCs to come!

Wow. You gave me favourite dlc d tier. Different tastes I guess. I loved the Sicilians and Burgundians. But I thnk they shoulda just been called normans

Conquerors was so good it’s probably the main reason the game was kept alive

I'd argue The Forgotten is S tier just under AoC because of revitalization it created. Without it, we probably don't get DE. It showed that AoE2 had more than just a small but dedicated fanbase, but that there was a real market for polish and expansion of core features.

Personally I would place also Dawn of the Dukes in S tier, as in the context of a DLC and not a big expansion I think is as good as you can make a DLC. We had two civs should have been in the game forever ago, especially Poles, campaigns well tied toghether and incredibly polished, and yeah the Jadwiga campaign alone makes the DLC worth it imo. I am not a fan of their civ design and balance either (But that applies to many of the newer civs imo, only Tatars, Bulgarians, Hindus and Lithuanians feel like they belong AoE2 imo. The last civs are a bit so-so in that category too imo) but I find that relatively secondary personally And I agree with everything else, my heart would like Return of Rome to be higher to play as the Romans but is such an uninteresting DLC otherwise. For me the time period is not an issue, Romans are extremely relevant in campaigns and having them in the game isn't too bad (If we have Huns then Romans are good), plus I think is cool that they represent the last century of the Western Roman Empire, which is otherwise forgotten in most people's minds. For me the only DLCs I want onwards are maybe something extra for African civs (I guess some asian civs are interesting too, like the Tibetans), and then just single player content so that any civ has a full campaign and then please stop and just focus on balance/improving the pathing and online. And yeah I'm one of the people that likes unique castle designs for each civ hahah

I think Return of Rome is a bit better. While it didn't do much for AoE2, I like the incorporation of AoE1 into the game with a distinct, yet similar gameplay. Would been less time playing AoE1 without it. I would put it better than VaV, but I may have an extra ire against VaV. The scenarios are good and made by a great creator, but it feels a bit iffy to just take a lot of modded content and pack it together as the main components in a "new" expansion. The Viking scenarios are great, but I'm also reminded that the Viking civilization hasn't a proper campaign from the devs.

Civ tier list on Empire War Red Bull settings when?

The Forgotten introduced the single most impactful balance change in AOE2's history by halving Stone Walls' Feudal HP and increasing their build time by 25%. Feudal Age aggression just wasn't a viable option prior to this nerf.

Next vidio brother,I from Indonesian

Lords of the west at D tier ain't right.

Sorry to ask: How are some DLC'S connected to AOE1?

Hautevilles from the Lords of the West is my favourite.. :(

Dromons are VERY good when used correctly. They can completely obliterate, but sometimes it is your own ships. An onager on water is never a bad thing though. Also Goths and Dravidians--Chola specifically--and civilizations who have no temporal connection to gunpowder, and say the 5th Malian level having cannon galleons in the 1200s is hilarious. It is fun as hell but makes me laugh. I don't understand why more civs don't have their cannon galleons replaced with dromons. VIKINGS SHOULD NOT HAVE CANNON GALLEONS if there are DROMONS 11. Dromons likely have many undiscovered techniques and i look forward to uncovering and stumbling upon others who uncover the secrets of the ship. balance is the issue. they crush things and will become an OVERWHELMINGLY dominating force once more effective uses beyond just CG replacement are found imo 39:50

IRC, RoR sell really well

Special DLC of Van Kleiss

No expansion can make thrill like Conqueror

Without watching the video, this is my tier list: S - AOC, DOI A - African Kingdom, TLK B - AOF, ROTR, DOTD C - TMR D - LOTW, ROR, V&V

What about The Age of Kings?

FE was the start of the revival of AoE2, for that alone it deserves a higher tier than C

I forgot to leave a like so I came back for the like. Take this random comment as a bonus 11

I got into an argument with someone from the FE Dev team on the Steam forums because if you'd donated to the project before HD came out, you then had to pay again for the expansion pack, and it mildly irked me that they hadn't considered the like 300 people this applied to. (Though they did offer a product key, though, as I'd already paid for the expansion I didn't take them up on the offer)

i have not even gotten through the AOE 1 content. i lose interest and not due to the subject matter. I wish they remade those campaigns aoe 2 style entirely, yet kept the civs apart. i know that would not have pleased the large Vietnamese AOE1 community, but hey, i paid for this and got a bizarre civ with a powerful cavalry UU and cavalier for a civ that typically relied primarily on infantry. lol i don't care about that though lol, i mean there are WAR WAGONS and BALLISTA ELEPHANTS. the civ just feels bizarre 38:45

"Most of everything from AoE1 was shoved into AoE2" Well, no - it wasn't. They didn't port *any* of the original campaigns, just three new ones. I actually cancelled my pre-order when it became clear this was the case. They have since ported some of them in patches, but I don't know if they will add the rest. It felt like a cash cow (we already have AoE1 :DE) and I think D-tier is fair.

Roman dlc should be higher.

my list: S (essential): conquerors, HD, DE A (great): dawn of the dukes, african kingdoms, forgotten B (good): rise of the rajas, last khans C (mediocre): lords of the west D (bad): mountain royals, dynasties of india F (abysmal): rome, V&V

Use ublock origin instead of ABP.

Babur showing differents maps, ennemies and goals to reach => not a great campaign Rajendra wanting us to do the same thing over and over again => great campaign Explain me this logic. Return of Rome lost me. Adding romans to a game that start when Rome fell is such a crap. Mountains royal is a joke. Armenians don't feel like Armenians. The rework of Persians makes no sense. Their 2 campaigns are badly done. Georgians save the day but that's not enough to make this DLC a good one. It is not worth 15 dollars. V&V made me laugh... and cry in the same time.

Sicilians are still one of my favorite teams because I'm a n00b don't judge :(