Wow, Age of Empires II HD is still getting DLC

Rise of the Rajas is out next week

It’s nearly 2017, and I’m marveling at the fact that Age of Empires II HD is getting official new content.

Forgotten Empires and SkyBox Labs are putting the finishing touches on Rise of the Rajas, a Southeast Asia-set expansion slated for Steam on December 19, 2016. There’s four voiced campaigns, more civilizations (Burmese, Khmer, Malay, Vietnamese), battle elephants, and mangrove forests.

It’s a strange but awesome sight to see a game like this running at high resolutions. We’ve gotten lucky with some of these re-releases and reworks, even if they do have their own issues. I’d love to see certain other strategy games touched up and expanded upon. (I’m looking at you, Blizz.)

Here’s the civilization breakdown for Rise of the Rajas:

• Burmese – Assemble the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia through a legion of Battle Elephants that can demolish the most powerful of defenses. The Burmese unique unit is the Arambai, a ranged cavalry unit with a deadly but low accuracy attack.
• Khmer – Construct the largest religious monument in the world and amass an immortal army of devastating siege weapons. The Khmer unique unit is the Ballista Elephant, a mounted scorpion that can be upgraded to fire two bolts simultaneously.
• Malay – Conquer Southeast Asia with the vast island empire of Malay and upgrade your docks to harbours which can shoot arrows. The Malay unique unit is the Karambit Warrior, an extremely cheap infantry unit that can quickly overwhelm its foes.
• Vietnamese – Lead your people to independence and wage guerilla warfare with an extremely powerful arsenal of ranged units. The Vietnamese unique unit is the Rattan Archer, a heavily-armored ranged unit that is effectively impervious to enemy archer attacks.

Besides that paid content, performance fixes are still coming along. “We’ve had an open beta over the past few months to identify and correct a few performance issues, and with your help we’ve managed to reduce desyncs by 90%! With today’s announcement of Rise of the Rajas, we’re also pushing these performance upgrades live to all of our players for free. Among other things, this makes multiplayer matches much more stable, AND we’ve added multiplayer restore back in, so if you ever DO lose a match in progress to a desync, you can get it back and pick up where you left off!”

Announcing Age of Empires II HD: Rise of the Rajas DLC! [Age of Empires]