I recently took a week or so break from New World to catch up on some more Age of Empires II content, and no sooner had I finished that than Microsoft dumped a whole bunch of news about the crazy amount of content coming to the franchise in 2026.

Let’s start with my DLC catch up. Mainly my goal was to play through the recent Chronicles: Alexander the Great. As with the original Chronicles expansion, it left me a bit conflicted.

My initial impression of the DLC was that it was simply too much. Too many new mechanics, too many enemies, too much happening all at once, too much of everything. So many of the missions, especially early on, have you being constantly attacked on three or four fronts at once while also grappling with some sort of mission-specific gimmick, limited resources, or another kind of handicap.

Honestly, I found it exhausting and stressful. Maybe I should have just swallowed my pride and lowered the difficulty, but it wasn’t so much the level of difficulty itself — I beat every mission and only needed to restart or save scum on one or two.It was just the overwhelming form the difficulty takes. One of the appeals of AoE2 for me is that it’s a relatively simple and slow-paced game, but the early Alexander missions feel more like an assault on the senses.

I was inspired to do some analysis on the Steam achievement stats recently, and it seemed to show a lot of people didn’t finish the original Chronicles or move on to Alexander — more so than other DLCs — and I wonder if this is why. The complexity of Chronicles feels just barely tolerable to me, and I could see it driving away more casual players.

Weirdly, in an inverse of how RTS campaigns usually work, it did chill out nearer the end, though. Once he entered India, the missions started to feel more straight forward and relaxed, and I started to enjoy myself a lot more.

As much as it makes perfect sense for the story, I also didn’t love being stuck as one civilization for 16/18 missions, especially since I didn’t find the Macedonians very fun. I much preferred the Thracians and Puru for the brief time I got to play them.

This, too, did get easier to cope with later in the campaign, though. Once you unlock enough new units outside the base Macedonian tech tree, there’s a lot of freedom to customize your army to your preference. I wound up mostly using Alexander’s Heavy Cavalry and Scythian Horse Archers, occasionally backed up by some of the Puru elephants.

I will also say that the quality of story-telling did feel a lot higher this time. Battle for Greece didn’t entirely live up to the hype on that front, but Alexander delivered. The characters feel very fleshed out, like real three-dimensional people, and the voice acting is top notch.

So like the original, I’d rate Alexander as an interesting but flawed experiment. I find myself wishing we could find a happy medium between the soaring ambition of Chronicles and the more vanilla campaigns.

After Alexander, I played the Persian campaign from Mountain Royals (which I recently bought on a deep discount), and as much as I was hungry for a simpler campaign experience, I did find it a let down in many ways. The different in quality when it comes to dialogue and voice acting was especially stark. I do think it was a bit of a mediocre campaign even compared to other non-Chronicles offerings, but still.

I wish there was a happy medium. I want something with the production values of Chronicles, but which hews closer to standard Age of Empires gameplay.

Shortly after I wrapped up my foray into Persia, we got news of a frankly staggering amount of AoE content coming next year.

Most notably, the next AoE2 DLC is The Last Chieftains, which adds three new South American civilizations with associated campaigns. A return to the Americas has been top of my wishlist for this game for a long time, so this is good news. The trouble with being so excited for an idea, though, is you set yourself up for disappointment by getting very clear ideas of what you want to see.

I’d seen a lot of people on social media pitching the Purépechas as a potential new civ, and having read up a bit on them, they look like a very fascinating culture I’d have loved to see in-game. They even have a folk hero you could build a campaign around in Princess Eréndira. I was also hoping we’d finally get a full-length campaign for the Mayans. It’s a shame we probably won’t see those things now, given another return to the Americas probably won’t happen any time soon, if ever.

Still, don’t get me wrong, I’m still plenty hyped for Last Chieftains. Any new native civilizations get my seal of approval, and it’s great that we’re finally getting a new architecture set — the first outside of Chronicles since the Definitive Edition launched. This DLC will be an instant buy for me.

Conspicuously absent from the announcement was any news of another Chronicles DLC. I’ll not say all is lost, and but considering the recent layoffs of key Chronicles developers and the low completion numbers mentioned above, the future for that line does look a bit uncertain. Much as my feelings on are it mixed, though, I’d still hope to see more. If for no other reason than to hopefully, eventually get to stomp some Romans with my elephants as Hannibal.

Also speaking of the Americas, I am pleasantly surprised that Age of Mythology will continue to be supported despite its low player numbers, including finally adding the massively requested Aztec civilization. I’d have rather seen a different native culture that isn’t already as exposed in pop culture, but I’m sure the Aztecs will be plenty fun. We’re also getting two cosmetic DLCs and finally a second god pack, adding the also massively requested Demeter as a major god for the Greeks.

I’m almost more hyped for her than the Aztecs. I do love me some naturalistic fertility gods, and I’m very curious what twists she’ll bring to the Greek playstyle. Shame she’ll probably only get a single mythological battle for campaign content, if that. Despite them removing the beta tag, Arena of the Gods still needs a lot of work.

AoE4 isn’t being left behind here, either, and just as I thought it was fully dead to me, their upcoming DLCs do seem to include some positive additions. The first of its two 2026 DLCs will add a new Chinese campaign. I’m sure it will be overpriced, and the Chinese are one of my least favourite civs to play in AoE4 (and really all Age games except Mythology), but at least they haven’t abandoned the concept of campaigns entirely.

I do wonder if we’re only ever going to see campaigns for base game civilizations, since they don’t seem to including them when new civilizations get added and it seems unlikely they’d make you buy two DLCs to play a campaign. I guess maybe they could sell a campaign for a civ while still disallowing it in multiplayer if you didn’t buy its original DLC, but it’d be a weird way to do things.

It would be a shame if none of the DLC civilizations ever got campaigns, but on the plus side I guess it raises the possibility of getting a Delhi Sultanate campaign one day. They’re probably my favourite AoE4 civilization.

The second DLC will add two new actual civilizations and not just variantslop, with one of them confirmed as Vikings (hopefully not the civilization’s final name). As much as I complain about how Euro-centric the franchise has been lately, the Norse nerd in me had very much wanted to see them added. Mind you, they probably won’t get a campaign, and the Crucible mode will presumably still be locked behind the otherwise unappealing Dynasties of the East expansion, so I may still end up skipping the DLC regardless.

AoE4 seems to be course-correcting a bit, but its DLCs are still probably ones I will only buy on sale if at all. The 2026 offerings for AoE2 and AoM look quite promising, though. It’s crazy how much content they’re pumping out for the franchise these days. It almost feels like too much, but with how little is going on for the RTS genre otherwise these days, I’ll feast when I can.