Pre-Order Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – Chronicles: Battle for Greece

Hello Age Community and welcome to the Battle for Greece!

The road to today and the announcement of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – Chronicles: Battle for Greece has been a long time coming, and the unlikely path that led us here is worth an explanation. That’s because it’s not just a story about CaptureAge, but also YOU – the Community – and how the passion of players that love Age of Empires can turn into some wild and unlikely adventures.

First let’s talk about CaptureAge. Here at World’s Edge, we started our relationship with CaptureAge several years ago, with a focus on getting their amazing spectator tool (also called CaptureAge) working for AoE II: DE. That tiny project forged some new friendships and confidence, and led to exploring different ways that the CA team might be able to contribute to AoE II: DE outside of what they were already known for. For many years now, they’ve been working rather silently on many small projects within the game, helping to deliver on new features and systems that have been part of the Updates you’ve been receiving over time. It’s been a wonderful collaboration and we’ve been genuinely delighted to watch them grow as a company – talented new people continue to join the CA team, and they’ve been able to express their passion for Age of Empires in new and exciting ways.

But then, as any good story goes, we reached a point of once-upon-a-time when collectively many on the AoE II: DE team took notice of Romae ad Bellum (Rome at War) – a promising mod being developed by a small group of people. Among the many things that caught our attention, they were doing beautiful work with building and unit design, and they were experimenting with gameplay in ways we felt were interesting. Eventually we connected with the Rome at War team to talk about their mod and their creative aspirations, and the vibe was the right one – we liked how they were thinking about AoE II: DE gameplay in a different time period, and it got us thinking about whether or not there was a path to working with them as a content partner. There were big gaps in what they’d be able to take on, but they had the thing that mattered most – a love for Age of Empires and enough passion to push through ambiguity and create something that people were talking about.

So now we have these two teams in the mix, mostly focused on very different things BUT… they both had the same ambition. They both wanted to be developing a true and ambitious content project. And they were both teams that originated in Community, made of people that played AoE II: DE personally, passionately, and daily – and wanted to be doing something interesting and different for the game.

As time went on and conversations continued, what started to emerge was one of those exciting moments where stars align and the opportunity to do something really cool becomes real. With the help of World’s Edge, CaptureAge invited the Rome at War team to join them, and together they became the strongest version of CaptureAge yet – just in time to journey into their first DLC project culminating in today’s surprise for all of you. It was an ambitious and heart-felt effort to launch, because while Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – Chronicles: Battle for Greece is definitely inspired by previous mod work from the team, this meant getting to work on a completely new DLC experience, authored entirely from scratch and built from the ground up, together with PhD Historians we added to the team and a desire to build a new type of experience players hadn’t quite seen before. They’ll have much more to say about that story in their own words over the weeks and months to come, but it’s worth highlighting here for a very specific reason.

Age of Empires isn’t just a World’s Edge endeavor – it’s something that belongs to all of us, and it’s been as much a part of your life and story as it has been ours. The examples of Forgotten Empires and CaptureAge teams demonstrate that a vibrant path exists, and for those of you interested in making your mark on Age, we’re watching! We’re fans too and excited to see the things you create! From mods, to music, to cosplay, to fan art – all of it makes us smile because we think it’s as cool as you do! When people and teams pop up in our Community that we can find a way to work with, we’re thrilled! Our connection to our Community is what guides the work we do and the choices we make, and whenever we can grow those efforts by inviting our Community to join us in delivering on the future of these games, it’s a fit like no other! That’s a lot of exclamation marks but also a lot of truth. Not every gaming franchise is like this and the Age of Empires Community stands out as a unique and positive place where this many years later people can still find opportunity in the things they love, and we think that’s pretty awesome.

So this is another encouragement for you to dream big and imagine possibilities. To pick up that editor and speak with your mods. Don’t be afraid of failure, don’t be afraid to get it wrong – it’s a supportive Community! People are there to give you feedback and you might even find others to join you in whatever quest you’ve created for yourself. Just go for it! Because you never know what will happen. You might just get spotted by a Dev, who tells a Producer, who tells a Business Manager, who sends an email, which starts a conversation, which leads to a blog, where we get to praise our Community for being full of amazing people that do amazing things. We genuinely feel that way.

Given the focus on Campaign content in Chronicles: Battle for Greece, alongside the fact that we won’t be adding the new Civs (Achaemenids, Athenians, and Spartans) to Ranked, it seems important to mention that this does not signal a departure from the types of DLC we’ve been delivering in the past that have been reliably adding new Civs for competitive play. In the case of Chronicles: Battle for Greece, we really wanted to try some unconventional things with gameplay, play around with the Tech Tree, and try some new things with Naval that weren’t going to harmonize with the balance in Ranked. So we make choices like this in order to (a) make room for that kind of creativity, (b) respect balance in Ranked, and (c) look for diversity in the types of content we can create for you. A little more about this, from a different angle –

What we’ve been doing with DLCs like Animated Profile Icons, Victors and Vanquished, and now Chronicles: Battle for Greece, is a bit of experimenting. The AoE II: DE community is pretty big and spread out. Our most visible cohort tends to be our competitive community, tournament organizers, and streamers, but there’s a rather massive and understated majority of our players that show up week over week and month over month just to enjoy their favorite Campaigns. They love Campaign content exclusively, and they’re playing them over and over again – hard to blame them (that Attila Campaign, amiright???). There’s some Venn diagram overlap where many of you together are enjoying a lot of Skirmish matches, but the point is that it’s a big game with lots to do and therefore we’ve got many different interests to explore and service. It starts to become important for us to look for ways that we can push Campaign content and do new and interesting things, even if it means some variation in how we roll out a DLC (e.g. Civs not going into Ranked). So when we do something different like this, please don’t be alarmed – we’re just a happy tree growing new branches – the ones that have given you shade in times past are still there and we’ve got plenty of surprises waiting for you. Like, a lot. A lot a lot. Seriously. A lot a lot a lot.

More to say about those surprises in the future!

For now, it’s time to settle in for the Grand Campaign as Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – Chronicles: Battle for Greece presents an ALL-NEW experience, not available in any form anywhere else, crafted with love by CaptureAge, and ready to play in just a few weeks!