The 1 year anniversary for Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition is around the corner and with the anniversary the devs have confirmed they will be releasing a massive game update. Naturally, this means civilization balance changes, map and pathing fixes, but also this will include a completely overhauled UI to the main menu and a new game mode, “Battle Royale” which brings us to this article.
WHAT IS BATTLE ROYALE?
Battle Royale for Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition follows a similar theme to other battle royale games, but with its own tasteful and in-character flair.
Battle Royale in video games and modern pop-fiction follows the premise that there can only be one victor, that each person put onto the map must be the last surviving person, and often, that the area that each player can be in is closing in on them in a death-like circular border, incentivising players to get to the center of the map and fight it out. Fortnite and PubG are the most notable examples of battle royale game modes, however The Hunger Games and (ironically) Battle Royale is also responsible for popularising the notion of a free-for-all, survive-as-the-last-man-standing concept within pop-fiction.
WHEN WILL BATTLE ROYALE MODE BE RELEASED?
The developers have not as of yet released the date for the new update which will also feature the release of Battle Royale, and even popular professional players and streamers have stated that they do not know when the update will be released. Speculation is that we can expect the update to be released around the 1 year anniversary of Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, which is the 14 November.
HOW DO YOU PLAY THE BATTLE ROYALE MODE?
At the beginning of a Battle Royale game on AoE2DE, you will begin with a hero unit. While this unit is extremely overpowered, and should be kept alive, having this unit killed does not mean you have lost. Players will only be defeated once they have lost all their units and they lose any building under their control.
Scattered across the map are numerous buildings, including your standard production buildings for military (Barracks, Archery Range, Stable, Siege Workshop, Castle, Monastery and Docks), a building called a “Trade Workshop” (which provides additional resources and can be used to buy and sell similarly to the market) and towers, protected by Gaia units. After killing any unit that is around the building, you will gain control of that building until another player steals the building by killing whichever of your units are left protecting it. The more Trade Workshops that a player has, the more economy that person can use to produce military. The more military production buildings, the more military production that player can field.
Every player begins in Post-Imperial Age, which means that all technologies, including unique technologies are researched. This is important to consider, as civilizations which may be strong in standard games may only have been strong because they could push an economy or military aggression to place opponents in compromising spots (looking at you, Mayans!)
WHAT CIVILIZATION SHOULD I CHOOSE?
On the condition that players are not playing random civilization, I would encourage powerhouse civilizations as these seem to perform best – civilizations which have strong paladins or siege are most notable. Archer civilizations are not preferable as they combine slow units with a unit which needs to be massed to be effective.
Top-tier Civilizations on standard land Battle Royale maps:
- Huns – The combination of strong paladins and strong cavalry archers are too good in this instance not to include.
- Mongols – Similarly to Huns, Mangudai (and even regular cavalry archers) combined with beefier hussars are very good in this game mode. Mongols siege also excels in this game mode.
- Celts – Strong siege mixed with infantry that are faster than average makes for the ability to drive a death-ball into your opponents.
- Tatars – Similarly to Huns, strong cavalry and strong cavalry archers. The very cheap price and additional gold of Keshiks may potentially be busted.
- Persians – Strong paladins that deal bonus damage to cavalry archers (including anything that falls in that armor class – such as war wagons). Additionally, has camelry options.
- Lithuanians – Strong paladins and fast moving skirmishers.
- Magyars – Strongest cavalry archers in the game and strong paladins.
- Slavs – Cheap siege and strong cavalry options, or druzhina infantry.
- Berbers – Camel archers which counter cavalry archers and camelry as an option. Also, all stable units are cheaper.
- Cumans – Fastest cavalry in the game which means potentially most trade workshops captured per minute.
- Khmer – Fast battle elephants with extra attack make for a pretty hard unit to kill when trying to gain control of a Khmer opponents buildings.
Professional caster T90Official streamed his gameplay of Battle Royale to Twitch and published it on his Youtube channel. See gameplay on his video, below:
