izigame.me

Before I start, this is my 100th review :D
Pro
- Three new civilizations. This DLC itself includes Dravidians, Bengalis and Gurjaras, so called Indian “splits”, but actually the base game “Indians” made never sense to begin with. It is roughly the equivalent of having a civ for the entirety of Europe. India is very, very big and culturally diverse, something Westerners are usually not aware of, especially considering that the Mercator projection (a way of displaying the surface of the Earth) displays areas around the equator as being way smaller than they are. The other new civ which is available for everyone (even those who don’t own the DLC) are the Hindustani, the reworked Indians, which get a new infantry unique unit, the Ghulam as well as a new unique building and an elephant replacement for the Battering Ram. All the other South Asian civ have that one too.
They’ve become really creative with the bonus like being able to garrison herdables for Food or the Dravidian Imperial unique technology which grants you armor ignoring infantry as well as cavalry. Don’t worry, it’s pretty much balanced by their tech tree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9VYVeohoTU

Here a short overview of all the civilizations from the AOE Wiki:
https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Bengalis
https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Dravidians
https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Gurjaras
and the reworked “Indians” civ:
https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Indians_(Age_of_Empires_II)
For those interested, here are the tech trees in 4k:
https://www.ageofempires.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/DravidiansTechTree4k.png
https://www.ageofempires.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GurjarasTechTree4k.png
https://www.ageofempires.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/BengalisTechTree4k.png
https://www.ageofempires.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/HindustanisTechTree4k.png
- The Gurjaras have their campaign in the base game as Prithviraj campaign. The Hindustanis, the reworked Indians have their campaign in the DLC (like they did in the previous DE DLCs. The DLC civilizations Dravidians and Bengalis have also a campaign
respectively which is of course voiced.
- 21 new achievements to achieve.
- New unique castle models for Bengalis, Hindustanis and Gurjaras.
- Continued support and events
- Finally, some more civilizations using the South Asian architecture
- A fix to the mess which was the Indians civ. It was basically the same as having a broad Europeans civ. Some regions are still plagued by that like Western and Eastern Africa as well as China.
- The asking price seems way fairer considering we’re basically getting 3.5 civilizations instead of measly 2.
- A lot of new units have been added, and even some new common ones shared between the South Asian civilizations. There’s the Elephant Archer which gets demoted from being an unique unit to a new regional unit in the Archery with its Elite Upgrade. Similar case with the Battering Ram replacement which is the Armoured Elephant. There’s also some crazy new stuff like the Gurjaras having a Camel Scout as an option in Feudal Age which then gets automatically upgraded to the Camel Rider in Castle Age.
- The architecture set distribution has been improved by a lot, considering the architecture set the new civilizations are placed in were used by a single civ.
- There’s no mess like with Dawn of the Dukes with regards to civ names (or at least not that much) because the “Indians”, a concept which makes no sense, were renamed to Hindustanis.
- We’re getting finally some more Battle Elephant civilizations too, a unit line which is only used by 4 civilizations in the base game.
Neutral
- Not directly related to the DLC, but I start to not like the events anymore. It’s a way to create FOMO (Fear of Missing out).

Contra
- No new music except the civ themes of course.
- No new Real-World maps
- It’s still a DLC which doesn’t add new architecture sets but considering there was solely one single (!) civ using South Asian architecture, it’s almost like getting a new architecture set considering how rarely the South Asian architecture was seen in skirmishes.
- They really should consider adding unique castles to all the civilizations now (Yes, they’ve still not added them for the non-DLC civilizations).
TL; DR: This DLC fixes a concept which made never sense to begin with. Compared to former DE DLCs, it contains way more content for the same asking prize. Also, it finally focuses on areas which really needed new civilizations and gives some much-needed love to some of the least used generic unit lines (Battle Elephant), adds some civilizations to the least used architecture set and if this wouldn’t be enough gives you the possibility to build Siege Elephants from your Siege Workshop and Elephant Archer from the Archery range. It almost feels like a former HD expansion.
If you can afford only one DE DLC, so far, I would recommend you buy this one and wait for a sale for the others.
It would make me extremely happy, if they would do something similar for Africa and America next.