Age of Empires II HD: Rise of the Rajas

Rise of the Rajas is the third major DLC add-on to a refreshed edition of Age of Empires II, Age of Empires II: HD Edition. Even if the new edition hadn’t brought any major changes to the 1999 predecessor, it turned out to be quite successful, and resurrected one of the highly rated real-time strategy games. This add-on was developed as a joint venture between SkyBox Labs and Forgotten Empires – the same duo that created two previous expansions.

Mechanics

The biggest addition introduced by Rise of the Rajas are four completely new Asian civilizations: Burmese, Khmer, Malays, and Vietnamese, with each of them receiving a unique unit. Aside from that, the game received two previously unseen universal units (i.e. available to each faction) – battle elephants and imperial infantry. Four new campaigns were introduced, taking place on each nation’s territory in South-East Asia.

The new add-on also introduces a few smaller novelties, including a completely new type of terrain – mangrove forests, an area which allows land as well as marine units to pass, and five extra random, special, and historical maps, improved unit AI, spectator mode, and additional objects for the in-game editor.

Technical Aspects

While developing Rise of the Rajas, the developers made a number of changes to the core game that were made available for free even for the players without the described DLC. Aside from improvements to the balance, the game network code was reworked, increasing the stability of multiplayer matches, while the frequency of sync errors decreased by 90%. The developers responded to popular demand, and introduced an option to resume matches, useful not only in case of a lost connection, but also during long, multi-hour matches as well.

Last updated on January 9, 2017