Unfortunately, I have to give this DLC a negative review, because of what it represents and that the community has been yet again ignored. The majority of the playerbase is single-player only, and so my review will mostly reflect that. We DO want new civs. We DO want new campaigns...but not like this. There are, of course, some positives this DLC has to offer, such as some really good campaign scenarios (I base it on watching Ornlu's videos) and 2 brand new civs - Khitans and Jurchens...but that's about it. This DLC instead gives us 3 short lived city states from the ancient China (Shu, Wei, Wu), instead of civilisations, and these civs introduce heroes as trainable units (for ranked matches), as well as some very non-aoe gimmicky bonuses/playstyles (not a single one of these city states has the ability to train trebuchets, but they have their own units instead). Additionally, only these 3 city states have their own campaign, with Jurchens and Khitans having none - and neither we got new campaigns for already existing civilistions, like Chinese and Koreans. And not just that - even the new campaigns focus on...wizards and sacrifices? Sacrificing a pig to stop a storm? That is some fantasy stuff. In other words - this DLC missed everything it could have missed. First obvious miss, was the Victors and Vanquised DLC - we asked for campaign only DLC, but somehow, the people responsible thought "oh, but the customer does not know what they want, so we will give them something better - long RPG like scenarios, they will surely love those"...yeah, how did it go? And instead of learning from their mistakes, we got the battle of Greece chronicles, which were universally liked... not by me though. Why? Because it was yet another "experiment" unrelated to the nature of AOE - and because this experiment was well-received (which I still do not understand why, given that it was basically a long RPG campaign), we are getting a yet another "experiment" again. One experiment worse than the previous one. Take a few steps back and see how great the first 3 DLCs were (Lords of the West, Dawn of the Dukes, Dynasties of India) - even though Lords of the West had some gimmicky one time techs, (conversion of food to gold, refunding of killed units, paper money for Vietnamese from Rajas), these gimmicks have been mostly fixed (farmers produce gold along with food, hauberk, lumberjacks produce gold along with wood, and even first crusade grants a conversion resistance bonus), and these DLCs have been well received now. Even the Mountain Royals' civs have been well received lately (only the mass bonus for knights and monaspas for Georgians is way too gimmicky, but anyway). But this, this is exactly what is not acceptable. We’ve been begging for 25 years to add campaigns for every single civilisation that does not have one…we did get Persians, Britons, Lithuanians, Incas, Goths, Byzantines (thank you for that! Beautiful!), but we still need Romans, Mayans, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vikings, Slavs, Magyars and Turks (no, the last 3 cannot be seriously considered as having their own campaigns, given that Vlad Dracul is a mix with 3 civs and max 2 levels each)., as well as Celts (a 6 level Roman campaigns with 4 Roman, 2 Celt scenarios + Bannockburn to William Wallace sounds fine) - and now, Khitans and Jurchens. I have no issues paying 20 bucks for quality new content, such as 4 new campaigns and 2 new civilisations. But I have issues that the devs pump out nonsensical RPG scenarios (V&V), short-lived states (3 kingdoms) as civs, and civs without new campaigns (Romans, Jurchens, Khitans), while not adding new campaigns for existing civs. We got African kingdoms and Rajas for 10 bucks each, with 4 new civs and 4 new campaigns, each. Then we got the last khans with the DE - 4 civs and 4 campaigns (Pachacuti for Incas was the 4th campaign). Given the inflation and whatnot, it’s ok to pay 15 bucks, or to get 3 campaigns and 2 new civs…after all, what we all want, is for every single civ to have their own campaign where they can be properly showcased. Historical battles, and especially victors and vanquished, are definitely NOT that. So Khitans + Jurchens, as well as their own campaigns + a Chinese and preferably a Korean campaigns, for 20 bucks, would be a fair deal. Khitans, Jurchens, Tanguts + 5 campaigns for 25 bucks would also be cool. But 3 kingdoms are not fine, and neither are Khitans and Tanguts with no added campaign. But...this can still be easily fixed... how? 1) Move the 3 kingdoms and their respective civs into the chronicles. 2) Add a cheap (10-15 USD) DLC that adds Tanguts, and campaigns for Tanguts, Jurchens, Khitans, and Chinese. Then, we can just keep on with this formula - add AOE2 like civilisations, as well as campaigns for those civilisations and existing ones. Examples: A) Add a Medieval transition DLC that adds Vandals, as well as campaigns for Romans (Ambrosius Aurelianus that would transition from Romans to Celts is a great idea..similar to El Cid), Vandals and Vikings. B) Add a Balkan/Muscowy DLC with Wends that would replace Vlad Dracul campaign, as well as campaigns for Turks, Slavs and Magyars. C) Add an east asian DLC with campaigns for Japanese, Koreans, as well as a new civ (Tibetans or something) along with a campaign for that new civ. D) Add an American DLC with a campaign for Mayans, as well as e.g. Tlaxcalans and Zapotecs, with a campaign for each of them, too. E) Go back to Africa and add some new African civs or something.... And only then experiment with Chronicles and unrelated stuff. Going this road, you can never go wrong, and I am sure that the community would mostly agree....but pumping out nonsense like this, is a road to retirement. I understand that this review might be a bit erratic, but I really had to be quick to post it as early as I did :D Hopefully you get the points I made and that you agree with them;)