Microsoft just announced a bunch of new news for the Age of Empires Definitive Collection (AOE 1, 2 and 3 Definitive Editions).

First up, since we’re such big fans of Age of Empires 2 they announced another new expansion for the Definitive Edition called Dawn of the Dukes covering Eastern Europe. They didn’t mention too much other than it’s coming this summer and will have new campaigns.

The last unexpected expansion, Lords of the West was great (read our review here) so we can’t wait for another one.

The amount of content in the game is seriously getting ridiculous and getting more is always a good thing.

They’re also adding co-op historical battles where they’ve hand picked specific campaign missions and historical battles that you can play together with your friends.

There will be more information about both of these updates in the coming month.

There are also some major changes coming for Age of Empires 3 Definitive Edition. The most major one being the addition of the new American civilization. It’ll include a new explorer, new home city, 9 new units a new age up mechanic and more.

Interestingly enough the new American civilization will be available for free for a limited time if you’re able to complete a series of in game challenges. Otherwise it’ll be available to purchase as DLC. That’s definitely an interesting way of doing it.

Later this year they’re also adding in African civilizations with a brand new expansion. More information about this will be available soon.

All of this information is from the below video which shows off some of these additions and changes:

They also released the first proper gameplay trailer for Age of Empires 4.

The trailer showcases 4 of the game’s 8 available civilizations in a little segment from the Dark Age, Feudal Age, Castle Age and Imperial Age.

Check out the gameplay reveal trailer below:

Overall I’ve got mixed feelings about what I’m seeing here.

First there are some pretty awesome looking new mechanics like where they set up an ambush for the enemy army in the woods.

It’s also looking like the different civilizations will have much more varied special abilities like how the Mongols are able to pack up their buildings and move them to new locations.

The one thing that bothers me though is the scale of the buildings. It looks like you can position units on top of walls and the walls look great and perfectly to scale with the size of the units. But then all your castles, houses and other buildings just look way too small compared to everything else.

That’s my major complaint and it bothered me in the first Age of Empires as well. It’s also another thing I quite like about AOE 2. In that game the buildings are big enough that I can actually imagine a bunch of human sized units going inside them.

But overall I’m optimistic about AOE 4, the new mechanics looks like they’ll shake things up a lot and it’ll be very interesting to see everything in action for myself when it’s eventually released.