Age of Empires II adds Danes, Saxons and Varangians

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition has a new expansion. The Viking Sagas went on sale on 22 September 2026 at GBP 14.99 and is available now, bringing three new civilisations and a campaign that follows one of the most travelled figures of the Viking age.

Three civilisations, three ways to fight

The Danes lean on speed, using longships to raid before an opponent can group up. Their unique unit, the Jomsviking, is a hardy infantryman who throws burning torches at buildings and ships. The Saxons are the defensive pick, built around fortified towns and the Hearth Troop, a heavy infantryman who opens a fight with a javelin before closing to melee. The Varangians trade raw power for flexibility, with the Jarl as an axe-throwing cavalryman who cuts through infantry.

Six new units and a free update

Six units arrive in total, three of them shared across the new civilisations. Varangian Guards are shock infantry who generate gold while they fight, Mounted Crossbowmen are slow-firing ranged cavalry, and Longships are the warships the setting demands. The expansion ships alongside a free content update, 185872, which adds a Scandinavian architecture set, the Varangian Guard infantry line and the Mounted Crossbowman as a regional unit for twelve existing European civilisations, so players who skip the purchase still get a meaningful patch.

Harald Hardrada's three campaigns

The single-player content is a three-part arc rather than one story. The Exiled Prince starts with Harald Hardrada cast out of Norway and working his way through the Mediterranean, the Kyivan Rus and the Byzantine Empire. The Hard Ruler covers his fight for the thrones of Denmark and Norway and the cost of holding them. The Last Viking ends with the invasion of England. Fifteen new scenarios are spread across the three, and the expansion was built by World's Edge with Forgotten Empires, CaptureAge, Tantalus Media, Wicked Witch and Feral Interactive.

Our opinion

A twenty-seven-year-old game shipping its third decade of expansions is not surprising any more, but what the designers choose to do with each one is instructive. The Viking Sagas is a raiding expansion in a game that already has raiding, so the interesting design is in the economies: a guard unit that pays for itself by fighting, a mercenary-flavoured civilisation that treats soldiers as hirelings, and a patch that hands a new regional unit to twelve civilisations at once, which reshapes matchups far beyond the three new factions. That is the difference between a content pack and a balance decision wearing a fur cloak. The campaign choice is the smart half of the marketing too: Harald Hardrada's life already reads like a strategy game, and building three chapters around exile, ambition and a final gamble in England gives the expansion a narrative spine instead of another set of disconnected scenarios. What it does not do is reinvent the wheel, and after this long that is arguably the point: the people still playing know exactly what they want, and the patch that lands with the expansion gives the rest of the roster a reason to log back in.