The only "Backend" work they did was probably just adding 1 new civ (rather than make 2 other unused civs for modders), new attack/protoanimtypes.
If I was Cysion I would be releasing dev blogs every week at this point, we got jack s**t dev blogs until November, and even then, It was only one sh***y dev blog about Nakamura's bullshit changes (while everyone on Reddit and Steam were kissing their arses because of the trauma from how bad AoMEE was optimized)
Worse Case Scenario:
- New "Balance" Changes that force competitive gameplay, and rushing down your throat.
- Probably a new crappy AI that is hard on easy, and satan himself on titan
- a new campaign, filled with sh***y RPG levels, shitty fixed force maps going from a-z with 4 units vs 7 armies, and no allies, cluttered maps, crappy heroes, reused plot points and reused ideas and crap from AoM/AoK, entirely filled with the new civ, and no continuity but a wink (Enemy to ally wanting a castle built in their town in ten minutes, or a trader wanting 2000 gold for a market, when you could build one yourself for 300 wood or horses or someshit)
- Some new RMS maps that are just rehashes of RTS-Sanctuary AoM Random Maps
- New campaign only content
- Bad Optimization, very weak balance, OOS s**t, bugs and lag galore.
- No Alpha/Beta stuff, even though MS has a big ass archive of all the stuff ES, and every other MS game company made, that didn't make it into their games.
- No new content for pre-existing civilizations (new techs, units, etc)
- More fanboys defending a sh***y expansion (most of them the elite players whom are payed to claim the expansion is great, like all those so called "reviews" AoF got)