Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – Update 107882

Stability & Performance

• Fixed a crash which could occur when loading a saved scenario game.
• Fixed a desync that can occasionally occur with ranged unit animations on different framerates.
• Fixed a crash which would occur when a player joins a lobby and the host adds an AI.

Graphics

• Fish Traps now display outlines when visually obstructed by buildings.

Audio

• The correct music track now plays for Romans, Armenians and Georgians when having them selected in History section.
• Horse and Hunnic Horse move sounds no longer play at the edge of the map.
• Background music now correctly loops in Return of Rome campaign menu.
• After purchasing a DLC from the Store, its campaign audio will now correctly load without having to reboot the game.

UI

• Updated the checkbox graphics for main and secondary objectives.
• The availability/upgrade level bars in technology tree preview now have more distinguishable colors.
• Relics no longer have armor display on their UI with Extended Unit Stats enabled.
• Javelina in Return of Rome now has correct icon.
• Pending Invitations screen no longer displays ‘Create Warrior Priest’ text instead of ‘Name’.
• The HUD will no longer display units garrisoned in transports if many land units are simultaneously selected.
• The names of map size options now display their base dimension.

Hotkeys

• Ungarrison hotkey now consistently works for Rams when having several garrisoned and ungarrisoned Rams selected together.
• Convert hotkey for military units now functions correctly.

Multiplayer

• The match will no longer terminate for all players when one player in a game with more than two players goes out of sync – only the desynced player will be dropped.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to pause the game endlessly in Multiplayer, instead of being limited to 10 pauses.

Xbox

• Changed UI Crossplay checkbox to be un-interactable if the cross-network play is blocked in the Xbox privacy settings.
• Create lobby submenu now shouldn’t remain open if the player is disconnected after hosting game and before lobby browser is opened.
• When the Minimap Camera Lock Behavior is set to Fast Pan the [Y] display button on the minimap is no longer shown.
• The [Y] Quick Command does no longer appear when you try to build, but cannot afford a Lumber Camp using the site based radial menu.
• Conversion related warning messages about Atonement and Redemption are now shown in the notification area on the left on Xbox.
• Fortified Church is now shown correctly as age-up requirement for Armenians and Georgians in the Xbox version when using a controller.
• University now has the correct icon in the age-up requirement display.
• The Set Gather Point command is no longer shown in the Donjon’s radial menu on Xbox when using a controller.
• Buildings can now be commanded to attack enemy buildings.
• Fixed an issue on Xbox where “ Treason” was not available in the Castle’s radial menu in the Regicide game mode.
• Fixed an issue on Xbox where the [LT] button icon was not shown at the bottom of the Spectator Mode section in the Help Index.
• Fixed an issue where setting a hotkey for Delete Unit command wasn’t working correctly.
• Fixed an issue on Xbox where the game would crash when trying to select a “Granary”-object with Extended Unit Stats turned on.
• Fixed an issue on Xbox where players could bypass the pause limit on multiplayer matches.

General

• Added a new Drop Off Resources command for villagers and fishing ships. It makes the units take the resources they are carrying to the nearest drop-off building and return to work right away.

• Added a new Seek Shelter command for villagers. The behavior is similar to town bell but only the selected villagers will seek to garrison into nearby buildings. This new feature is only supported on PC for now, Xbox will be supported soon.

• Added a new All Back to Work command for garrisonable buildings. The command sends back to work all garrisoned villagers from this building and all nearby buildings within 25 tiles range (same range as for town bell). Using Shift + “Back to Work” will also act as “All Back to Work” command.
  Castles and Fortified Churches don’t display an “All Back to Work” button but have both hotkey and Shift + “Back to Work”. This new feature is only supported on PC for now, Xbox will be supported soon.

• Units in line formation will only regroup into a column after a move or attack move command of more than 30 tiles, instead of 10 tiles previously. Patrol command keeps its previous behavior of always forming a column, regardless of distance.
• Upon ringing town bell, villagers that have no available garrison slot for them will still walk to the nearest garrisonable building and stay idle. Deactivating the town bell or using all back to work command will send these villagers back to their tasks.
• When tasking a group of units to garrison into a siege unit or a Transport Ship, units will automatically spread themselves out to garrison into nearby siege or transports of the same type. The old behavior of only garrisoning into the single target is now controlled by holding Ctrl when clicking on the garrison target.

• Drag selection when holding down Alt with Selection Modifier Hotkeys setting enabled will no longer select Mule Carts and herdable animals. Now only civilian unit classes are selected (villagers, fishing ships, trade units). Herdables can still be selected when there are no civilian units in selection, though.
• Healing a damaged Mule Cart by garrisoning it into a building no longer costs resources.
• Units with splash damage now consistently deal full damage with a direct hit on their target.
• Town Centers will hit closer targets more reliably now.
• Drop Relic button and hotkey are now available when having Monks and Monks with Relics selected together. Pressing the button or hotkey will make one of the Monks drop the Relic.
• All previously event-exclusive cheat codes are now available to all players.
• Added a new cheat code: flemish reformation – Transforms all villagers into monks.

Fixes

• Researching Spies technology as Chinese no longer subtracts more resources than intended.
• Warrior Priests no longer stop automatically healing other units after being tasked in a group.
• Fixed an issue where Monks were unable to put the relic into a Monastery when using the command queue to pick the relic up with the New Waypoint Behaviour toggled off.
• Placing a building foundation on top of a Boar-like animal no longer prevents it from returning to its original location.
• Researching times of queued technologies are now correctly considered for splitting into the bulding with the shortest queue when queueing technologies from several selected buildings.
• Villagers will no longer attack other violent huntable animals nearby when they can’t reach the one they’re specifically tasked to.
• Description of “Hoardings” changed to: “Strengthens Castles, Kreposts, and Donjons by providing +1000 hit points.”
• Ranged units can no longer get stuck in their firing animation and will fire continuously.
• Right-clicking a target multiple times will no longer hinder ranged units from attacking the target as expected.
• Fishing Ships will no longer become idle when finishing constructing a Fish Trap together with a Villager.
• Fixed an issue where standing units would re-group into formation every time when a unit leaves the group.
• Vertical and horizontal gate foundations can no longer get destroyed in one hit when their corner parts are hit with splash damage.
• Stone Gate foundations no longer receive an incorrect HP increase when advancing to Castle Age.
• Fixed an issue where Mangonels would not automatically attack buildings at max range.
• All monks will now lose their faith when a group of monks completes a conversion without “Theocracy” researched.
• Fixed an issue where player could get the same civilization multiple times in a row when playing with random civilzations preferred in the ranked/quick match queue.
• Fixed a legacy issue where units with multiple-projectile volleys (such as Chu Ko Nu), when switched from one attack target to another amidst the attack, would result in loss of damage due to not correctly applying primary projectile damage on the new target.
• Fixed an issue where defensive structures such as Castles could output more damage than intended when switching targets.

General

• Changed population limits for the player in several scenarios to match the intended values:
  • Le Loi 6: ‘The Final Fortress’: 250 instead of 200.
  • Sundjata 2: ‘The Sting of the Scorpion‘: 150 instead of 200.
  • Yodit 2: ‘The Right Partner‘: 150 instead of 200.
  • Yodit 5: ‘Welcome Home’: 125 instead of 150.

Campaign Missions

• Almeida 3: ‘Ruins of Empires’: The Bantu will now spawn new forces only as long as they are not defeated.
• Attila 1: ‘The Scourge of God’: The game continues as intended if the player makes the boar attack Bleda but leaves the forest at the same time.
• Bari 2: ‘The Rebellion of Melus’: Dromons are now disabled for the player.
• Bayinnaung 5: ‘The Old Tiger’: Defeating South Rakhine no longer also defeats West Rakhine.
• El Cid 2: ‘The Enemy of my Enemy’: All Toledo villagers leave the map and no longer get stuck on other units.
• Historical Battles: ‘Manzikert’: The player no longer has Pavilions the enemy cannot access.
• Joan of Arc 2: ‘The Maid of Orleans’: Orleans no longer resigns at the game start.
• Montezuma 3: ‘Quetzalcoatl’: Several changes to make achievement “Hot & Spicy” easier to complete:
  • Tabasco defends more intelligently – assigns repairers to its TC when it has low HP.
  • Spanish attack with lower amount of units on lower difficulties.
  • Cannon galleons are held back until 200/275/350 seconds on standard/moderate/hard difficulty.
  • The player starts with slightly more food and gold.
• Thoros 2: ‘The Emperor’s Revenge’: On Console, player is no longer able to use Radial Menu during the initial objective.
• Voices of Babylon 1: ‘The Holy Man’: The Lion that is tasked to hunt the Gazelle in the beginning of the mission will no longer fall idle before the Gazelle is dead.

Georgians

• No longer start the game with a -50 food penalty.
• Cavalry regenerates 5/10/15 HP per minute in Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age civilization bonus changed → Cavalry regenerates 15% HP per minute, starting in Feudal Age.
• (Elite) Monaspa train time increased from 11 seconds → 14 seconds.
• (Elite) Monaspa nearby unit requirement for additional attack increased from 5 units → 7 units.

Incas

• Fixed a bug where the food discount wasn’t resulting in correct cost values for Eagle Warriors and Skirmisher-line (new food costs: 21 in Feudal Age, 20 in Castle Age, 19 in Imperial Age).

Italians

• Genoese Crossbowman train time decreased from 18 seconds → 14 seconds.

Tatars

• Flaming Camel no longer requires Timurid Siegecraft to be trained at Castles but now becomes instantly available at the Siege Workshop when reaching the Imperial Age.
• Flaming Camel train time increased from 20 seconds → 30 seconds.

General

• Changed the name of the map size with 240 tiles dimension from Giant to Huge.
• Added MORE_MAP_SIZES launch parameter to unlock new map sizes in Editor and Lobbies: Miniature [80], Giant [252], Massive [276], Enormous [300], Colossal [320], Incredible [360], Monstrous [400]. Note that some standard random maps may not correctly support the new map sizes yet.

General

• Fixed an issue where the lobby would not be private after selecting “Visibility: Private” when creating a lobby.

General

• AIs will no longer idle a villager when attempting to repair siege weapons.
• AI now requires at least one non-allied player in the game to resign.
• Advanced players now have the option to use hidden taunt 205 to induce the AI to resign earlier.
• Extreme AI: AI will now consider Fortified Churches and Donjons a threat and either retreat or attempt to avoid them in the early stage of the game.
• DE, CD, and HD AIs now obtain Devotion in appropriate situations.
• Fixed a bug where the scout would inappropriately retreat to the town center or guard a villager when playing as Georgians in certain situations.
• Extreme AI: When group micro is active and the AI has many spears against a scout rush, some of these spears will be sent to guard camps in defensive stance instead of supporting the main army.
• Extreme AI: Fixed some rare bugs where the AI would idle its units when group micro is active.
• Fixed a rare bug where the AI would inappropriately use advanced scout micro on lower difficulties.

Pathfinding

• Military units will now more readily attack a specific right-clicked unit instead of freezing or attacking an alternate unit. However, units will still attack alternate units as usual if they are part of a large group or the intended target is impossible to reach.
• When a right click attack command is sent to a unit that is temporarily not possible to path to, units on stand ground will attempt to attack the selected target for longer before attempting to switch to another target.

Scripting

• sn-gold-dropsite-distance now works as intended, allowing AIs to choose whether to place their first camp at gold or stone.
• The editor can now load AIs from all file locations.
• Fixed an issue where the game would prefer loading AIs from one location when “Test Scenario” was pressed and preferring another when the scenario was packed into a campaign.
• A default name for a unit line can now be added to unitlines.json.

General

• Added the tool for building widgetui atlases to Tools_Builds folder. It can be used by executing build_all_atlases.ps1 script located in widgetui folder (which can be edited to generate only specific atlases). The tool will build an atlas with the textures defined in AtlasDef of the atlas in materials.json. The correct coordinates of textures in the atlas will be set in materials.json during the atlas generation.
• Added “UnlockScenarios” parameter for campaign layout json files. Setting this parameter to true will immediately allow access to all scenarios in the campaign, opposed to allowing to access the next scenario only after the previous scenario is won.
• Fixed an issue where new unit lines with IDs outside of the unit line ID range in the official unitlines.json were not functioning. Now unit lines can have any ID from -399 to -200.
• Unit lines for buildings now use “Building” parameter in unitlines.json.
• Added “Identifier” parameter in unitlines.json for defining AI constants for unit lines.
• Added “unique_unit_line” parameter for each civilization in civilizations.json for defining previously hardcoded civilization’s unique unit line ID.
• Missing civilization settings (such as the new “unique_unit_line” field) in a modded civilizations.json file will now automatically fallback to the unmodified civilizations.json fields for the respective civilization, as long as the civilization’s data name matches. This makes it possible to only override certain parameters of a civilization.
• Directed blast damage mode (Blast Attack Level flag 128) can now work with substraction type blast damage (negative Blast Damage attribute value).
• Power up task no longer allows invalid right click tasking of power up-providing buildings to the object IDs specified in the task.
• Resources tracking player stats (such as P1 Kills, Razed by P3, etc.) now support Gaia, and have been relocated to the 300-499 range. Any existing references in older Scenario Triggers will update automatically, and the XS Constants for such resources will use new values.

Scenario Editor

• The game can now boot directly into the Scenario Editor if the EDITOR launch parameter is specified. This can be combined with other parameters (e.g. EDITOR LAUNCH_GAME_VARIANT=AOE1).
• Added an option in Players tab to lock the player to the selected AI personality – players will not be able to change the AI personality for this player when setting up a game.
• Technologies modified by a “Change Technology Cost” trigger effect can no longer be researched when not having enough resources.
• Fixed the frame count for Statue (Civilization) object, allowing to access previously inaccessible statue variations.

XS Scripting

• The XS error checker now checks for a greater variety of syntax errors, and the level of detail in error messages has been increased.
• The x256tech script has been updated to its final version, and a variant called x9tech is now available.

Investigation

• LAN lobbies not working: We have identified the cause of the problem, and will be providing a fix in an upcoming update.

As always, we are continuing to track issues reported by the community for future updates.

For other known issues, please visit this page to see what’s being tracked!

COMING UP…

Hello Community!

If you tuned into our recent New Year, New Age event, you’re pretty up to speed on all of the activity going on within World’s Edge – we’re doing an awful lot, which makes us pretty thrilled! Sitting back and watching that as the AoE II: DE team, it’s hard not to be really proud of this community and the ways in which your continued enthusiasm and support has enabled so much of this. Indeed, for those of us that have been making videogames for a longer while, the Age community stands out – you’re a pretty special bunch and we’re delighted with how you choose to interact with us as well as each other. It’s a pretty positive and uplifting space and we feel like it’s our continued privilege to be on this side of things and working hard to give you some meaningful joy. It felt like a good idea to start this by saying thank you and that we’re soooooo looking forward to those do-your-best-at-guessing surprises still around the corner!

Victors and Vanquished, the new DLC for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, officially launches tomorrow! Woo-hoo! But if you haven’t yet laid eyes on some of the other highlights from the show, check these out –

• Age of Mythology: Retold has got us seriously, seriously hyped! The team working on Myth is doing some jaw-dropping things. And also, how do we get that AR setup in our studio conference rooms? Hmm…
• Age of Empires: Mobile is particularly exciting for us as our first move into this space and we couldn’t be happier with how that’s progressing!
• There’s also a really great Developer Diary segment showing you more about everything that’s going into bringing your favorite franchise to your phone – TiMi has been an excellent partner and we’re thankful for the dedication and gravity they’ve brought to this challenge! They definitely deserve your excitement because we think they’re doing something pretty special.
• Oh, and did you know there are even more Updates coming to Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition + Age of Empires IV? This includes new DLC coming for AoE III: DE and Season 7 coming to AoE IV!
• And finally, we snuck in a 2023 Year in Review, which gave everyone at the studio a bit of an emotional reminder about just how much work we’ve been getting done and how much we’ve been able to deliver – it can be difficult to keep that in your head when you’re always busy working on the next cool secret thing 🙂

It’s also worth noting that many of the Developers at World’s Edge and within our partner teams at Forgotten Empires, Tantalus, and CaptureAge, are often working across the franchise on most of what we’re busy with, so there’s really a community of people dedicated broadly to these various games and their unique qualities. We’re less segmented than you might imagine and generally all-in across the board on making sure you get the best experiences we can deliver. We basically eat, sleep, and live Age in all of its forms 🙂

With Victors and Vanquished in particular, we’re trying something new. There are no new Civs in this DLC and that’s intentional – it’s an effort on our part to diversify the kind of content we’re able to bring to you and figure out how we can continue to keep your experience vibrant in new and interesting ways. A surprisingly large portion of those playing AoE II: DE are spending their time playing/replaying Campaigns and Skirmish matches, rarely tackling Ranked or Custom Multiplayer. We also see a lot of excitement and engagement around our occasional Challenge Scenarios like Mangudai Madness, and before that both Barbarossa Brawl and Mongol Raiders, alongside the Mods and Custom Scenarios you’re downloading and playing. For many of you, these are the best parts of AoE II: DE and we’re hearing your demand for more of these types of content.

Now, boiler-plate business logic would suggest that we’d be the most successful with this kind of effort if we packed Civs into every offering so that there’s value for everyone, because new Civs tend to be the domain of player groups that prefer competitive play. It can be hard to argue against that – the more broadly appealing something is, the better it can perform, right? Well… we’re not sure that’s true, and what we’re starting to do with Victors and Vanquished is experiment with content releases that are more targeted in what they deliver for different groups of players and what you want the most. It also gives us room to speed up this process and figure out a calendar for you that’s hopefully full of more fun and more things to look forward to!

We’ve got some big surprises still waiting for you along these lines and they’ll take their own form as we continue to work on entertaining you in new ways, so to the extent that you enjoy and support Victors and Vanquished, we fully intend to keep Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition like a year-long Christmas tree with the presents piled high (without getting clothes from Grandma – cool toys only). Note: this doesn’t at all mean that the DLC you love is going away, but it definitely means we’re trying new things in an effort to make you even more happy.

As much as it feels like we’ve already done so much in the 4+ years since launch in November, 2019 – heck, we even went through a global pandemic together and had this game to give us some good vibes during difficult times – there’s also this way in which it feels like you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg still, because the releases we already have planned into 2025 kind of blow our minds.

And yes, it’s only March of 2024 and we definitely just said 2025… 😉

Another thing that’s pretty special about Victors and Vanquished is where it comes from. Our own Ramsey Abdulrahim originated this content and pitched us internally on evolving what he’d done into this DLC project. This effort represents a much larger story that’s been at the heart of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition from its inception, which is YOU! Our partners at Forgotten Empires are themselves a series of community creators that built a business on the back of passion and found a way to turn what they love into a full-time pursuit. Creators from mod communities working their way into professional Game Development isn’t a new idea, but when it happens it tends to represent the best of what videogames can be – a relatively unencumbered opportunity for people to take a hobby they love and turn it into a lifetime of opportunity and creative expression. Here at World’s Edge, this is something we pay a lot of attention to and value immensely. We’re often hiring out of our community to bring you the content you’ve been playing for years now. We recognize that the love you have for this game is as valuable to others as it is to us, and we’re often anxious to grow our own teams in this spirit and with people across the world that care deeply about Age of Empires.

This is your encouragement to dream big and grab that Scenario Editor. Ramsey was you at one point and if you’ve got a similar passion to build, we’d be happy to see you age-up doing something you love. The coolest part of writing this is that someone reading it will probably do exactly that and be one of our co-workers someday, and that makes us super happy. How cool is that!? Answer: it’s pretty cool!

Forgive the Illiad, we’ll be done now and say see you again soon with another Update full of fun stuff. In the meantime, please enjoy Victors and Vanquished and the excitement of everything yet to come, and thank you for being such a wonderful audience, we’re very lucky to have you – you help us live our dreams. <3

DISCLAIMER

Please note that this list is subject to change and should not be considered a comprehensive list of all the known issues we’re tracking. The above is to inform you of the team’s current priorities, which will change as other issues arise or take precedence.

For the latest updates and announcements, please visit our social channels.