Age of Mythology: Retold Update 18.33318

AoE Official June 17, 2025

Welcome heroes to another exciting update for Age of Mythology: Retold, loaded with goodies and we’re excited for everyone to get their hands on and experience these changes. In addition to the Fortifications changes, there is a new game speed toggle available, difficulty/balance tweaks made to the Fall of the Trident campaign, and more! So take a peak at the notes before jumping in game!

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Thanks again to our amazing community members, all of whom have helped to make Age of Mythology: Retold a success thus far!

—The Age of Mythology Team

Please note that custom mods may not be compatible with the latest game update. If you are experiencing issues launching or playing the game after downloading the new build, try disabling your installed mods before trying again.

Still having trouble? Visit our support site!

Build Spotlight

Fortifications Game Pacing Update

As a new gameplay evolution to improve defensive options, we bring you a fortifications update! This has been on the dev to-do list for some time, and we’re excited for the community to try it. Please share your thoughts on the forums – we’ll be looking out for them!

Buildings are more resistant to hack damage with higher increases for some defensive buildings, such as Towers and Fortresses.
Towers and Fortresses now deal significantly more damage to help players defend their bases.
Siege weapon damage has been increased to allow them to serve their role better as anti-building units, now that buildings are more resistant to hack damage.
A new technology called “Advanced Fortifications” is now available to further improve Fortress-type buildings in the Mythic Age. The “Advanced Fortifications” technology further increases the damage and armor of Fortress buildings.
Villager train times have been increased; this should make the window of opportunity to punish booming strategies larger, to compensate for the stronger defenses.
For the full details about changes applied as part of this balance change, please read more in the Balance section of this change list!

New Updates for the Monthly Community Event – Pantheon Pin-Up

Congratulations to the community for your impressive display as you all worked together toward the first month’s rewards, which included the new alternate art Poseidon God portrait reward!

This month’s objectives are well underway as we all work toward the Oranos God portrait reward and other new profile images as a community.

To further encourage participation in more of the weekly objectives, some changes have been made to give you earlier access to rewards if you put in the effort to help the community. These changes include the following:

When the community reaches its goals, the rewards are now unlocked shortly after the goals are reached instead of waiting until the event has concluded!
You can access the rewards even earlier if you fully participate in the challenges each week! Completing all the challenges for each week will unlock the associated reward for your account. Players who don’t complete all the challenges will still unlock the same rewards if the community goals for each challenge are reached. The goal of these changes is to reward those who support the community goals.
Challenges for each week no longer lock after each week ends. After challenges become available to complete, they will remain available until the end of the month.
The Weekly Challenges objective tracker in-game will now only display the last up to four incomplete challenges to prevent your UI from being overwhelmed. The list of challenges shown will only update when new matches are entered. The challenges that are not currently visible are still being tracked and will be completed once the necessary conditions are met.

These changes apply retroactively to the currently active event! If you missed out on completing any challenges from the first two weeks, you can now jump back in and help the community push toward the 100% completion goal!

New Gameplay Speed Control

In the thick of a fight and feeling overwhelmed with controlling your army? Or perhaps the creation of your next army feels too slow? Now you have the control to enjoy the game at your speed!

Slow, Medium, and Fast Gameplay Speeds can be cycled through at any time in allowed game modes. This includes most single-player modes, such as Skirmish and the Campaign.
Mouse and Keyboard players can use the new button in the top right of their screen to cycle through the gameplay speeds.
Controller players can open the Pause Menu and press the new binding to cycle the gameplay speed. While playing on Xbox, use the Right Bumper (RB). On PlayStation 5, use R1.

Fall of the Trident Campaign Quality of Life and Difficulty Adjustments

In the last update, we made adjustments to several Fall of the Trident Campaign missions to improve the player experience. This update brings new changes to more missions, along with additional updates to those that were modified in the previous patch.

The changes made to these missions focused on:
- Making goals clear to the player through additional or improved messaging.
- Adjustments to difficulty, primarily for moderate and lower levels, to bring the experience closer to what should be expected at these levels of difficulty.
The following missions have had changes since the last patch:
- Fall of the Trident 04: A Fine Plan
- Fall of the Trident 05: Just Enough Rope
- Fall of the Trident 06: I Hope This Works
- Fall of the Trident 08: Bad News
- Fall of the Trident 11: The Lost Relic
- Fall of the Trident 12: Light Sleeper

If you were struggling on one of these missions or haven’t tried the campaign yet, now is a great time to experience the story in Age of Mythology: Retold.

In addition to these specific level changes, many players may find the Gameplay Speed Control detailed above to be a helpful tool for experiencing all campaigns at a comfortable pace.

Game

Stability & Performance

Updated network libraries to improve stability.
Improved multithreading performance in some situations related to multiplayer and communication via networked processes.
Additional tracking for a rare out-of-sync that can occur has been added.
Fixed a crash that could occur when rendering massive terrain maps. Terrain edges are now split into batches for rendering, similar to how the terrain sections are rendered.
Minor improvements have been made to ensure that save files are handled correctly across all platforms.
Minor performance improvements for some game simulation situations.
Minor performance improvement on PlayStation 5 when achievements are granted. Processing of achievement granting is now run on a separate thread.
Memory functionality updates to bring PlayStation 5 functionality closer to that of the other platforms.
Minor general improvements to stability, including some crash fixes.
Performance optimizations for querying unit data used by the UI and other non-simulation uses.
Fixed a crash that could occur while playing with a controller if players attempted to open the diplomacy site menu for another player at the instant the target unit was destroyed.
Fixed a rare multithreading crash that could occur related to memory management.
Fixed a rare crash that could occur when interacting with some pop-up dialogs.
Improvements to shader preloading during PlayStation 5 startup ensure that all necessary resources are loaded ahead of time.

Localization

Minor updates to localization in some languages.

Graphics

Yang Jian now uses player colors.
Minor adjustments were made to the Greek Villager walk animation to reduce some awkward motion.
Updated the VFX for Forest Protection.
Idle fishing ships now show the idle Zzz VFX.
Fixed a missing animation issue for the Chinese Citadel Center.
Fixed the minimap not fully updating correctly if changes were made too quickly. This should resolve cases where custom random maps with delayed map generation could display a portion of the earlier map state.
Added launch points for projectiles to spawn at to all Fortress-type buildings.

Audio

Minor adjustments to enhance audio balance for various situations.
Fixed a bug that prevented music from playing for Age of Mythology: Retold while in the PlayStation 5 system menu.
Earth walls no longer play a birth sound on completion.

Hotkeys

The Push to Talk hotkey will now report if it has been remapped to something else to fix situations where silent conflicts could occur.
The “Select All” and “Select All On Screen” hotkeys will now correctly ignore units that are performing conversion or trading.

UI

AI difficulty will no longer show in some places when no AI is present in a game.
Fixed a case where using a binding to close the Settings menu while a Combo Box is currently being interacted with would cause the Combo Box to appear in an incorrect state until the game is restarted.
Fixed a bug that caused overlapped arrows to show in the UI while spectating games.
Removed masking on notifications and chat to improve readability. In some cases, the masking made the UI appear blurry.
Minor updates to improve the appearance of the Objectives popup panel.
Fixed the Hamask technology incorrectly appearing in the Loki technology tree.
Fixed the missing Dionysia technology in the Zeus technology tree.
Terracotta Riders will now appear correctly in the technology tree.
Support for server-driven maintenance messages has now been added. During maintenance periods, you may see warnings or be prevented from accessing some areas of the game.
Loading screen tips have been updated with new additions and adjustments to enhance the tips.
Fixed a visual glitch on the Skirmish screen that showed some additional padding between dropdowns due to the hidden tutorial elements unintentionally extending the grid size.
Fixed a case where extra buttons could appear in the Community Event finished popup window.
Speech-to-text subtitles are now limited to a maximum as intended.
Simplified the News pop-up UI keyboard button prompts to prevent them from showing in mouse mode.
The Personality and Difficulty buttons now mimic the behavior of other combo boxes by changing opacity when in a disabled state.
The game type can now be changed to a saved game after creating a lobby.
The Weekly Objectives tracker will no longer show while watching a recording game or spectating a multiplayer match.
Fixed some issues with the UI while spectating and watching replays while in controller mode, including the following items.
- The resource toggle is now hidden in 1v1 and when there are more than two teams present.
- Input hint to use God Powers is now hidden.
- The Age Up icon will no longer flash.
News popups will now let new players complete the first-time user experience before appearing.
Minor fixes for a few situations where the new Oranos God Portrait reward would not show correctly.

Controller

Text is no longer cut off when showing the gather rate in the selected unit UI, while playing with a controller.
Fixed a bug that prevented controller players from using allied Farms.
While playing on an Xbox, the game will now try to pause after pressing the Xbox button on your controller.
Training and Research time is now shown in the controller Command Menus.
Moved the Garrison prompt to be more consistently readable.
Added Garrison as a contextual action when pressing on A (Xbox) or Cross (PlayStation 5) for some units.
The default setting for “Military Command Menu First Page” has been changed to “Military” (was “Abilities”).

Gameplay

Fixes

Fixed a bug that caused the AI to not respond during the Sudden Death match on Nomad.
Improved unit responsiveness by adjusting idle time between tasks.
Improved unit responsiveness after using the Stop command.
Fixed a bug where units could ignore all other units around them except those attacking them. This behavior had resulted in excessive idle time and could lead to units failing to respond effectively, ultimately causing them to die.
Fixed a bug where units sometimes would not send target died events. When this “target died” event was not sent, it could lead to units becoming idle instead of retargeting as expected.
Reduced frequency of wandering for units flagged as allowed to wander while idle.
Various fixes for pathfinding behavior, including:
- Fixed a situation where units could become stuck at the edge of the map.
- Fixed some cases where units became confused and stopped responding to commands.
- Fixed some paths being treated as complete paths when they can only be partial paths based on unit isolation from their desired goal.
- Fixed a case where units could take too long to repath if other units block their path.
- Fixed an issue where gathering actions would repath too frequently in some situations.
Fixed a bug that caused unit groups to sometimes become stuck on buildings.
Fixed a case where units could twitch when commanded.
Villagers will no longer accidentally retarget nearby enemy units when tasked with attacking animals or chopping trees.
Villagers will no longer retaliate against predators if they are currently performing an action and moving.
Fixed cases where units could be produced from some angles on production buildings and end up stuck inside pockets in the treeline.
Various minor improvements to the AI.
The Roc unit now has a smaller selection mesh to reduce the chance of accidental selection.
Fixed a case where units with a force added from being pushed while colliding against another unit and dying in the same frame resulted in the other unit teleporting.
Units that are defakified while in a player’s vision are now added immediately to that player’s KB data.
Villager Priority System improvements (while the Villager Priority System is active):
- Improved checks to verify that gatherers can reach a gather plan’s resource when choosing a unit to assign.
- When a gather plan selects a new resource, it now tries to choose one that its current gatherers can reach.
- Villagers will now be forced to work when they have been idle for too long.
- Fixed gatherers with different resource gathering rates not being preferred for their higher rate resources.
- Fixed an issue where gatherers were not correctly assigned to resources based on proximity to the resources. In some situations, this issue was causing unnecessary extra worker migration.
- Unit flags are now used to determine resources for drop sites, rather than their carry capacity.
- Drop sites will now create a new base (for gather range purposes) instead of joining an existing base if the drop site exceeds the range of the base.
- Gatherers will now try to avoid traveling too far across the map to gather in other bases.
Fixed a bug that caused Pioneers to become stuck when casting Sky Lantern against a cliff.
Fixed a bug that caused the IgnoreRally attribute to not behave correctly during unit creation in some cases. Pigs spawned from a relic (Tusk of Dangkang) no longer follow rally points in any case.
Improved AI resign behavior by not instantly resigning. The AI will now have to decide twice in a row to resign. This will hopefully prevent cases where the AI could resign early in some rare situations.
Fixed that caused Oracle auto-scout to not function correctly for players and the AI.
Fixed a bug that prevented the AI from building/using Obelisks correctly in some situations.
Fixed a case where resources were not returned to the player when expected. Placing a foundation on a Settlement while not in Line of Sight would sometimes not return resources to the player after revealing that the Settlement was already claimed.
Caravans will now head to their intended Town Center after training if their Market’s original Town Center target was destroyed and then rebuilt.
Newer dynamic modifiers are now processed first for Dynamic Data handling. This ensures non-stackable modifiers, such as those from Boost abilities that retain a higher multiplier, are taken into account for unit stat calculation.
Chiyou units granted from using a cheat can now damage buildings and individual units through their normal attack.
Fixed a bug that caused Earth Wall to become instantly destroyed after casting. Earth Wall foundations now have 1 build point added to ensure they are not treated as untouched foundations while placing them. Revealing trees while spawning an Earth Wall was one example of a situation that could lead to the wall becoming destroyed due to the untouched foundations.
Fixed a bug that caused units to sometimes gather from sub-optimal trees. An example case was when Kuafu units tried to gather from a tree, but they could not reach it due to their larger size, which resulted in them choosing a far-away tree as the next best option.
Units tasked to seek shelter no longer attempt to garrison within Underworld Passages.
Casting Forest Protection over a building no longer prevents training for flying units.

Balance

Deathmatch

Chinese favor rate multiplier reduced from 1.5x → 1.2x.

Units

Villagers: train time increased, see specific culture sections for details.
Fishing Ship: train time increased from 15 → 18 seconds.
Caravan: adjusted as follows
- Train time increased from 15 → 18 seconds.
- Gold gather rate increased from 0.7 → 0.8.
Poison & bleeding damage over time effects: no longer work on siege weapons.
Titan: bonus damage multiplier vs buildings increased from 5x → 6x.
Myth Units: Myth units with crush damage have had their crush damage increased, see culture sections for details.

Buildings

All buildings: adjusted as follows
- Hack armor increased from 30% → 40%.
- Repair rate reduced from 0.5x → 0.4x.
Walls: repair rate reduced from 0.25x → 0.2x.
Sentry Tower: adjusted as follows:
- Hack armor increased from 30% → 50%.
- Build points increased from 50 → 60.
- Damage increased from 5 → 8 pierce.
- Hitpoints reduced from 750 → 600.
- Pierce armor increased from 85% → 90%.
Fortress-type buildings: hack armor increased from 40% → 50%.
Town Center: hack armor increased from 45% → 50%.

Technologies

Watch Tower: cost increased from 150 wood 50 gold → 200 wood 100 gold.
Added “Advanced Fortifications” mythic age technology, which improves fortress buildings damage by +30%, and -10% hack vulnerability. Cost: 600 Wood 600 Gold. Available in fortresses.
Survival Equipment: cost increased from 100 wood 100 gold → 150 wood 150 gold.
Crenellations: damage bonus multiplier vs cavalry increased from +0.25x → +0.5x.
Engineers: siege damage increased from +25% → +50%.

Relics

All relics: now also trickle 0.01 favor per second.
Scarab Pendant: Taowu are now affected as the Chinese equivalent of the siege myth unit.

All Pantheon Changes

Greek Pantheon

Major Gods

Zeus

Infantry: damage bonus vs buildings increased from 50% → 60%.

Developer Note: This is to slightly offset for the now increased in hack armor buildings, so that this bonus still feels impactful.

Minor Gods

Athena

Sarissa (Technology): adjusted as follows
- Hoplite damage increased from +5% → +10%.

Developer Note: Sarissa has seen a lot of nerfs in previous patches, leaving it a little on the underwhelming side.

Aegis Shield (Technology): cost increased from 150 Wood 15 Favor → 200 wood 20 favor.

Hermes

Spirited Charge (Technology): centaur speed increased from +5% → +10%.

Developer Note: We are bringing back the centaur speed post-upgrade to match that of the cavalry, to off-set the lost 1x multiplier against myth units.

Winged Messenger (Technology): free pegasus respawn delay increased from 10 → 90 seconds.

Developer Note: Free units need some sort of incentive to take out. With a respawn delay so short it meant there was no real reward for taking it out, and after the changes there should be some deserved downtime for losing it.

Ares

Will of Kronos (Technology): Cyclops damage area increase on hand attack reduced from +3 → +2.

Apollo

Sun Ray (Technology): ranged soldiers, heroes and myth units ranged attack damage increased from +10% → +15%.

Myth Units

Centaur (Hermes): bonus damage vs myth units reduced from 3x → 2x.
Cyclops (Ares): crush damage increased from 24 → 28.
Hydra (Dionysus): crush damage increased from 15 → 18.
Nemean Lion (Aphrodite): crush damage increased from 11 → 14.
Colossus (Hephaestus): crush damage increased from 80 → 100.

Hero Units

Atalanta (Poseidon): hitpoints reduced from 275 → 260.

Human Units

Villager: train time increased from 15 → 18 seconds.
Prodromos: hitpoints increased from 135 → 145.
Myrmidon (Zeus): hitpoints increased from 140 → 150.
Gastraphetoros (Hades): damage bonus multiplier vs buildings increased from 12x → 20x.

Naval Units

Trireme: hitpoints reduced from 320 → 305.
Pentekonter: hitpoints reduced from 350 → 335.
Juggernaut: hitpoints reduced from 275 → 265.

Developer Note: Greeks have been proving to be dominant on water due to their powerful ~10% increased ship hitpoints, so we are bringing it down to ~5% more hitpoints.

Siege Units

Petrobolos: crush damage increased from 44 → 55.
Helepolis: crush damage increased from 40 → 50.