Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition — Update 47820

The Celebrating the Ages Event

May 3 – May 24 

With all the announcements from the Age Fan Preview Event, there couldn’t be a better time to celebrate the Age of Empires series!

In 1997, the very first Age of Empires was released—the beginning of us all coming together to form the fantastic, passionate community we are today! In celebration of this momentous moment, we’ve packaged up some classic community favorites throughout the series and brought them straight to you in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition! As a bonus, we’ve even brought back a few other fan-favorite goodies from previous events!

Join us as we reminisce over the incredible moments and experiences YOU, the community, have created in this special CELEBRATING THE AGES event!

New Rewards!

Starting TODAY through MAY 24, complete daily in-game tasks to unlock event-themed goodies! In addition to the normal daily rewards, we’ve added two additional bonus challenges to this event!

Each of the following challenges must be unlocked in order and on separate days:

Keep it Forever!

Remember: if you sign in to Xbox Live at any point during the event, you get to keep all the mods and profile icons you unlock! Sign in, earn your rewards, and enjoy!

We hope you enjoy the Celebrating the Ages event!

—The Age of Empires Team

♦     ♦     ♦

Event F.A.Q.

Stability & Performance

• Fixed an issue that could cause the game to crash when checking whether a specific building foundation is obstructed when it no longer exists.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the game to freeze during the first few minutes of gameplay, or later in very rare cases.
• Fixed an issue that would cause a freeze when using the ‘Select All’ hotkey for a specific building type which includes foundations that are still under construction.
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when creating a Multiplayer lobby.
• Fixed several crashes that could occur during game startup.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when attempting to watch a replay of a Lords of the West campaign without owning the expansion.
• Fixed an extremely rare crash that could occur when two players resigned at exactly the same time.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when using an outdated data mod that hadn’t been updated to account for the new civilizations introduced in the Lords of the West expansion.
• Fixed a Scenario Editor crash that could occur when generating a custom Random Map, reducing the amount of players and map size, and then generating it again.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when attempting to play with a modified data file containing more than 1701 units.

Achievements

• The ‘Smoke in the water’ achievement can now be unlocked, as intended, in the Lake Poyang Historical Battle.
• The ‘Turkish delight’ achievement can now be unlocked, as intended by defeating all other Turkish factions without forming an alliance with them.

Audio

• The ♪ Burgundian ♪ and ♪ Sicilian ♪ themes will now play for the full duration of their tracks.

UI

Building Range Indicators have been added as an option in the Options → Game section. Depending on the selected option, range indicators are shown for all buildings with a ranged attack:

• At All Times
• When Selected
• Never

The color of the range indicator mirrors the Terrain Grid Color by default, but can (alternatively) be changed to the Player Color of the selected building’s owner.

• Double-clicking a civilization in the civilization selection screen will now select it without having to press the ‘Confirm’ button.
• Fixed a very rare issue where it was possible to disable in-game notifications with no way to re-enable them.
• Fixed a purely visual bug in the UI where Viking militia-line units displayed a higher hit point value than the maximum hit points allowed.
• The Bulgarian Technology Tree no longer states that the stone cost-reduction to construct Town Centers is only effective as of Castle Age; the bonus is now in effect starting in the Dark Age, as previously.

Accessibility

• In the Ranked Matchmaking window, the Preferred/Banned Map screens can now be navigated using the keyboard for each game type.
• In the Mod Manager, the ‘Check For Update’ button can now be accessed using the keyboard.
• Fixed an issue which made it difficult to consistently navigate between the different Multiplayer tabs (Ranked, Lobby, etc.) using the keyboard.
• When chat narration is enabled, the Narrator now acknowledges the first letter of words when reading through in-game updates.
• The Narrator no longer skips the first two letters of other notifications.
• The Narrator no longer reads out “icon 1” and “icon 2” rather than reading the descriptive text of images in the ‘Select Icon’ window.

General

UNITS

Elite Steppe Lancer [Standard & Elite]: Reduced gold cost from 45 ▶ 40 gold.

TECHNOLOGIES

• The  Cannon Galleon technology is no longer required to train the unit. Instead, researching  Chemistry now unlocks the ability to train Cannon Galleons.

Burgundians

BURGUNDIANS

Increased the amount of food generated by Relics from 20 ▶ 30 food/minute, which now mirrors the generation rate of gold.
The food cost of economy upgrades is now reduced by 50% in addition to being available one Age earlier.

UNITS

 Flemish Militia: Reduced attack versus cavalry from 12 ▶ 8.
 Flemish Militia: Reduced attack versus camels and ships from 8 ▶ 6.

TECHNOLOGIES

Burgundian Vineyards: Now converts half of all food into gold rather than the entire stockpile.
Burgundian Vineyards: Increased the rate at which farmers generate gold by +33%.

Cumans

CIVILIZATION

Reduced the team bonus health granted to palisade walls from +50% ▶ +33%.

Franks

TECHNOLOGIES

Bearded Axe: Now available in the Castle Age (was Imperial Age).
Bearded Axe: Reduced the cost to research from 400 food, 400 gold ▶ 300 food, 300 gold.
Chivalry: Now available in the Imperial Age (was Castle Age).
Chivalry: Increased the cost from 400 wood, 400 gold ▶ 600 wood, 500 gold.

Incas

CIVILIZATION

Villagers now gain the benefits of Blacksmith upgrades starting in the Castle Age.

Malay

CIVILIZATION

Fish Traps now provide +300% food as opposed to an unlimited amount.
Battle Elephants now cost -30% in the Castle Age and -40% in the Imperial Age.

UNITS

Karambit Warrior [Standard & Elite]: Increased attack from 6/7 ▶ 7/8.

Mongols

UNITS

Mangudai [Standard & Elite]: Reduced speed from 1.45 ▶ 1.4.

Portuguese

UNITS

 Organ Gun [Standard & Elite]: Secondary projectiles now consistently deal 2 damage as opposed to 1 or 2 depending on whether they hit their primary target.

Sicilians

CIVILIZATION

Now receive access to the  Siege Onager upgrade.

UNITS

Serjeant: Increased Feudal Age melee armor from 1 ▶ 2.
Serjeant: Increased Castle Age hit points from 60 ▶ 65.
Elite Serjeant: Increased hit points from 75 ▶ 85.
Donjon: Reduced the stone cost to build from 200 ▶ 175 stone.

TECHNOLOGIES

First Crusade: As an added effect, the technology now also improves all Sicilian units’ resistance to conversion.

NEW MAPS!

Five brand-new maps have been added to the map pool:

🌐 Crater

“In the depths of a Siberian forest, an ash-covered wasteland appears, offering little shelter but plenty in gold and riches.”

🌐 Crossroads

“Four forest-capped hills loom at the center, serving as the only source of wood and rendering the paths between them most treacherous.”

🌐 Michi

“An impenetrable forest separates the teams of players, until one breaks through and draws the first blood on this infamous battlefield.”

🌐 Team Moats

“The surrounding streams offer little but a false sense of security. And with little room for expansion, players must soon break out and claim the vast lands around.”

🌐 Volcanic Island

“With stone scattered around in the shallows, the once fire-breathing mountain has since overgrown with lush vegetation and now awaits to be conquered.”

Map Balance

• Baltic: On Tiny, Small, and Medium map sizes, the number of Relics now correctly scale and spawn based on the number of players actually present on the map.
• Migration: Players’ starting islands now always touch the edges of the map to prevent a channel around to the back of the island.
• Migration: Increased the width of the water channels between the players and the mainland.
• Migration: Increased the size of the mainland and created a more consistent shape across map variants.
• Migration: Forests on the mainland now grow in larger groupings and can appear closer to the coastline, allowing for more open space inland.
• Migration: Increased the amount of gold and stone on the map to more closely match the standard amounts, though the number of resource nodes can vary slightly.
• Migration: Berries no longer grow close to the water.
• Migration: Cliffs no longer spawn on the Tiny (1v1) map size.
• Seize the Mountain: Slightly reduced the amount of forest generated on the map.
• Seize the Mountain: Adjusted the forests on smaller map sizes to make the map less easy to wall.
• Seize the Mountain: Reduced the size of the mountain on smaller map sizes to allow for more playable space.
• Seize the Mountain: Improved the balance of starting forests in 3v3 and 4v4 settings.
• Seize the Mountain: On smaller map sizes, the mainland now spawns further from the map edges to prevent players from walling to the edge of the map with a Dock.
• Hideout: Secondary gold and stone piles—as well as other resources which were meant to spawn outside of the player’s walls—can no longer appear within the walls of an elongated base.
• Fortress: Fixed an issue which would create empty areas of the map.
• Fortress: Towers are now spaced more evenly.

General

• Fixed an issue where AI players would issue orders repeatedly, causing undesirable side effects such as unit stuttering.
• Boar lurers garrisoned by the AI in a Town Center to avoid the boar’s attacks will now, rather than hiding in the Town Center for extended periods of time, ungarrison once the boar swaps to a new target.

Pathfinding

• Fixed a rare, persistent issue where units would defy the rules of space and time to path through walls and attack enemy units.
• Fixed an issue where lumberjacks could become idle after tasking them to trees using command queue.
• Fixed an issue where builders would refuse to path to a foundation if blocked or locked within walls during a previous attempt to reach the site.
• Villagers working on a Farm will no longer move around the farm more than four times before dropping off food. This should make their harvesting efficiency more consistent.
• Fixed an edge case where huntable wild animals, such as a boar, would stop chasing the boar lurer despite them still being within the boar’s line of sight.

Scripting

• The can-train, up-can-train, train, or up-train commands now allow for -1 to be passed into them instead of causing a game crash.
• up-remaining-boar-amount now also works on living boars, as intended.
• Stacked find-status-remote searches no longer erroneously reset search indexes.
• Introduced sn-enable-research-queue to control whether AI players can (or cannot) queue technologies along with units when sn-enable-training-queue is enabled. sn-enable-research-queue is set to 0 by default, and can be set to 1 to enable.
• sn-number-tasked-units now works as intended when used with up-target-objects or up-target-point.

General

• Added a new Blast Defense Level attribute in data for scenarios and RandomMapScripts. It has the same functionality as the blast defense level field in unit data.
• Added a new Object Hotkey attribute in data for scenarios and RandomMapScripts. It has the same functionality as the Hotkey field in unit data.

Added new flags for Hero Status attribute to control hero properties individually:

• 2: cannot be converted
• 4: auto-healing
• 8: default defensive stance
• 16: protected formation
• 32: safe delete confirmation

The flags can be combined with each other, or flag 1 can be used to enable full hero status.

• The Regeneration Rate attribute now determines the number of hit points a given unit regenerates in a minute. The Regeneration task in the unit data is no longer required. The Regeneration Rate attribute has no effect for units with Hero Status flag 1 (full hero status) or 2 (auto-healing), which regenerate at the fixed 30 hit points/min rate.

Investigation

As always, we are continuing to track issues reported by the community for future updates. Here is a brief update from our Production team regarding some of what is still in the works:

• Crashes and Freezes: This Update delivers several fixes that address game crashes and freezing. Addressing these types of problems remains a priority for us when we’re able to get actionable information about what users are experiencing and why those problems are occurring. We continue to monitor these issues where reported by users and ask that you reach out to our Support Team for solutions and to provide our team with more information about the issue should you encounter them. As part of this process, you may be asked to submit files that give us important information about why you’re experiencing problems, and perhaps even directed to PUPP to help us confirm if we’ve been able to resolve your issue.

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

What's on the Horizon

During the recent Age of Empires Fan Preview Event, we announced both Dawn of the Dukes and that Coop is coming to the game!

We’ll have more details on both of these announcements in the coming months, so stay tuned to our channels for more information!

PS: We’re pretty hyped and excited to get this into your hands 🙂

Public Update Preview Program (PUPP)

April was the first time that we pushed balance changes to the PUP, and we’re thankful to our users who helped us identify bugs which we’ve since been able to address ahead of the the launch of this update.

We were also able to validate a fix for game freezing that wound up being pretty difficult to track down. The PUP continues to be one of our best tools for resolving complex issues, and we’ll be utilizing the PUP more and more in the months ahead.

You can find more information in the Steam forums when PUP builds are active (note: you must be logged into Steam to view the forum), and we invite you to participate with us as we take steps to make sure you’re having an enjoyable gaming experience.

You can get involved in the latest edition of the Public Update Preview, here: