GREETINGS, heroes of old! While the heroes of our modern age fight to keep our world safe, we’re here to deliver some fantastic news for those of you doing your part by staying healthy, staying home, and staying put: a new Age of Mythology Patch Preview for game owners to download and play RIGHT NOW! The team has been working hard to pull together some big updates for the game; now we’re excited to share them with you, along with the opportunity to play and discuss your experience before they’re passed along to the live game!
Today’s build is primarily focused on the stability and performance of the game. Here are some of the highlights:
- Fixes for various memory leaks!
- Fixes for various crashes!
- Fixes for various multiplayer desync issues!
- New rendering improvements to increase the game’s performance!
- Bug fixes for several civilizations and game features!
- …and more!
You can read up on the full list of changes below, download the new build right now (yes, RIGHT NOW!), and then visit the forum to join the discussion once you’ve had the chance to experiment with them. As this is a public beta, you are also welcome to jump onto Discord to chat with other players!
As always, we’re excited to share these changes with all of you and hope they continue to improve your game experience. And from all of us: stay safe, wash your hands, and PROSTAGMA! ❤
—The Age of Empires Team
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Having trouble downloading or playing the build? Visit the official Age of Mythology forums.
GAME STABILITY
- Fixed various memory leaks.
- Fixed various crashes.
PERFORMANCE
- Implemented rendering improvements that should increase the game’s base performance.
- Textures and particle effects with partial transparency will now render correctly—such as the Locust Swarm.
- Improved the multiplayer lag mitigation system.
GAMEPLAY
- Added a new settings option to display a unit’s health when it is damaged.
- Players can no longer “foundation scout” unfinished Town Centers beneath the Fog of War.
- Resources hidden by the Fog of War now display the proper (gather) mouse cursor if they’ve since been depleted but not re-scouted.
- Loading a save game will no longer result in Gardens generating all resource types.
- Unfinished buildings that are part of a control group will no longer prevent the use of hotkeys to create units.
- Buildings are no longer constructed slower if the initial builder is garrisoned.
- God powers on flying units can now be properly cast at the edge of the map.
- The Spiders God Power can no longer be used to activate campaign triggers.
- War Salamanders no longer path off the map to bypass obstacles or cross cliffs.
- Fixed an issue where units could path into objects such as gold mines.
- Fixed various issues where players could be kicked from their game for not owning DLC-specific units.
- Fixed an issue where hotkey customizations would not save properly, causing both the custom and default configurations to be active at the same time.
- Fixed an issue where SHIFT+clicking to queue attack commands would result in the army moving to where the enemy units were killed.
- Fixed an issue where melee units would ignore queued attacks on buildings if under attack.
- Fixed an issue where Levy, Conscripts, and other technologies that increase training speed could remove a unit from the build queue.
- Fixed the Auto Queue only activating on a single building when multiple were selected.
- Fixed an issue where ambient game sounds would sometimes fail to play.
BALANCE
General
- Monks can now properly attack all units.
- Sea Snakes can now properly attack all units.
- The Oracle Bone Script and Landlord Spirit technologies now use the correct modifiers.
- The Inferno God Power now correctly applies damage limits.
Atlantean
GENERAL
- Reduced the amount of Favor generated per Town Center from 0.25/s to 0.225/s.
UNITS
- Automaton: Reduced health from 250 to 230 hp.
- Chieroballista: Reduced the bonus damage dealt to the Destroyer Hero from 400% to 300%.
- The Lampades’ special attack, Chaos, no longer affects: Physician, Pegasus, Hippocampus, Roc, Raven, Leviathans
- The Lampades’ special attack, Chaos, now affects: Hades Shade, Serpents, Sea Snakes, Sentinels
- Onager: Increased crush damage from 13 to 14.
POWERS
- Reduced the number of Deconstruction charges from 3 to 2.
- The Shockwave God Power now correctly affects animals.
TECHNOLOGIES
- Architects: Removed the pierce armor provided to Sky Passages (was +5%).
- Architects: Removed the pierce armor provided to the Tartarian Gate (was +25%).
- Horns of Consecration: Increased the bonus favor granted per Town Center from 0.01 to 0.02.
Chinese
UNITS
- Monk: Reduced the time it takes Shennong Monks to convert Myth units from 15 to 14 seconds.
- Monk: Can now convert Greek Physicians.
- Fire Lance: Increased pierce damage from 4 to 5.
- Fire Lance: Reduced training time from 15 to 12 seconds.
POWERS
- Imperial Examination: Now properly affects Towers.
- Imperial Examination: Now works on Settlements.
- Imperial Examination: Reduced the overall duration from 60 to 45 seconds.
- Recreation: Increased the number of villagers resurrected from 3 to 4.
TECHNOLOGIES
- Dragon Scales: Now applies its benefits to Heroes.
- Golden Peaches: Increased the health bonus granted to units trained at the Castle from +20% to +25%.
- House Altars: Reduced the food, wood, and gold required to research the technology from 150 to 100. Increased the Favor cost from 10 to 15.
- Landlord Spirit: Can now also be researched in the Temple.
Egyptian
GENERAL
- The bonus hack damage granted by Set to his animals upon reaching the Classical Age has been reduced from 70% to 35%.
POWERS
- Meteor: Reduced the radius of the impact site from 32 to 20.
- Shifting Sands: Reduced the minimum unit health shifted from 1000 to 400.
- Locust Swarm: Reduced the spawn radius of the swarm from 6 to 1. The visual indicator has also been reduced from a radius of 6 to 2.
Greek
UNITS
- Myrmidon: Increased unit speed from 4 to 4.3.
- Myrmidon: Increased unit health from 110 to 120.
- Bellerophon (Hero): Reduced hack damage of the special attack from 70 to 60.
- Hippolyta (Hero): Reduced the speed of her attack animation from 2 to 1.75 seconds.
- Polyphemus (Hero): Increased health from 540 to 700 hp.
- Polyphemus (Hero): Updated his special attack to only target Myth units, though it is now an instant kill.
POWERS
- Underworld Passage: Reduced pierce armor of the structure from 85% to 80%.
TECHNOLOGIES
- Divine Blood: The benefits of the technology are now properly applied when constructing Towers.
- Divine Blood: Reduced the building rate bonus granted to Villagers from 20% to 15%.
Deathmatch
- Reduced the Tower build limit from 16 to 14.
- Reduced the Fortress build limit from 10 to 8.
- Reduced the Sky Passage build limit from 10 to 4.
- Reduced the number of starting Villagers for the Atlanteans from 6 to 5.
- Atlantean Villagers now construct Town Centers 20% faster (was 10%).
MULTIPLAYER
- Addressed an issue that could result in some players gaining an ELO rank in the billions without first accomplishing the truly mythic feats it would take to do so.
- Players can now properly host maps that were downloaded to the “rm2” folder.
With this update, several fixes for desyncs have been implemented, including:
- “Cinematic mode” desync.
- “King of the Hill” desync.
- An issue where players who quit the game early could cause others to desync.
- A rare desync caused by unit formations.
In addition to these fixes, additional options have been added to guard against desyncs caused by custom mods:
- Players with mods that are prone to desyncing are no longer able to quick-search for a match.
- Added an option to the mods screen to automatically disable any mods that may cause a desync.
- “extendedmechanics.xs” is now considered a desync-sensitive file.
UI
- The “Random” god selection option is now fully random and no longer considers other gods on your team.
- God Power counters now display for Powers with multiple uses: such as all Atlantean powers and the Earth Dragon power.
- The Tornado God Power now appears on the minimap for its entire duration (and not longer).
- The Locust Swarm God Power is now properly displayed on the minimap.
- Kronos can now time shift Markets by clicking the corresponding button in the Market UI.
- Fire Ships now display the correct upgrade in the technology tree.
- Updated all costs in the technology tree to display the correct values.
- Observers are no longer shown the ELO dialog at the end of the game.
We’ve also added temporary network indicators to help debug network lag in the game. Here is what they mean:
- TT = Turn Time
- UT = Predicted Update Time
- RT = Predicted Render Time
SCRIPTING
- Added the following scripting functionality: Adding xsSqrt, xsSin, xsCos, xsAtan, xsAtan2, xsPow, xsFloor, xsCeil, xsRound, xsClamp, xsMin, xsMax, xsAbs, xsStringLength, xsSubString, xsFindString
- Added the following trigger scripting functionality: trGetUnitScenarioName, trGetNextUnitScenarioName, trGetTerrainType, trGetTerrainSubType, trGetTerrainHeight, trGetWaterHeight, trCoverTerrainWithWater, trPaintTerrain, trChangeTerrainHeight, trSetCivAndCulture, trGetGPData, trSetGPData, trMutateSelected
- Fixed in multiplayer: trUnitSetHeading, trUnitTeleport, trUnitSetAnimation
- AI user variables can now return strings.
FEEDBACK
Over the next month or so, we will be collecting multiplayer data and information regarding desyncs and game performance to verify that today’s changes had a positive impact on the game. To aid with this, we need a few things from those of you interested in exploring the new build:
- Play multiplayer matches!
- Report desyncs!
This information will be the most useful as we continue to analyze and make tweaks to the game. As mentioned above, we also fixed some major rendering issues, so please let us know if you notice a difference or see any new visual issues as you play. Once you’ve had an opportunity to play with them, you are invited to discuss the changes with others on the official Discord or on the forum—where you can leave your thoughts about the update:
Thank you for your ongoing support and help; we’ll see you on the battlefield! ⚡