Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition — Update 51737

Hello and welcome to another release filled with exciting updates, balance changes, and bug fixes for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition!

Today’s build brings several fixes and updates to the game, including addressing several issues with the game crashing, civilization & map updates, and improvements & fixes to the AI. Many of these changes and fixes are a direct result of the Public Update Preview program (or PUP). For more information on the PUP—or to get involved—click the link above or scroll down to the Ongoing section of this post.

On top of all the new changes, features, and improvements coming with today’s build, Dawn of the Dukes introduces two all-new civilizations: the Poles and the Bohemians! Experience 3 new fully-voiced campaigns and 16 new Achievements!

Now, let’s take a quick look at some of the changes coming with today’s update:

• Celebrate all things Age of Empires with the brand-new Jungle Summer Vacation event, where you can unlock awesome rewards!
• We’ve added Polish language support!
• Units which were commanded using Attack Move no longer try to get into formation when reaching the destination they were sent to while enemy units.
• A number of balance updates to gameplay, civilizations, and maps.
• Plus several bug and crash fixes!

Be sure to dive deep into the post below to get all of the juicy details before loading up the game and checking them out for yourself!

💬 DISCUSS: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Forum 🗣 JOIN: The Age of Empires Official Discord

Thanks again to our amazing community members, all of whom have helped to make Age of Empires what it is today! Our Age of Empires Fan Preview was a celebration of all of you, and the celebration continues in this event!

—The Age of Empires Team

◆ UPDATE 51737 ◆

BUILD SPOTLIGHT

While there are plenty of notable fixes and features to which to look forward in today’s build, here’s some of the big highlights coming with this month’s update:

Two New Civilizations!

The Poles

The Poles are a cavalry civilization. While their western neighbors employed deadly companies of heavily armored cavalry, the Poles leveraged their strengths to evolve more towards what modern eyes might class as medium cavalry. While they could not always triumph over their rival counterparts on an individual basis, they emphasized maneuverability, organization, and sheer numbers at a time when warfare was shifting away from the typical medieval model.

The Bohemians

The Bohemians are a gunpowder and monk civilization. Threatened both militarily and ideologically on nearly all sides, the Bohemians responded with groundbreaking innovations in both spheres. Novel weaponry, battle tactics, and defensive strategies shattered the numerous feudal and professional armies of their invading rivals, while scholarly thought and debate inaugurated one of the earliest successful social revolutions in early modern European history. Bohemian armies compensated for a lack of sheer brute strength with an uncanny ability to outwit, outmaneuver, and counter their opponents.

For a deep dive into the Poles and Bohemians, and more, view the official page for Age of Empires II: Dawn of the Dukes right HERE!

GAME

Stability & Performance

• Fixed a crash that could occur under specific circumstances when selecting/interacting with control groups.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when the player sent messages in a Multiplayer lobby at the same time as the host closes the lobby.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when receiving an in-game invitation while playing a single player game and having the in-game menu open.
• Fixed a crash that consistently occurred in a custom scenario related to a unit transforming into another.
• Fixed a performance issue that occurred during the first few seconds of gameplay on many Random Map Scripts.
• Fixed a soft lock issue that could occur under specific circumstances when attempting to load into a match hosted by a user with a data mod enabled.
• Fixed a soft lock issue that could occur in-game when the resign dialogue was opened while the match ended.
• Fixed a crash/hard lock issue that could occur under specific circumstances when disconnecting from the internet during ranked matchmaking.

Audio

• Fixed an issue where terrain ambience tracks other than Forest ambience would fail to play. Terrain ambience types that can be heard in-game are as follows:
  • Desert
  • Fog
  • Snow
  • Jungle
  • Lake
  • Ocean
  • Forest
  • Plains

• In Battle Royale game mode, a special kind of music now plays when the Corruption fog approaches your vicinity.
  
• Tweaked the way some melee attack sounds are played in large battles.
  

UI

• Post-game timelines now properly align players with their own graph, players are sorted by team (previously playernumber).
• The amount of secondary projectiles is now included in the attack display for units which fire several projectiles.
• Fixed an issue in MP lobbies with the “Hide Civilization” option enabled where players were able to see another player’s civilization when switching to their playercolor.
• Steam Users who want to create/edit clans no longer have to sign into Xbox Live to do so.
• Fixed an issue where several dialogs such as the Civilization selection dialog did not close when the user pressed the Escape key.
• When a player creates a MP lobby who has an out of date dataset mod a proper error message will now display explaining the issue.

GAMEPLAY

General

• Serjeants spawned by the First Crusade technology no longer default to using the aggressive stance when the Default Aggressive Unit Stance is disabled.
• The “going above and beyond” cheat code is now available to all players.

CAMPAIGN

General

Adjusted several AI player controlled civilizations in various campaign missions for better historical accuracy, anticipating the launch of the new Dawn of the Dukes expansion:

Genghis Khan

• Mission 5: Polish → Poles civ; Bohemians → Bohemians civ

Barbarossa

• Mission 1: Bohemia → Bohemians civ
• Mission 2: Poland → Poles civ

Ivaylo

• Mission 5: Poles → Poles civ

Co-op

• Increased difficulty of the Bapheus and Hastings co-op scenario based on community feedback, especially on the hard difficulty level.

CIVILIZATION BALANCE

General

🡒 TECHNOLOGIES

• Herbal Medicine cost reduced from 350g ▶ 200g.

🡒 UNITS

• (Elite) Steppe Lancer: reload time lowered 2.3 ▶ 2.0.
• Hand Cannoneers: hitpoints increased from 35 ▶ 40.
• The speed of Bullet projectiles increased from 5.5 ▶ 7.5.

Burmese

🡒 TECHNOLOGIES

• Howdah: Gives Battle Elephants +1/+2 armor (from +1/+1 ▶ +1/+2).

Byzantines

🡒 CIVILIZATION

• Fixed an issue where the hit points of Watch Towers in the Castle Age and Siege Workshops in the Imperial Age were lower than expected.

🡒 TECHNOLOGIES

• Town Patrol is now free and instantly researched.

Chinese

🡒 CIVILIZATION

• Team Bonus changed to Farms +10% food (from +45 food ▶ +10% food).

Cumans

🡒 CIVILIZATION

• Archery Ranges and Stables now cost -100 wood.

Lithuanians

🡒 CIVILIZATION

• Can now research and train the Winged Hussar instead of Hussar.
• Lose access to the Blast Furnacetechnology.

🡒 UNITS

• Leitis (Standard & Elite): Increased attack from 12/14 ▶ 13/16.

Malians

🡒 CIVILIZATION

• Gold Mines last 30% longer (replaces the free Gold Mining technology bonus).

Sicilians

🡒 CIVILIZATION

• The Sicilians now start with an extra 100 Stone.
• Team Bonus effect changed to remove the cost of the first trained Transport Ship and train it instantly.

🡒 TECHNOLOGIES

• Scutage: replaced with the Hauberk technology.
• Hauberk: this unique technology grants Knights +1 melee and +2 pierce armor.

RANDOM MAPS

General

• Autumn season now includes the new birch tree type accompanying the new Dawn of the Dukes expansion 50% of the time.

Map Updates

• Acclivity: Unbuildable rock terrain now generates exclusively on slopes, making it more evident where you can build and where you cannot.
• Acclivity: Fixed a rare bug that caused one or more players to not generate forests around their initial town center.
• Amazon Tunnel: Adjusted the carved player bases to have slightly more space and appear more natural.
• Arabia: Each player now has 3 starting forests positioned towards the edge of the map.
• Arabia: The players’ starting forests generate further away.
• Arabia: The front of each player’s base is more open making it more vulnerable to attacks.
• Arabia: Hills can now appear closer to players’ town centers.
• Arabia: The third gold pile for each player is generated further away.
• Arabia: Extra gold, stone, as well as relics, are now generated per player and therefore more fairly balanced.
• Arabia: Slight variance has been added to the the circular positioning of players’ bases.
• Arabia: Cliffs and water oases have been removed.
• Arena: Improved the placement of lumbercamps on Empire Wars.
• Frigid Lake: Minor aesthetic changes.
• Lowland: Fixed a rare issue that could cause elevation to not generate properly across the entire map.
• Marketplace: Minor aesthetic changes.
• Migration: Relics now spawn correctly on all map sizes.
• Northern Isles: Forests have been moved slightly further away from the player’s town centers.

We’re continuing to observe player feedback regarding all official random map scripts, Arabia has received an especially impactful update this time which we’ll be observing the effects of and plan further adjustments if necessary.

Random Map Scripting

• Added a new way to paint actor areas without having to create objects, implemented new function: create_actor_area x y id radius.

LOBBIES & MATCHMAKING

• Diplomacy options are no longer greyed out with non-AI players when the “Teams Locked” option is disabled (always enabled in ranked gameplay).
• Fixed an issue where players who join a lobby using an outdated data mod were booted from the lobby after downloading, with the civilization selection dialog still being open if opened in the lobby.
• Fixed an issue where hosts of Custom Scenario lobbies were unable to change their color until other people joined.

AI

General

• Optimized the AI players’ strategic decision-making in a wide variety of areas, including strategy selection.
• AI players are now less eager to pick a fight while critical army upgrades are still being researched.
• Improved the AI’s ability to advance to the next age earlier without sacrificing economy, with a bigger effect for certain civilizations.
• Improved performance on various different maps such as African Clearing.
• Fixed an issue with the AI’s dark age gatherer distribution calculation on nomad-style maps.
• Fixed an issue where AI players rarely didn’t ungarrison boats from their docks when expected.
• AI players may now task Serjeants to help construct Donjons instead of only using villagers.
• Extreme difficulty: Improvements to the effectiveness of the Militia rush strategy.
• Extreme difficulty: Implemented a completely new Scout Cavalry rush strategy which we’re keeping an eye on to improve.
• Extreme difficulty: Increased likelihood of AI players retreating their cavalry from enemy spearman type units.
• Extreme difficulty: Fixed an issue where the AI did not lure ibex to their towncenter to hunt as it would with deer or other similar animals.
• Extreme difficulty: The AI is more likely to succeed in saving a villager’s life that is being targeted by wild animals or enemy units by forcing it to garrison when possible and necessary.
• Fixed an issue where Cuman AI players didn’t advance past the Feudal Age in Deathmatch and Infinite Resources games.
• Improved AI player performance on Infinite Resources settings.
• The AI (HD Version) will no longer taunt the player with a betrayal message while unsuccessfully attempting to switch teams while a treaty is still ongoing.

Pathfinding

• Units which were commanded using Attack Move no longer try to get into formation when reaching the destination they were sent to while enemy units are in sight instead of fighting those.

Scripting

• Wall objects are now being detected when using position-target, position-focus or position-enemy.
• Fixed an issue with up-chat-data-to-player and up-chat-data-to-player-using-id where they did not always output chat to the intended player.

LOCALIZATION

• Added Polish language support!

MODDING

General

• Added new flags for Blast Attack Level attribute to control the blast damage style:
  • 4: Logistica style (5 damage to surrounding units).
  • 8: War Elephant style (50% of the unit’s attack).
  • 16: Battle Elephant style (25% of the unit’s attack).
  • 32: Lechitic Legacy style (33% of the unit’s attack).
  • 64: Reduces the blast damage with distance (works only for melee units).

• Added new flag for Enable Smart Projectiles attribute:
  • 2: Missed projectiles deal 100% of their damage if they hit another target (instead of the default 50%).

Scenario Editor

• Two new terrain types have been added accompanying the Dawn of the Dukes expansion’s release: Birch Forest and Swamp.
• The Change Object Civilization Name function now works with Set Area.
• Objects which were disabled in scenario can now properly be re-enabled later if the scenario game was loaded from a saved game file.
• Fixed a bug where researching the Anarchy technology by trigger for civilizations other than Goths didn’t enable Huskarls to be trained from the barracks.
• Added "Night" color mood.

XS Scripting

The following commands have been added:

• xsGetRandomNumber()
• xsGetRandomNumberLH(int low, int high)
• xsGetRandomNumberMax(int max)

◆ ONGOING ◆

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:

• Alt+F4 & Queue Dodging: As a progress report, we’re continuing work on our solution for this and intend to push it Live as soon as it’s ready (and we’re as anxious as you are). We’ll be providing an information section in future patch notes once this change is ready to go Live so you know what to expect, and we’ll definitely want feedback and reaction – it’s our intent to monitor this issue and update our solution where users are continuing to try and exploit queues.
• Crashes and Freezes: As a reminder, player-reported issues (when they’re informational only) can be difficult for us to diagnose, and log files alongside a little bit of back and forth with our Support Team remain incredibly helpful. This shift toward working directly with our players to dig into the issues you’re reporting has allowed us to improve stability more quickly, and we’re anxious to keep this up. Here’s information that will help you work with our Teams when filing Support Requests –
  • If your game is crashing, there’s a new type of log file that was introduced in the last patch, and it looks like this (example): AoE2DESteam-46906-2021.04.06-15.46.57.mdmp.
  • The file can be found in this directory: C:\Users[YOUR WINDOWS USERNAME]\Games\Age of Empires 2 DE\logs.
  • The log file name specifies the game, platform you’re playing on, build version, and the date/time of the crash, and is specific to every instance – so if your game crashed earlier in the day and you’ve been playing since, you can still go back and find this file by matching it to when your issue occurred.
  • Please attach this file in any Support Requests you submit regarding a crash, and if necessary we’ll reach back out for more information.
  • You can reach out to our reach out to our Support Team, and if you’re a Steam user, you may be directed to PUP to help us confirm if we’ve been able to resolve your issue.

• Polish language shows improper glyphs/characters if set to serif font.
  
• Italian VO is missing from Jadwiga 1.The Matter of the Crown intro cinematic.
  
• Duplicated Vietnamese and Vikings history articles appear in the end of history section.
  
• Poles and Bohemians civ names untranslated in Polish.
  
• Description of Poles Civ in Tech Tree unlocalized in Latin American Spanish.

PUBLIC UPDATE PREVIEW (PUP)

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.

◆ MOD WARNING ◆

Please note that custom mods may not be compatible with the latest game update. If you encounter performance or stability issues after your mods are disabled, please visit our support page for assistance!