[2023] Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – Update 99311

New Challenge Scenario: Mangudai Madness!

Introducing Mangudai Madness, a new limited-time challenge scenario in the vein of Barbarossa Brawl and Mongol Raiders! Can you defend the Wonder against increasingly challenging waves using only your army of Mangudai?

The setup is simple: you have a Wonder to defend, Mangudai, and access to techs. Strategize how you will spend your resources and use the terrain to your advantage. Take on waves of Teutonic Knights, Throwing Axemen, Onagers, tanky Saboteurs — and a very special campaign hero unit if you can make it to the final wave!

Mangudai Madness is supported with a leaderboard. Challenge your friends and put those micro skills to the test!

NEW! Animated Player Icons

Starting today, you can customize your player icons with glorious new animated options! Choose from three new cosmetic DLC packs from Steam, Microsoft Store, or Xbox, and enjoy these incredible animated icons in your favorite game, or collect them all with a discount!

Please note: These icons provide no gameplay benefit and are purely cosmetic.

• La Hire’s Dry Humor Collection is a set of eight animated recognizable situations, funny animations and memes.
• Joan’s Marvelous Moving Masterpieces are a display of eight animated historically inspired art pieces showing the diversity from across all the lands.
• Barbarossa’s Barrel of Pickled Goods contains a fine selection of eight animated art pieces and Age of Empires logic and other memes.

Stability & Performance

• Fixed a crash that occurred when typing certain numbers on the lobby search bar in multiplayer menus.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when attempting to launch the title on Steam when another instance of the game from the Microsoft Store was already running.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when playing custom lobbies with AI.
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when a projectile passes through a Hussite Wagon.
• Fixed a rare crash which could occur with invalid waypoints.
• Fixed a crash with custom datasets where players using the mod researched a technology with an ID higher than the number of units defined in the data file.

Achievements

• Fixed an issue with the Church Sanctuary sometimes not rewarding players the achievement when they had correctly kept all 20 Villagers alive.

Graphics

• Units standing behind Mule Carts now display outlines.
• Fixed an issue with snow trails left behind by Mule Carts; they now show correctly when moving in any direction.

Audio

• Fixed an issue where Gaia attack notifications would not play on Custom Maps.
• Fixed an issue where gunshots from a Persian Castle with Citadels could be heard from too far away.

UI

• QoL: The option ‘Extended Unit Stats’ was added to the Interface Settings. Toggling this setting on will make the command panel show additional stats when selecting a unit or a building.
  • The following statistics will be displayed when relevant to the unit:
    • Reload time.
    • Movement Speed.
    • Blast Radius.
    • Regeneration Rate.
    • Work Rate.
    • Nearby Enhancement (How many units are benefiting from the selected unit’s aura).
  • The attack icon will display an arrow if the selected unit or building deals pierce damage.
  • If the unit has minimum range, the range will be displayed as maximum range/minimum range.
• Hovering over the selected unit’s icon in the command panel will now display the unit’s training description if it exists.
• Keep technology, Watch Tower, Guard Tower, Stone Wall, Pavilion A buildings now have unique icons.
• Added blue versions to several small buttons in Return of Rome mode.
• If a player selects two production buildings of different types, they can now produce units from the last selected production building.
• Fixed an issue where having Steam Cloud enabled would cause significant lag when opening the Location button in Skirmish/ Multiplayer lobbies.
• Fixed an issue where the menus would become stuck for a short time if players held backspace.
• Fixed an issue with Map Voting where all maps received the same amount of votes, and players votes were not displayed correctly in the UI after placing their votes.
• Fixed an issue where Steam users were sometimes not informed of Map Pool Votes.

Settings

• Fixed an issue where the Safe Delete pop-up would only trigger if the last unit a player selected was a hero.
• Fixed an issue where the menu-narrator would not narrate the Age of Empires II and Return of Rome buttons on the left-hand side of the menus when hovered.

Hotkeys

• Fixed an issue where Wood Upgrades technology hotkey was not working for Two-Man Saw.
• Mule Carts now use both Lumber Camp and Mining Camp configured hotkeys as a fallback (including “Select All”, “Go To” and “Villager Build”).

Recorded Games & Spectator

• Fixed an issue where holding down Shift and left-clicking an object from another player wasn’t switching the POV to the object’s owner.

Multiplayer

• Changed Enter interaction in menus so that taunts only fire when the Enter key is released, instead of every frame the key is down.
• Changed the behaviour of Pause during Multiplayer so that players can no longer scroll, zoom or interact with the Mini-map while the game is paused.

Xbox

• Fixed a crash that occurred when an Xbox player would try to spectate a PC lobby using a Custom Scenario. Trying to join as spectator to a Custom Scenario from Xbox is not intended and is now prevented.
• Fixed an issue where if a player would disconnect while loading into a Multiplayer match, no message would be displayed to them informing them about the disconnection.
• Fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to open the Virtual Keyboard in certain Multiplayer modes.
• Fixed an issue where players could tribute away all their resources in an infinite resource game.
• Fixed an issue in Art of War missions where players could not toggle score and objectives panels.
• Fixed an issue where players could not build Bombard Cannons from the Siege Workshop using the Y shortcut.
• Fixed an issue where players could not use Send Monk in the Site Commands menu if the Monk was holding a Relic.
• Fixed an issue where buildings with garrison slots would be impossible to repair if the player was using a controller and had Right Click Garrison enabled in the settings.
• Fixed an issue where players would receive bans incorrectly if an Xbox player joined a party with a Steam player and started matchmaking.
• Fixed an issue where players attempting a rematch would not be given a warning prompt by the game stating that there are not enough players to start the match.
• Fixed an issue where players could invite someone while playing an active game if they were previously in a custom game together.
• The game will no longer go Out of Sync if a console player uses the site-based menu to toggle Automatic Farm Reseeding on.
• The civilization emblem for Romans in the command panel is now displayed correctly.
• Improved the player color appearance on the icons of new units added in The Mountain Royals.

General

• Gates can now be locked before their construction is finished.
• Deer and other Prey Animals now have more consistency in how long they pause before moving again.
• Monks now instantly search for new healing targets instead of waiting for 3 seconds.
• Mule Carts are no longer visible in Fog of War.

Fixes

• Trebuchets no longer ignore shift commands when attacking buildings.
• Groups of Villagers now correctly gather from unused Farms when they finish building a Farm.
• Fixed an issue where rams grouped with other units would stop moving before reaching an enemy target when the player issued an Attack Move.
• Monks no longer stop chasing a unit they are converting if that unit stops moving.
• Fixed an issue where Villagers would lose their field of view, and Mule Carts (if completed) would become invisible if the player rung the town bell when the Mule Carts were under construction.
• Fixed an issue where if a player has converted Monks and then researches Block Printing, the player would be granted vision in an area around the converted Monks the moment the tech finished.
• Fixed a rare issue where the Go Back to Work hotkey would sometimes cause Villagers to become stuck inside a building.
• Fixed an issue where moving large groups of units would cause some units to stop reacting to group commands.
• Guard command no longer switches units formations to Line Formation when used.
• Already selected units will no longer stay selected when using CTRL to drag-select military. Players can use SHIFT+CTRL if they want to keep existing units selected.
• Warrior Priests in no attack stance can now heal allied units.
• Villagers no longer can drop off resources into buildings with a Mule Cart garrisoned inside.
• A group of Monks can now be shift-queued to pick up and deliver Relics.
• Units no longer change direction rapidly when their path is obstructed when the player has a issued Follow command on a unit.
• Fixed an issue where warships, especially Galley-line units, would freeze occasionally if the player issued many movement commands.
• A Deer will no longer get stuck if the player places a building foundation on them.
• Knights on aggressive mode now correctly re-target enemy units if they are attacking a farm and those units walk past.
• The game no longer treats Mule Carts as a hard obstruction; this should help pathing around them.
• Donjons and Fortified Churches will now automatically target enemy units if they have units queued.
• Individual units will now join the formation of larger groups of units that were already moving if the player selects both groups and issues a movement command.
• Fixed an issue where formations would not form up correctly after being tasked to move from a patrol or attack move command.
• Fixed an issue where when tasking a group to attack a close enemy unit, the faster unit will remain walking slowly with the group of slower units.

General

• Joan of Arc is no longer able to heal units.

Art of War

• Booming: objectives now update when the player has built a Castle.
• Land Battles: objectives now update if the player lost the last wave.

Campaign Missions

• Attila the Hun #1: The Scourge of God: Fixed an issue where the wrong dialogue could play after defeating Bleda.
• Attila the Hun #6: The Fall of Rome: The enemy factions will now resign correctly and are no longer kept alive by Wonder or Town Center foundations.
• Barbarossa #2: Henry the Lion: Player now has the correct population limit.
• Bayinnaung #2: The Mandalay Cobra: Fixed an issue where some starting units would disappear shortly after closing the initial Objectives pop up.
• Devapala #1: Dissatisfaction: The correct slide now appears in the outro.
• Ismail #1: The Red Hats: Farrukh Yasar no longer splits from his army when moving out.
• Ismail #4: The Fallen Amir: Shaybani Khan’s units, if they have been bypassed, can now track the player’s units and find them more easely.
• Ivaylo #1: A Most Unlikely Man: Fixed an issue where a rock formation in the right side of the map was not displayed as expected.
• Sforza #4: Blood and Betrayal: Fixed an issue where some gates would not be fully destroyed after reducing their HP to 0.
• Suryavarman I #5: Nirvanapada: Fixed an issue where the game statistics at the end of the mission could show negative values.
• Tamar #1: Takeover: Armenia’s Villagers next to Mule Carts will no longer walk away to hunt Ibexes if the player waits before meeting Zakare.
• Tamar #3: The Protectorate: Yury will now become aggressive if the player chooses to attack the Turkomans first instead of liberating the city.
• Thoros #1: Outlawed: Fixed an issue where players would receive more food in tribute than needed in order to research the infantry upgrades at the start of the mission.
• Thoros #3: Caught in the Crossfire: The player is now allowed to research Fereters after advancing to the Imperial Age.
• Thoros #4: Bloody Crestwaves: The player now needs to research Fereters on their own (except on Standard difficulty).
• Thoros #5: Of Turncoats and Traitors:
  • The player is no longer attacked by the Byzantines right away after the fleeing to Mleh’s camp.
  • Church Sanctuary achievement no longer requires keeping the Villagers alive after they have changed ownership.

Co-op Campaigns

• Tamerlane #5: Scourge of the Levant: Changed civilizations of Cilician Armenia and Georgia to Armenians and Georgians, respectively.

General

• Monk conversion consistency:
  • Monk conversion chance 25% ▶ 40%, interval 4-10 ▶ 5-9.
    • Previously 40% of conversions would happen at either 4 seconds or 10 seconds, creating highly volatile and RNG dependent interactions. With these changes, 80% of conversions will happen between 5 and 7 seconds.
  • Below are some ancillary changes. Here, the average conversion time remains unchanged compared to before, but now with the more consistent conversion behavior.
    • Scout resistance set to +3 min conversion time, +1 max conversion time, +2 conversion resistance.
    • Ships resistance set to +2 min, +2 max.
    • Teutons resistance set to +3 min, +1 max.
    • Bengalis Elephant resistance set to +3 min, +1 max.
    • First Crusade resistance set to +4 min, +4 max.

Developer Note: The goal of the conversion change + supporting changes is to keep the average conversion time the same but reduce the variability, creating more consistency in how long it takes conversions to occur. Our aim is to reduce the frustrating elements of conversions while keeping the relative power level the same.

• New Technology available in the Castle Age for all civilizations at the Monastery: Devotion. Required for Faith.

Devotion (100 food 150 gold): unit conversion resistance set to +1 min, +1 max. (Units are 15% harder for enemy Monks to convert)

• Faith cost decreased from 750 food 1000 gold ▶ 550 food 750 gold.

• Faith conversion resistance set to +4 min, +4 max. (Units are 50% harder for enemy Monks to convert).
  • The combination of Devotion + Faith is equivalent to the previous version of Faith.
• Dromon projectile attack rebalanced to deal equal damage with all individual projectiles instead of full damage on a main projectile with mostly cosmetic secondary projectiles.
  Total damage against Buildings is kept unchanged, damage against units/ships is reduced by around 20%.
  • Damage reduced from 50 ▶ 8.
  • Bonus damage vs. Buildings reduced 135 ▶ 34.
  • Bonus damage vs. Siege reduced 20 ▶ 2.
  • Bonus damage vs. Castles 0 ▶ 9.
  • Bonus damage vs. Walls 0 ▶ 15.
  • Increased projectile spread area.
• Dromon train time 50 seconds ▶ 65 seconds.
• Siege Engineers properly increases Petard bonus damage vs Castles and Walls.
• Cavalier upgrade time reduced from 100 seconds ▶ 80 seconds.
• Mule Carts are now targeted with lower priority than units (same as other buildings).
• Mule Cart cost 100 wood and 20 food ▶ 80 wood 20 food.

Armenians

• Galley-line fires two projectiles Civilization Bonus changed ▶ Galley-line and Dromons fire an additional projectile.
• Galley-line secondary projectile changed to always be an arrow for better readability of the bonus.
• Warrior Priest with Relic no longer incorrectly receives extra line of sight from Block Printing technology.
• Mule Cart technology bonus increased from 25% ▶ 40%.
• Lose access to Two-man saw.
• Cilician Fleet demolition ship radius improvement reduced from +33% ▶ +20%.

Bengalis

• (Elite) Ratha Cavalry Archer armor increased from 0 ▶ 1.
• (Elite) Ratha now deals 20% trample damage in melee mode.

Bohemians

• Hussite Wagon HP reduced from 180 ▶ 160.
• Hussite Wagon main projectile damage reduced from 11 ▶ 10.
• (Elite) Hussite Wagon train time increased from 21 seconds ▶ 26 seconds.

Chinese

• Town Center Civilization Bonus increased from +10 population space and +5 LOS ▶ +15 population space and +7 LOS.

Georgians

• Buildings cost 50% fewer resources to repair Team Bonus reduced ▶ Buildings cost 25% fewer resources to repair.
• (Elite) Monaspa no longer incorrectly receives extra damage against buildings, archers, skirmishers, camels and Shotel Warriors when grouped.

Hindustanis

• Villager discount Civilization Bonus increased from -5%/-10%/-15%/-20% ▶ -8%/-13%/-18%/-23%.

Huns

• (Elite) Tarkan base movement speed increased from 1.35 ▶ 1.4.
• Huns now start with a unique scouting horse on nomad style maps once their starting Town Center is completed.

Incas

• Military units food discount reduced from 15/20/25/30% ▶ 10/15/20/25%
• (Elite) Kamayuk food cost decreased by 65 food 30 gold ▶ 60 food and 30 gold.

Japanese

• Civilization bonus adjusted to Cavalry Archers +2 vs. Archers (except Skirmishers).

Koreans

• (Elite) Turtle Ship receives attack ground ability.

Persians

• Savar bonus damage vs. Archers reduced from 3 ▶ 2.
• Savar upgrade research time increased from 150 seconds ▶ 160 seconds.
• Civilization bonus of cavalry generate 5 gold per kill removed.

Poles

• Folwark cost decreased from 125 wood ▶ 100 wood.

Portuguese

• (Elite) Organ Gun damage decreased from 7 (9) ▶ 6 (8).
• (Elite) Organ Gun bonus damage vs Infantry and Skirmishers increased from 1 ▶ 2.

Vikings

• Defeating Warrior Priests with infantry units now correctly generates a gold reward when Chieftains is researched.

Return of Rome

General

• Scout cost reduced from 100 food ▶ 90 food.
• Mysticism technology effect changed from double priest hitpoints ▶ priests +20 HP (effect reduced by 5 HP)
• City Watch research time reduced from 45 seconds ▶ 15 seconds.
• Stone Thrower, Catapult, and Heavy Catapult Melee Armor reduced from 0 ▶ -2.
• Tower build time decreased from 72 seconds ▶ 65 seconds.

Carthaginians

• Team bonus changed from Fire Galleys +1 Pierce Armor ▶ Academies work 20% faster.

Egyptians

• Priests range bonus decreased from +3 ▶ +2/3 in Bronze/Iron Ages.

Lac Viet

• Forager gather bonus decreased from 20% ▶ 15% faster Foragers.

Macedonians

• House HP team bonus increased from +25 HP ▶ +50 HP.

Minoan

• Ships cost bonus adjusted from -30% ▶ -15/20/25/30% in Stone/Tool/Bronze/Iron Age.

Yamato

• Ship HP bonus changed from +20% HP ▶ +10/15/20/25% HP per Age.

General

• Fixed an issue where players could not select Data Mods when hosting a lobby for the game version they were about to play; instead, it was determined by whether they were in Age of Empires II or Return of Rome.
• Fixed an issue where players could prevent a game from starting by holding down any key plus Enter.

General

• Fixed an issue where AI units were failing to respond to being attacked while attacking a building.
• Fixed an issue where AI explorers may randomly stop exploring the map.
• Fixed a rare issue where AI villagers could become idle after depleting their resource instead of being reassigned to another available resource.
• The HD and CD AIs now properly play Armenians and Georgians.

Pathfinding

• Fixed an issue where units would regroup and cycle to the back of their formation with every right click or attack command.
• Fixed a rare issue where units would slide across untraversable terrain when being patrolled on Stand Ground.
• Fixed several issues with villager pathfinding around resources, especially regarding Mule Carts. Villagers should become stuck less frequently when gathering around a Mule Cart.

Scripting

• up-set-attack-stance, up-reset-unit and other related commands now work correctly with all-units-class.
• up-reset-attack-now now resets the attack flag to all units and with immediate effect.

Mod Validation

• During startup, the game now validates that all sprite (.smx and .sld) files in enabled mods can be safely loaded. If the game finds an unreadable or corrupted sprite file in a mod, then that mod is automatically disabled and an error message is displayed to let you know that there was a problem. This prevents crashes due to changes in the game’s graphics format, or due to errors in a sprite file.
• When the game shuts down unexpectedly, your mods will be automatically disabled on the next launch. The game will display a popup message on the main menu asking if you would like to re-enable your mods (If you re-enable your mods and continue to experience crashes, we recommend manually re-enabling your mods one at a time to identify the culprit.)
• Mods are no longer disabled automatically when launching a new version of the game for the first time.
• Players are now prevented from manually enabling a mod with broken/unloadable sprites.

Scenario Editor

• Added new trigger effects: “Create Object Armor”, “Create Object Attack”, “Modify Attribute By Variable”.
• “Change Object Civilization Name”, “Change Object Player Color” and “Change Object Player Name” trigger effects now reset on the object ownership change, so the new ownership is correctly presented.
• “Replace Object” trigger effect now correctly transfers the HP percentage of the original object instead of the absolute HP value.

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:

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

COMING UP…

We’re coming to the close of another year and 2023 has been wild for the Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition team (to say the least). We kicked things off with launching the Xbox version of Age II: DE, something we’d been in development with (secretly) for quite a while. That was pretty scary for us – Console RTS isn’t exactly the preface you see ahead of people describing a great gaming experience – and it took quite a few Vills across several teams to make that a reality! Thankfully it’s been a big positive for Age II: DE and the RTS genre broadly, and we’ve been thrilled to see the successful release of Age of Empires IV on Xbox continue to push that innovation. It was a really strong start for everything that would come next!

Right behind that came the Return of Rome, and then more recently we brought you The Mountain Royals – our 5th DLC release for Age II: DE. 5TH! That’s crazy! It’s genuinely heartwarming that we’re able to continue developing content and features for Age of Empires II this many years after its initial release in 1999. It speaks to the uniqueness of our community and the experience we share in our love for this game and the Age of Empires franchise. Trust us, we’re happy to be here and continue to work on Age II: DE for as long as you’re here with us, and we’re pretty excited about what that future looks like!

Today, this includes the launch of Animated Icons, which we’ve had a lot of fun conceptualizing and hope you enjoy! Please be sure to let us know what you think about these, what you like and what you don’t, and we’ll be listening for that feedback as we think about other ways to make your presence in the game even more fun and entertaining.

Tomorrow… well friends, not literally tomorrow but tomorrow-tomorrow – future talk – that tomorrow includes some really, really cool stuff. We’re very aware that from time to time, our community gets a little worried that we may be slowing down development of Age II: DE in favor of other priorities, or maybe being distracted by other projects. But looking ahead at everything we’ve got in our planning, it really feels like the best is yet to come.

There are so many exciting new things that we’re currently heads down figuring out for you guys, some of which we’re pretty far down the road on developing, so there may be some fun surprises waiting for you in the not too distant future. Beyond that, there’s yet more in the works, and we’ve been growing our team and the contributions coming from developers around the world. 

2024 is going to be a great year for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, with some surprises we’re pretty sure you’ll simply never guess. Try. Give it your best. We’re hyped and can’t wait to see the reaction as some of these things get announced!

We’d also like to close out 2023 by thanking everyone at World’s Edge, Forgotten Empires, Tantalus, Wicked Workshop, and CaptureAge that have contributed to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition throughout the year, but especially YOU! For being here with us on this journey. We’re incredibly thankful for you and the opportunity to share this experience with it. It means as much to us as it does to you, and we’re right there with you – we absolutely love this game

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.

Game- Stability & Performance

• Fixed a crash introduced with Update 99311.
• Fixed a rare issue where units could move to the edge of the map when issuing an attack move or patrol command.