It’s been two weeks since the release of Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms but we haven’t taken a break since! We’re keeping a keen eye out for bug reports and your feedback. The good and the bad of course 🙂
Hotfixes
In the past week, we had no less than 5 hotfixes so far. Each addressing a good bunch of issues that were reported by our passionate community. You can read up on all the fixes in their respective posts:
- Hotfix 1: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/496880503067996386/
- Hotfix 2: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/496880503079143583/
- Hotfix 3: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/496880503083171332/
- Hotfix 4: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/496881136904807796/
- Hotfix 5 (patch 4.5): http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/492378265877924119/
If you experienced crashes on release day or any persistent issues that impeded you to fully enjoy the game, feel free to give it another whirl as quite a bit of critical bugs have been resolved already.
If you’re still experiencing crashes, hop over to this support topic on the Steam forums where morness, the lead programmer on the project (on behalf of Skybox Labs) is working hard to make sure all reports are being dealt with.
Balance
Many players already noticed that the new civilizations are a “bit on the stronger side”. This is a very fair assessment and a conscious design decision. When we worked on The Forgotten, we tried our utmost best to make sure the new civilizations would not overpower the older ones. But this lead to the unfortunate situation where people had to play with new build orders, units & technologies against strategies that were practiced for over a decade. This lead to the not always incorrect perception that these civs were a bit underpowered.
So this time we went for the opposite approach, where we’d make sure the civilizations would all have their share of strong traits. Which invites everyone to try out new tactics and unit combinations, without being mercilessly punished when something goes wrong. We are constantly looking out for feedback posted on various community forums and are keeping track of your suggestions.
It goes without saying that a lot of the feedback so far was anticipated. Bonuses like the 20% cheaper cavalry for the Berbers, has been widely considered a very (even too) strong bonus and we are very likely to turn that into a 15% reduction (or a staggered one per age even) when the first balance patch comes around (TBA).
Feedback
As usual, let us know if you’re liking the game and if you have any issues. We’d love to hear. If you have the time, maybe even leave a review on Steam!
The more I think of the swordsman speed being up’d, I am kind of 50/50 about it. I don’t think there should be any speed change in feudal age otherwise I feel feudal archers would become pointless. If it’s done I feel like it should be after somebody researches longswordsman upgrade in Castle age. My thoughts though revolve more around civs that already have good infantry bonuses. (I still know we are talking about swordsman line). Would Celts keep same % speed boost or would that be nerfed to fit the new speed (This would hurt Celts if they lost… Read more »
I agree on giving swordsman 5% speed increase.it will increase game flexibility by using almost all units according to opponents strategies.also agree to give war wagon 0 value of melee damage.same should be given to Indian elephant archers (need open on suggestion on elephant archers).teutonic knights movement speed increase too.should given full tower upgrades and 1 fully upgrades from ram and onagers to indian civilization. I disagree to take away arson from goths instead should given same type of tech to other civilization.it will balance all civilizations and also increase more fun & would sees more advance strategies from players.… Read more »
Hey Cysion, Nice expansion, enjoying it! Some comments for fine-tuning some civs: 1. Berbers get camel archer and genitours (both cavalry archer), and yet they neither get last archer armor nor parthian tactics… seems bizarre… Also, there doesn’t seem to be much incentive for making camel archers unless I am specifically fighting cavalry archers. It would be nice to change its stats/ability to make it more appealing (like Mangudai for instance). For example, if the regeneration rate (through unique tech) is increased more so it actually has greater effect on survival of the unit 2. Change the Huns and Saracen… Read more »
For Saracens, some bonuses that would be useful but not too powerful would be (or at least I think so): – create camels 25% or 30% faster – lower the cost of all camel/mameluke related upgrades (i.e bloodines, husbandry, blacksmith ones etc) by 25% – Give camels +1 or +2 melee and pierce armor – Lower Heavy cavalry archer upgrade cost and parthian tactics cost (or make them free), since Saracens have one of the best fully upgraded cavalry archers in the game, so giving more incentive to make it. – Change the unique tech to lower mameluke/came/cavalry archer cost… Read more »
One quick suggestion for the 4.7 patch/hotfix:
Please add some sort of wind device on top of the African Mill, even if it’s not animated. It just looks like a slightly over-sized house and is difficult to quickly identify visually.
Thanks for your excellent work. It is rare that I shell out money for games (this is actually the first game I bought in years and the first thing I’ve ever bought on Steam).
One more thing: Farimba unique tech (Malians) is really too strong. Their cavalier can beat a regular fully upgraded Paladin! Their heavy camels also are now the best in the game, better than Saracens with +30 hp. Would be more appropriate if it is reduced to +3 attack instead of +5.
So, did you all quit? When are we going to get a fully functional game? And when are we going to get a AK civs rebalance? I think everyone agrees the new civs are somewhat unbalanced and could use some changes.