It’s long overdue, but the new AI has finally arrived for Age of Empires II HD! And not only for The Forgotten, also the base game received a fresh AI script.

AI scripters Archon and Promi (known for their work on the AI scripts “The Horde” and “Promi” on the original FE mod) teamed up to script a new standard AI for the HD edition. However, this came with a few fresh challenges: the mod and HD version have vastly different AI capabilities, so while they could use their knowledge and experience, they couldn’t just reuse their old work. However, the result is one that may be seen: the new AI can take on the old AI 1v4 on the hardest level and will give a good challenge to casual players who want to step up their game a bit. However, if you still wish to play the old AI: you can select it as “Conquerors AI” when setting up your game.

AI Battle

Some other improvements:

  • The AI will now retreat and regroup its troops, no longer suiciding themselves one by one to your castles.
  • The AI will make units depending on your army composition, trying to counter you.
  • The AI now makes unit combinations that make sense. No longer will you see petards and longswordsmen flooding out of their bases.
  • The AI no longer cheats! Originally the AI would cheat on hardest (receiving +500 resources every time it aged up), now it plays fair on all levels.

All in all, a lot of new variation for your compstomps!


We also welcome a new campaign to this patch. You might remember the Battles of the Conquerors from the original game. We came up with a variant for the Forgotten. Cleverly named “Battles of the Forgotten”. In a series of 8 scenarios, we tried to cover some of the civs that had less coverage in the AoE2 campaigns so far: Chinese, Britons, Vikings, Magyars, Japanese, Mayans, Turks and Persians.

BotF_Campaign_Screen

So that’s a lot of hours of new content added to the game for free, enjoy!