A new Age of Empires II patch has just hit open beta and it contains a whole slew of balance changes! You can find the patch notes below or on the Steam forums: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/1621724915768225810/
General Community Bug Fixes:
- Advancing through replay chapters should no longer cause a desync
- Visibility settings should no longer cause a desync
- Pressing escape/enter in the lobby password text field should now function correctly
- Co-op teams should now display correctly in game and on the post-game screens
- Co-op players should be able to ready correctly on the first try
- Restore game and save lists should now correctly show DLC requirement icons
- Audio taunts setting now saves to the players profile correctly
- Some localized text clipping issues were addressed
Lobby Improvements:
- Players should no longer be able to join fake lobbies
- Players should now correctly time out if attempting to join an invalid lobby
- Players should no longer crash when excepting an invite from a custom campaign
- Players should now correctly cancel joining a lobby even when selected quickly
- Lobby should no longer crash when kicking players who are in the Tech Tree
- Lobby settings should now remember the team random option
- Lobby settings should no longer appear blank after disabling DLCs
- Lobby names should now scale in font size based on title length
- Lobby button sound effects should now play when changing names
- Lobby reset button now has a sound effect when pressed
- Lobby data set icon should now maintain the correct icon on subsequent loads
- Lobby browser custom scenario setting has been added to the game type filter
- Lobby browser location setting now has the any option at the top
- Lobby browser location setting should no longer appear blank after selecting reset
- Lobby browser standard victory filter should now function correctly
Gameplay Improvements:
- Starting a game with mods should no longer encounter a rare crash
- Under attack text notifications now play a chat sound
- Villagers should now lure animals to the town center more frequently
- Trade carts should no longer lose their gold when pressing the stop hotkey
- Lock teams should now disable tributing to enemy player in single player
- Garrison unit UI button should now be the correct size
- Treaty warnings should now be displayed when building inappropriately
- Tech tree should now close correctly after opening it with F2
- Campaign objective window tabs are no longer too low
- Campaign intro slides audio no longer becomes misaligned when using alt tab
- Campaign Honfoglalas now has the correctly objectives
- Campaign Dos Pilas no longer has a gate that disappears after the first objective
- Campaign Dracula 4 and 5 now have correct enemy player colours
- Campaign Bapheus no longer triggers diplomacy after killing Bey Metin
Balance Improvements:
- Condottiero now have unique armor class (only resisting bonus damage from gunpowder units, not from other anti-infantry attacks)
- Condottiero -1 pierce armor (from 1 to 0)
- Condottiero -1 attack (from 10 to 9)
- Elite Battle Elephant cost increased from 800f 500g to 1200f 900g
- Elite Battle Elephant research time increased from 80s to 100s
- Malay Battle elephants 30% cheaper (rather than 25%)
- Elite Karambit -1 attack (from 8 to 7)
- (Elite) Battle Elephant blast radius -0.1 (from 0.5 to 0.4)
- (Elite) Camel Archer -5 HP (from 60/65 to 55/60 without Bloodlines)
- (Elite) Camel Archers -2 armor vs Camels (from 2 to 0)
- (Elite) Camel Archers -2 armor vs anti-cavalry archer attacks (from 2 to 0)
- (Elite) Camel Archers -2 attack vs Rams (from 2 to 0)
- Ethiopians lose the free Halberdier upgrade
- Howdah cost +200f (from 200f 300w to 400f 300w)
- Howdah effect reduced from +1/+2 armor to +1/+1 armor
- Arquebus increases projectile speed of Bombard Cannons and Bombard towers by +0.2 (from 0 to 0.2, used to be 0.5 prior to patch 5.2)
- Organ Gun +1 spread damage (from 1 to 2)
- (Elite) Arambai -0.05 speed (from 1.35 to 1.3)
- (Elite) Arambai -1 attack
- Elite Arambai -2 armor vs anti-cavalry archer attacks (from 2 to 0)
- Slavs farm bonus now properly works after researching Wheelbarrow and Hand Cart
- Chatras effect increased from +30 HP to +50 HP
- Eagle Warrior training time +3s (from 32s to 35s)
- Eagle Warrior -0.05 speed (from 1.2 to 1.15)
- Anti-camel bonus increased for all anti-cavalry units (except camels)
- Malians lose free Gold Shaft Mining
Eagle Warriors always get nerfs
Condottieri useless now extremely niche unit
“Anti-camel bonus increased for all anti-cavalry units (except camels)”
Halberdiers going from doing +17 to camels to +26 is probably the worst and most misguided balance idea I’ve ever seen, and frankly, I don’t recall anyone ever asking for this one. RIP Indians, and Saracens will never be seen or heard from again.
I agree entirely. Though, the Saracens were hardly seen anyways, unfortunately. It’s been said for years that they need buffed but I doubt that’ll happen. The market, mameluke, and cavalry archer bonuses have always been really, really great ideas that are horrendously executed. Mams and camels cost way too much gold along with their upgrades (especially their upgrades). The market has the potential to speed up advancement but doesn’t really do enough. Don’t get me started on their mostly useless cavalry archer/foot archer bonuses that would be cool if they simply did meaningful damage.
It’s not like Saracens don’t have good utilities, but Camels are the brunt of their military, and they’re about to get deleted from the game, basically.
Hi Forgotten team need to clear up the rumors that on steam about this link https://steamdb.info/app/221380/dlc/ app ID 609740 which is the 4th DLC from AOE2 HD and comes up as unknown app. Is AOE2 HD getting another expansion because the rumors are hot no news, no announcements from the news feed nothing and getting frustrated that zero updates have been provided on this can you please reply ASAP and clear this app as me and many fans are getting tired of waiting on this unknown DLC 609740 on the AOE2 HD and surely at this time of year something… Read more »
I don’t think the increased halb bonus against camels is necessary, since it’s the Indian imperial camels that are too strong, not the other civ’s heavy camels. Balancing imp. camels by reducing their raw combat stats (ex: -10hp or -1 attack or even slowing down their attack speed like paladins) will discourage them from fighting against units that are supposed to soft-counter camels (militia line, archer line, etc.). The other changes look good though. Maybe initial attack delays can be looked into for the next balance patch. Reducing the cav archer’s initial attack delay slightly (CA’s attack delay reduced from… Read more »
First I want to thank you for your continuous effort to keep the game alive.. But after I saw this changelog, and I saw that you are going to make a big nerf to the camel-line and I don’t think this is a good idea. Since the first version of this game Age of Kings in 1999, Camels weren’t common and popular because of their wrong classification, and they desperately needed a buff, which happened in African Kingdoms and since that they became more viable option to 10 civilizations of the game. And nerfing them again after being good for… Read more »
MAN.
you need to fix the desync.
I don’t mind the lag or delay.
Desync is really game-breaking.
and save-and-exit is not a fix. I have not had one game where I could gather all the players in a room after a desync. Also the fact that a saved game is no longer ranked takes away the motivation for people to continue.
Is there going to be another expansion? I’d really love to see some eastern European civs. Rus’, Poles, Lithuanians…