Welcome to an exciting update for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition! This patch addresses stability and performance issues, bug fixes, and some minor balance changes! Be sure to dig down into the post below to get all of the smaller details before hopping in-game and checking them out firsthand.
Thanks again to our amazing community members, all of whom have helped to make Age of Empires what it is today!
—The Age of Empires Team
Remember that you’ll need to update your game in the Microsoft Store:
- Open the Microsoft Store.
- Click the [∙ ∙ ∙ ] symbol next to your profile picture.
- Select Downloads and updates.
- Press the Get updates button to automatically detect, download, and install the latest changes to your game!
- Open the game. The title screen should show you on Build 158041.
If you are unable to launch the game after downloading the update, make sure you add (or re-add) the Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition client or folder as an exception to your firewall and antivirus program.
That’s it; you’re ready to play!
Remember that you’ll need to update your game in Steam:
- Open Steam.
- Click on Library to see your games list.
- Click Downloads at the bottom of the Library window.
- [If the new build does not download automatically,] click the Download Now button to manually download the new update.
- Open the game. The title screen should show you on Build 158041.
That’s it; you’re ready to play!
Remember that you’ll need to update your game in the Xbox App for Windows.
- Open the Xbox app.
- Games that are installed show up on the left side of the app.
- Hover over the game or click it, and then select Update.
- [If the new build does not download automatically,] hover over the game, select More Options (…), choose Manage. Under the Files tab, choose the option to Check for Updates.
- Open the game. The title screen should show you on Build 158041.
That’s it; you’re ready to play!
- Under the games tab from the PlayStation Home Screen Locate the game and hover over it. Make sure not to select it!
- While hovering over the game press the Pause button (☰) on your controller.
- In the new pop up menu select the Check for Update option.
- If there is a new update available, this will automatically start the download. If your game is on the most recent version, selecting this option will confirm that information for you.
That’s it; you’re ready to play!
Please note that custom mods may not be compatible with the latest game update. If you are experiencing issues launching or playing the game after downloading the new build, try disabling your installed mods before trying again.
Still having trouble? Visit our support site!
Game
Stability & Performance
- Fixed a memory management crash related to building placement in Co-op.
- Fixed a crash occurring on the Xbox One platform.
- Fixed a crash on the loading screen when loading into a game on the Microsoft Store platform.
- Fixed a crash that would occur when a player accepts a multiplayer lobby invite while also loading into a campaign level.
- Fixed a crash in Skirmish and Custom Multiplayer Lobbies caused by selecting AI players to mirror using the Chronicles Civilization Set.
- Optimized cutscenes for the Chronicles DLC series on consoles, reducing download sizes.
Achievements
- The ‘Blockade Breaker’ Achievement now references the correct mission name: “Destroy both naval blockades in ‘Divine Salamis’.”
- The ‘Crisis Management’ Achievement now references the correct mission name: “Complete ‘The Fruits of Empire’ without demanding medium or high tribute.”
- Fixed an issue preventing players from getting the ‘Promachos’ Achievement after killing 10 enemy units with a Spartan Polemarch.
Graphics
- Fixed an issue which had the wrong animation play for some units during Patrol, Attack-Move and following Waypoints.
- Fixed an issue which had herdable chickens disappear in the Fog of War.
Audio
- Numerous small menu narrator fixes to help with accessibility.
UI
- Fixed an issue making Fire Lancers and Jian Swordsmen to count as two units in the units counter of the HUD when the “Military Mode” map was selected.
- Fixed an incorrect Loom technology Tooltip text.
- Fixed an issue preventing the “Remaining Population Alert” from playing under some circumstances.
- Updated some Villagers tooltips regarding new huntable animals behavior.
- Numerous small fixes to improve menu visuals for Accessibility.
- Fixed an issue on PS5 that prevented a player from moving the cursor / selector when the Browse Mods tab and Player Profile screen were visible.
Hotkeys
- Allow “Auto Scout” hotkey to work when the unit is moving and the “Stop” UI button is visible.
Xbox
- Fixed an issue that forced players out of gameplay when the controller was willingly turned off from the power options.
- Fixed an issue preventing audio from playing when players downloaded different audio Language Packs.
- Fixed a number of small memory leaks.
PlayStation
- Mitigated some desync occurrences in Crossplay Multiplayer Games.
- Fixed an issue where loading an old save of the William Wallace campaign would crash the game.
- Fix for some PlayStation players not being able to connect to multiplayer.
- Fixes for small graphical errors that could appear in the William Wallace Campaign if launched from PlayGo.
Gameplay
General
- Added DISABLE_RUNAWAY_ESCAPE_MOVE launch parameter to disable runaway/escape CTRL + right-click move behavior.
Fixes
- Fixed an issue that had monks garrison in Fortified Churches after being produced with Building Waypoints set to pick up and deliver a relic.
- Fixed an issue that prevented CTRL and SHIFT modifiers from working when unloading units from garrisonable units and buildings.
- Fixed an issue preventing Samurais from using their speed charge attack when targeting Trebuchets.
- Fixed an issue that had Siege Towers unload the garrisoned units immediately in place instead of unloading after having moved to the selected area when issued the “Unload” command via UI button or Hotkey.
- Fixed an issue awarding 2 kills to players that killed a Trebuchet or a Packed Trebuchet.
- Fixed an issue that made violent huntable animals (like Boar, Rhino, Elephant) become unresponsive, ensuring they now always attack back in defense, even when retreating.
- Mitigated an issue that sometimes had Trade Carts and Trade Cogs go idle when reaching their destination Market or Dock.
Campaign
Campaign Missions
- Historical Battles: ‘York (865)’: Fixed an incomplete text showing in the Scouts section regarding AI players.
- Jan Zizka 4: ‘The Golden City’: Fixed a wrong text showing in the Objectives section regarding AI players.
- Liu Bei 1: ‘The Oath of the Peach Garden’: Adjusted the requirements for the Yellow Turban bases to “surrender” and delete their buildings, improving gameplay flow.
- Tamerlane 4: ‘Sultan of Hindustan’: Fixed an issue where flaming camels failed to engage the enemy armored elephants.
Chronicles
Graphics
- New Chronicles-specific siege weapon skins are now added for all Chronicles civilizations.
- Spartans now have a unique skin for their Fort.
Audio
- Added a new conversion sound effect for Chronicles Priestesses.
UI
- The text description for Chronicles civilization unit types are now capitalized when viewing from the Civilization Selection menu, in parity with non-Chronicles civilizations.
- The Mouflon huntable animal now uses a unique icon.
- Fixed an issue with the radial gamepad menu for Chronicles civilizations, where the radial menu would continue displaying unique Classical Age techs at the Fort after they have already been researched.
- Fixed an issue on PS5 that prevented a player from moving the cursor / selector when the Browse Mods tab and Player Profile screen were visible.
- For the Achaemenids, Athenians, and Spartan tech tree under Barracks, Supplies no longer appear. Arson now correctly appears as a Civic Age technology, and Gambesons no longer appear on the quick tech tree preview.
- The Siege Onager and Siege Ballista are now shown in the tech tree for Achaemenids, Athenians, and Spartans.
- Chronicles civilization Levy-line Tooltip no longer mentions only “Swordsmen”.
- Chronicles civilization tooltips now reference “HP” instead of “hit-points”, in parity with non-Chronicles civilizations.
- Athenian Military Policy technology tooltip has been updated to clarify all melee military units gain gold for killing enemy units.
- Fixed a typo in the Incendiary Raft-line tooltip.
- Athenian Naval Policy tooltip now specifies Foot Archers and Warships now cost 20% less gold.
- Fixed a typo in the Unpack and Pack commands for the Palintonon unit tooltip that was incorrectly referencing ‘Trebuchet’.
- Achaemenid Immortal and Elite Immortal tooltips now mention attack and accuracy upgrades at the Academy for ranged attack mode.
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue where the Spanish Team Bonus (+25% Gold from Trade units) was also affecting Wood for Trade Cogs when using Antiquity Mode.
Athenians
- Athenian Military Policy now decreases the wood cost of Military production buildings by 33% instead of 25%.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Scout Cavalry units from gaining +5 Gold for killing units while Athenian Military Policy is active.
Spartans
- (Elite) Hippeus now deal 3 unblockable trample damage within 0.5 tiles when attacking.
- (Elite) Hippeus HP increased from 80 (90) → 90 (100).
Campaign
- Chronicles: Battle for Greece 13: ‘Wrath of the Regent’: Fixed unrelated text that would appear on the console gamepad radial menu after recruiting the maximum amount of Cretan Archers from the Fort.
Random Maps
General
- Fixed an issue that was allowing the spawning of distant herdable animals in some Empire Wars maps.
Lobbies and Matchmaking
General
- Fixed an issue where starred Civilizations would be lost when changing Civilization sets.
- Fixed an issue that would allow players to select Chronicles civilizations in Skirmish and Custom Multiplayer Lobbies under the default Age of Empires II civilization set.
- Fixed an issue that allowed users to bypass the Chronicles Civilization Set restrictions on the Skirmish and Custom Multiplayer Lobbies.
- Players can no longer change Civilization Set to Chronicles in Skirmish or Custom Multiplayer Lobby settings if they do not own the Chronicles DLC.
- Chronicles Civilization Set can now be accessed in Match Settings when the Chronicles DLC is un-installed but still owned by the player.
AI
General
- Included villagers gathering from pastures in “villager-food” shortcut used by AI to account for villagers assigned to food.
Pathfinding
- Fixed an issue that made units unresponsive when a command was issued in the exact frame the previous movement command was completed.
Modding
General
- The techtreepreviewpanel.json file now supports both numeric and string (corresponding to data_name) civilization values for the “CivIds” array
- Allowed modifying the following unit attributes by Effect Amount, Modify Attribute trigger effect and technologies in data with the IDs:
- Train Locations Entry Mod (158) – allows to specify the index of the Train Location structure to be modified or queried from the Train Locations array for the associated attributes (Train Location ID, Button ID, Train Time, Hotkey ID). Defaults to 0, otherwise has the same behavior as the Damage Sprite index attribute.
- Train Locations Total Num (159) – allows to obtain or resize the length of the Train Location array. When resizing to a larger size, will duplicate the values for the last entry. Otherwise has the same behavior as the Damage Sprite number attribute.
Scenario Editor
- Added an additional 20 blank technologies to the Scenario Editor.
- Added additional variants of the “Loot” object.
- Fixed an issue preventing “Task Object” trigger from activating when the last unit in the selected unit list died.
- Fixed a localization issue regarding Water Terrain variants.
- Fixed an issue where the editor settings option “Run triggers and effects in display order” would become un-intentionally disabled if the user cancelled the dialogue window that appears.
- The Trigger Active condition now correctly remembers the selected trigger when deleting other triggers.
- Fixed an issue where using the Modify Resource effect would show blank entries instead of actual resources.
- Flag Achaemenids 1/2/3, Flag Athenians 1/2/3, and Flag Spartans 1/2/3 are now called “Civ Flag Achaemenids 1/2/3”, “Civ Flag Athenians 1/2/3”, and “Civ Flag Spartans 1/2/3”.
Ongoing…
Matchmaking Improvements
Shorter queues mean more time playing the game and less time waiting! Last week, we applied a server update to enable improvements to multiplayer matchmaking. Players will now see shorter queue times on average.
Investigation
As always, we are continuing to track issues reported by the community for future updates.
For other known issues, please visit this page to see what’s being tracked!
What’s on the Horizon?
COMING UP…
Hey there Age Community!
Here we are launching new DLC! It’s a bit mind-blowing to think about it, but including the Animated Profile Icons we launched a while back, this is the 10th DLC for AoE II: DE that we’ve been able to bring to you since our release in the fall of 2019, and we now find ourselves nearing six years of ongoing updates and content releases for this beloved game.
When we set out to remaster Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, we were starting with compatibility with modern devices, visual updates, and some minor additions/adjustments to gameplay to try and help make the experience accessible for new players that weren’t already familiar with the game. Looking at where Age II: DE is now, it’s kind of amazing to take a second and think about just how much of a significant expansion of the original game that it’s become. Not just in content, but in the continuous features we’ve added, quality of life changes and upgrades, and especially our move to Xbox and PlayStation consoles that necessitated the invention of things like the VPS (Villager Priority System) in order to make an RTS friendly and easier to play with a controller.
It’s been a profound privilege for all of us on the team to be able to do this for so long and in so many vibrant ways, and it’s really because of you – our community – that keeps showing up and engaging with what we’re doing. We feel like we have to earn that every time all of the time, so we’re always working pretty hard to steer this ship and make sure we deliver, and this felt like a good time to reflect and be thankful for the relationship we get to have with you and the mutual joy that it’s given all of us. We love Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition just like you do, and we’re thankful you’re here with us!
Today we get to talk about Age of Empires II: DE – Chronicles: Alexander the Great (say that three times fast) – a second DLC installment in the Chronicles line being created by CaptureAge! It remains an incredibly unique story about a group of modders that were spending their personal time tinkering with the Editor in Age II: DE and working to realize a vision they had, which has now turned into several years of professional game development in partnership with Xbox. It genuinely is a dreams-come-true story, and it’s been fun to work with the entire CA team in delivering this as they evolve from their beginning as the CaptureAge eSports guys to a team that’s delivering a decent amount of what you’re experiencing in both updates as well as new DLC releases with examples like Chronicles. We’re likewise thankful for their partnership and being able to be a part of that together with them.
Chronicles: Alexander the Great is an especially exciting release for us because it centers on one of the most famous figures in history, and tells the dramatic story of Alexander’s rise and fall. It’s a particularly interesting creative development process to work through if you’ve been making videogames for a while, because there aren’t many other situations where you’d want to have PhD Historians working with you as narrative designers to ensure the authenticity, accuracy, and dramatic impact of this kind of subject matter. You’re simply not worrying about this kind of thing if instead you’re spending your time designing big guns that are useful for splatting even bigger aliens, etc. What we do with the Age franchise is fairly unique in that way, and it tends to combine the challenge of simple game design and trying to create unit and campaign content that’s fun and entertaining, with the challenge of representing the historical record in an equally enthusiastic way. With Chronicles: Battle for Greece and Chronicles: Alexander the Great, we feel like we’re trying new things and putting a lot of creativity in this mix of gameplay and historical representation.
What’s also unique about Chronicles is that you don’t find these Civs in Ranked and that’s by design, although it doesn’t mean they aren’t playable as a Multiplayer component. They exist in Skirmish and you can create Custom Lobbies that comingle them with existing Age II: DE Civs or you can keep it Chronicles. But with this DLC we’ve really tried to focus more on the scale of an epic narrative, told in a unique way, as a love letter to the massive majority of you that spend your time in Campaign and Skirmish and don’t tend to touch MP much at all. That represents quite a huge margin of our audience, and most of the challenge we have is making sure those people know that Chronicles exists and that these DLC offerings are picture-perfect for their play style. We gently encourage you to let your Campaign and Skirmish-loving friends know about it if they’re not playing it or haven’t seen what we’re doing – we think they’ll like it!
And so… you’re reading this on the day of new DLC dropping… whatever could there be on the horizon still?
The short answer? A lot. A lot a lot.
Beyond watching the reception of Age of Empires II: DE – Chronicles: Alexander the Great, we’re heads down on several things that we’re confident you’ll be excited about when we finally get to ship those updates and/or announce what’s coming. Recently we provided word that the upcoming Thalassocracy 2 Tournament would include an early look at naval combat changes coming to Age II: DE next year, signaling some exciting work we hope to put in your hands soon – be sure to check out the Thalassocracy 2 for more info on exactly what “naval combat changes” means!
And just yesterday you heard that the next Red Bull Wololo Tournament is on the way! We’re pretty thrilled about this next iteration in the beloved RBW series and excited to meet all of the fans that make it to the show (it’s genuinely always so fun to meet you and hear your stories, it gives us so much energy!)
These brief mentions are great examples of fairly big things in the works that we’ll be talking about or putting in your hands as time goes on. So definitely keep your eyes on our social media and web channels for news, right now there’s just no shortage of things coming your way in the months ahead.
For now, we hope you enjoy this latest release! Even if you’re somebody that primarily goes for Ranked play and competitive Civ additions, we think you’ll be delighted with the exceptional narrative and presentation of historical drama in Age of Empires II: DE – Chronicles: Alexander the Great. It’s really amazing to see what CaptureAge has been able to create with the Chronicles series and we think you’ll enjoy it as much as we’re loving playing it across the Team!
And once again, thank you for being such an amazing community – it’s our joy to be here with you and keeping Age II: DE vibrant for all of us – we’re fans too 🙂
Wololo!
– The Age II: DE Team
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.