[Bug] Castles Without Murder Holes Will Sometimes Stop Attacking

Age of Empires II: DE II - Report a Bug
1

Game Version:

  • Build (34223)
  • Platform (Steam)

Issue:

If a Castle is being attacked by both melee and ranged units but does not have Murder Holes, it will fail to attack at all. I believe this problem can happen as well with Town Centers and Towers but not sure how to reproduce this problem with Town Centers consistently.

I’m not sure if Murder Holes is technically the problem here though, it’s possible that defensive structures in general can target units outside of its range and just not attack even if valid targets are in range.

Reproduction Steps:

  1. Make a Castle
  2. Have it be attacked

EDIT ~
Extremely easy to reproduce for towers/castles. Have a single unit walk into a defensive structure, the structure will attack it until it gets into melee range. Then walk other units into it, they won’t be attacked.

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2

Game Version:

  • Build: 35584
  • Platform: Steam

Issue:

Static defenses without Murder Holes sometimes have difficulty acquiring new eligible targets if a current target enters melee range with them. When testing with a single knight entering melee, the tower often acquired the stranded knight as a new target. When testing with multiple knights entering melee, the tower rarely acquired the stranded knight as a new target.

Anecdotally, I have also noticed this fairly regularly while playing, but only recently decided to test it more rigorously to report it as a bug. So I do not think this is a rare occurrence.

Reproduction Steps:

  1. Create a custom scenario. Place a tower/castle owned by Player 1. Place several knights owned by Player 2 with no AI personality around the tower/castle, the farthest of which must be stranded; I used Gaia hay stacks to strand the knight. Give Player 1 a unit somewhere else so the scenario does not immediately end.

  2. Test the scenario a few times until the problem occurs. It does not appear to be deterministic, so will not happen on every trial.

Alternatively, see the linked videos below. Note that I disabled all mods prior to recording these tests.

Tower test
Castle test

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Without keep, castles will just stop firing at targets altogether if it is trying to fire at a target at the base. The end result is a castle not firing at anything even if there are targets that are outside of the base of the castle.

4

Thank you for the report (and for the videos highlighting the issue)! I have submitted this information for review by the team, and will update the thread if they need any additional information.

Thanks again! :+1:

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