When attempting to have a villager build, the menu is glitching. From the top menu which houses four options: buildings, military buildings, repair and garrison. If I click on buildings it will show briefly and then go back to the top build menu. Same behavior clicking on military buildings. The sub menu appears for a fraction of a second before moving back to the top menu. Sometimes I’m able to use hot keys such as qq to build a house or qa to build a farm, but this is also buggy because the game wants to stay on that top menu.
Hi @jlj4774
This is a really strange issue that nobody else reported. Are you using mods that could interfere with the UI? If so, please try disabling them and then restarting the game.
If you are not using mods, please try verifying integrity of game files
Hello, thanks for trying to help. It seems this was related to a specific game. I did a file validation and thankfully it came back OK but for this one session it continued. I gave up and started a different one and we’re OK now. So if anyone’s reading this in the future, just start a new game, I guess…
+1 on this issue. its becoming more frequent and I end up having to restart games, often back to back games. game is unplayable until multiple restarts have happened
This still happens from time to time, once it happens the game is unplayable and I have to start from scratch.
No mods
Verification of game files finds no issues
Sometimes (not always) when this occurs the game comes to a slow crawl as if there’s not enough resources to play the game. This is funny because I recently upgraded to a much more capable PC and this was never an issue on my prior PC.
This is becoming very annoying. I disabled all mods, reinstalled the game and yet every third game this happens. Clearly this is widespread as a number of users have reported it. Highly frustrating
@Felizon89 I kind of know how to reproduce this sort of bug. I was making a scenario which involved looping triggers that either enabled a building or changed the button location or something similar. Every time the build menu changed, it reset to the top level. I will try to test to refine the information to make a minimal reproducible example - I think I was using XS to change things. It would be useful to know if people are experiencing this only in scenarios with triggers or not, and if so, to post the scenarios.
Has anyone been successful in resolving this issue? I play Skirmish 99% of times just against AI to unwind. 4 back to back games I started today had this issue. I have disabled all mods and also reinstalled the game twice. I dont know what Im missing but Skirmish games are unplayable. I’d be very sad to let this game go
It occurs after I have one of the AIs request resources in return for being an ally. Once I send them the resources, my build menu breaks. The only mods I have installed are the official ones offered by the AoE team as events. The last time I had this happen, I shrugged and was intent on trying to finish the game with just what I had built and sent my villagers to only gather resources, but the further I got into the game after this started it started having lag that became more consistent the longer the round continued.
I haven’t found a solution to this except to play with a lower AI difficulty, which makes the game too easy.
EDIT: I played the same settings above but didn’t have an AI request resources for allying. The game ran completely fine. It looks like something about changing allegiances has started breaking the game?
Edit to the Edit: I just went through a game, again with the above settings, but when one of my enemies offered an alliance I ignored it. Upon this message, the game started chugging hard and the same builder menu bug appeared (tho the game was so slow it wasn’t quite worth it)
(I’m a new account so I can’t post any more links to this specific post. I have the game file for before & after the bug appeared in the next post)
I am in a similar boat to some of the other people here. I enjoy playing Skirmishes to unwind, but having this issue occur is really disheartening. I hope this information proves helpful to the devs in figuring out what the problem is!
Thanks. +1 to the pattern of AI switching allegiances (I failed to realise this). I usually play 4v4 Extreme AI and off late one of the enemy AIs have been switching to Neutral and the game breaks when this happens.
I was also having this problem but I found that if I turn off “taut” in the game option menu it stopped occurring. It doesn’t fix the problem but I can play without being forced to use hotkeys.
After years of smooth gameplay, I’ve been encountering an issue for the past two days.
It all started during my first game after installing the recent 4GB major update on April 16, 2025, titled “The Three Kingdoms.” Midway through the game, the build menu began to malfunction—it automatically backed out of the sub-menu for both Economy and Military buildings without any input from me. Even the keyboard shortcuts stopped working, rendering both mouse-based and keyboard shortcut-based building impossible, as the sub-build menu kept closing on its own.
Two days later, I’m still facing this issue and trying to figure out what’s causing it. The problem occurs in both single-player (Skirmish) mode and custom multiplayer games with friends. I’ve ruled out my computer, OS, Steam, or any external interference as the cause. The issue must be linked to the recent update, as everything worked perfectly before it. I suspect that older mods might be incompatible with the new update and are triggering the problem, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ve begun disabling mods one at a time to see if this resolves the issue. However, some users without any mods have also reported the same problem, so I’m uncertain if this approach will work.
For reference, I don’t have all the DLCs installed, such as those featuring the Armenians and Romans. I’ll continue troubleshooting and provide updates with my findings.
System Info:
OS: Windows 11 Pro, Version 10.0.26100 (Build 26100)
Platform: Steam
Recent Update: The Three Kingdoms
App ID: 813780
Build ID: 17957298
Version = 101.103.10863.0 #(141935)
Installed Content Updated: April 16, 2025, at 1:22 PM
ISSUE EXPERIENCED
