My campaign progress was removed.
I had completed all campaigns on Hard and unlocked all achievements, including those for the Caucasus Campaign Selection Screen (Thoros, Tamar, Ismail). However:
I reinstalled my operating system, which also required a reinstallation of the game.
I purchased, installed, and completed the newest DLC: “Chronicles: Battle for Greece.”
I noticed I no longer had 100% campaign completion on my profile — the progress for the Caucasus campaigns was gone.
The related achievements for those campaigns were still intact.
EDIT: It’s not just the Caucasus / Mountain Royals campaigns that reset; it’s also all “Victors and Vanquished” scenarios. Please note that I backed up my “%userprofile%\Games\Age of Empires 2 DE” folder before the reinstall and restored it after reinstalling the game.
I have the same issue:
Played all campaigns to gold medal, including those for the Caucasus Campaign Selection Screen (Thoros, Tamar, Ismail) and all Victors and Vanquished scenarios.
I hadn’t played for some time. Now when i started this week the medals were gone and only level 1 of each of the three campaigns was playable from the selection screen.
Other then OP:
GAME BUILD #: 101.103.12349.0 #143421 18209429
GAME PLATFORM: Steam
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
I did not reinstall my system. I purchased, installed, and played some the the missions of the DLC: “Chronicles: Battle for Greece.”
I don’t know how to find my profile here to check if the campaigns progress is still here. I play on steam with username n0xi0us - steampage: Steam Community :: n0xi0us
I think I have savegames of all campaign-missions before i finished them. I just reloaded “Ragnar” of “Victors and Vanquished” and got my gold medal back.
It happened to me over 1 year ago. I never got back my lost progress.
My guess is an alternative profile was generated (you can check how many folders with many numbers in their names there are in your local save repertory). I unlocked stuff on a second profile not noticing and when the game finally manage to get my main save profile I lost the last thing completed. It is still an assumption the problem may be more complex.
I think it happened after an update.
Since that time I regularly make a back-up copy of my save profile folder and check the campaign progress to identify if anything went wrong.
This game has one of the most terrible progress saving system for 2025. Securing simething on a server? Hell why?
The interesting part is that your progress is saved on Microsoft’s servers, and wiping it manually is practically impossible unless you play completely offline or buy the game on a new account.
The online profile doesn’t just list which campaigns you finished—it also stores the date and the highest difficulty cleared. Anyone can look this up, for example:
When you query the Relic backend API directly you get the raw JSON that the game itself consumes, complete with extra metadata such as the stat-group IDs that tie each campaign to your completion record.
So what’s missing from all profiles—not even displaying as “0/n” like other unfinished campaigns? Every Caucasus / Mountain Royals campaign (Thoros, Tamar, Ismail) and all Victors & Vanquished scenarios.
That strongly suggests the data itself wasn’t erased; instead, those campaigns were never added to the stat groups the game pulls from the server. When your local player.nfp file is lost or corrupted, the game regenerates it at launch using the server copy—so any campaign that isn’t part of that server payload reappears as “not started.”
In short, this looks like an oversight in how the newer campaigns were wired into the online stat-tracking system, not a failure to save our progress in the first place.
That was interesting. So it is not as bad as I thought since there is a partial back up save on the servers.
I guess getting a local back up save of your profile should still work to regenerate your Moutains Royals and V&V completion?
It also shows that at some point, some devs became careless about basic features. Can anyone relate this to a change of direction or whatsoever?
The recent updates brought a mess I have hardly seen before with that game but I haven’t paid attention to the situation 3 or 4 years ago.
Yeah, if I had to sum up what’s happening on this subforum, I’d say there are hundreds of unfixed bugs in the game, with little motivation from the developers to address them and almost no quality assurance. I’m still hoping things will improve - money talks, after all, and the latest DLC seems to have sold well. Maybe that will encourage them to hire more support.
In the meantime, I can help you restore your medals and campaign progress -with a bit of help from your side:
Complete at least one scenario from Victors and Vanquished, and make sure you’ve finished at least the first scenario of the Tamar, Ismail, and Thoros campaigns on any difficulty. (This ensures those campaigns appear in your profile file so I can update them easily.)
Once you’ve done that, send me your Player.nfp file. You’ll find it here: <UserProfile>/Games/Age of Empires 2 DE/<long-number-folder>/profile/Player.nfp
You can send it either here or via DM. I’ll open it in my tool and update your progress (e.g., mark all campaigns as completed on Hard).
When I send the edited save back, disable Steam Cloud temporarily before launching the game, or else your changes will be overwritten by the cloud sync.
Copy the fixed Player.nfp file back into the profile folder (same location as above). (Optional but highly recommended: Make a backup of your original Player.nfp before replacing it, just in case!)
Finally, launch the game and check your restored progress!
Just a heads-up: I’d recommend not starting any other campaigns until you get your updated file back, just to avoid any extra confusion or conflicts.
I remember doing the same stuff for Witcher 3 gameplay bugs. Tons of them…but you know what was interesting? The moment they released the 2021 update, they actually included my fixes in there (i set the permissions to allow use of my “mods” in any other mod or in any game modification on nexusmods)…wish they let some capable programmers fix some of the things officially…i mean, what could go wrong fixing trivial stuff like campaign diplomacy?
I can confirm that my Victors and Vanquished and Mountain Royals progress isn’t saved either. And funny enough during the whole AoE 2 medal fiasco I had a fresh Windows install. So I can’t tell which to blame.
I hope they can fix it because I don’t want to replay VaV missions I’ve completed (and hope it doesn’t take till next DLC release).
I think I still have documents and settings folder from previous Windows install saved (saved roughly a week before Three Kingdoms got released). Can I use it?
Great initiative on trying to recover your progress - here are a few things to double-check:
1. Disable Steam Cloud before restoring
If Steam Cloud sync is enabled, it will overwrite any local changes every time you launch the game—regardless of whether your Player.nfp is newer, modified, or you’re even online. Steam keeps its own cloud copy and force-syncs certain files at startup. Before you copy your backup, go to your game’s Properties → General in Steam and pause or disable Cloud Sync.
2. DLC install might be the real trigger
Reinstalling Windows can’t be the whole story - others (like noxius) lost progress without a reinstall. The one consistent action seems to be installing the Battle for Greece DLC (or another major update), which likely prompted the game to regenerate Player.nfp from the server payload. That means your backup could already have been missing some campaign flags.
3. How I can help
Diagnose
Send me your backed-up Player.nfp and I’ll run it through my tool to see exactly which campaigns it believes are completed. That will tell us whether the backup itself was already affected by the bug.
Restore
If you’d rather not replay everything, I can edit your current file - basically decompress it, flip the completion flags for the relevant campaigns, and recompress. My parser is still a bit rough for public release, but it reliably marks campaigns as “completed” on any difficulty you choose.
Wow, turning off Steam Cloud and copying file worked. I launch the game, have my Vav and Caucasus progress restored and even one China DLC mission progress is saved. I just don’t know now if I can turn Steam Cloud back on lol.
EDIT: So I turned Steam Cloud on and progress on those two expansions was lost again. This is so strange. How does it know I finished one mission in China campaign then? Did it take data from Microsoft servers? (I am logged in Xbox in AoE). Do I need Steam Cloud at all in the game? I think I can turn it off for just one game.
EDIT 2: ChatGPT says campaign progress is stored on Microsoft servers and you don’t need Steam Cloud. It’s possible that by just turning Steam Cloud off all progress can be restored for those affected (provided you were logged in Microsoft account I guess). I’m gonna keep Cloud off and continue playing Three Kingdoms and see what happens.
Great to hear you got your Victors and Vanquished and Caucasus progress back! Steam’s sync logic can be a bit confusing, so here’s a step-by-step that should let you restore your Player.nfp and keep Steam Cloud on without losing it again:
What’s happening under the hood
Microsoft/Relic servers store most campaign progress (e.g. Three Kingdoms missions—but, due to an oversight, not Victors and Vanquished).
Steam Cloud holds your Player.nfp, recent savegames, hotkeys, options, etc.
When you launch AoE II DE with Cloud enabled, Steam compares its “online” copy of Player.nfp to the locally cached one, syncs them, and then overwrites the copy in your Games folder under your user profile.
Where your files live
Online Cloud copy (viewable in your browser after you log in): View Steam Cloud for AoE II DE
You should see Player.nfp with a timestamp.
Game profile folder (where AoE II DE actually reads/writes):
<UserProfile>\Games\Age of Empires 2 DE\<long-number-folder>\profile\Player.nfp
Foolproof restore with Cloud still enabled
Exit AoE II DE.
Disable Steam Cloud for AoE II DE:
In Steam: right-click the game → Properties → General → uncheck Enable Steam Cloud.
Backup both copies of Player.nfp:
i) The one in your Game profile folder
ii) The one in Steam’s offline Cloud folder (…\userdata\…\813780\remote\Player.nfp)
Copy your “good” Player.nfp (with Victors and Vanquished & Caucasus progress) to both locations:
i) Overwrite <UserProfile>\…\profile\Player.nfp
ii) Overwrite …\Steam\userdata\…\813780\remote\Player.nfp
Re-enable Steam Cloud in Steam’s Properties for AoE II DE.
Launch the game. Steam will detect the mismatch and prompt you to choose “Cloud” or “Local”—select “Local.”
Enjoy your restored progress, and Steam Cloud will stay in sync going forward.
This forces Steam to upload your edited file as the new cloud copy, so future launches preserve it. Let me know if you run into any more sync conflicts!
Building on our earlier discussion, I’ve now confirmed that every campaign whose progress survives a reinstall or cloud sync has a dedicated STAT_ID, whereas those that vanish (Victors & Vanquished, Thoros, Ismail, Tamar, Glory of Greece, Voices of Babylon) lack any STAT_ID entries. Here’s the precise breakdown of which STAT_IDs need to be added:
Campaign progress is retained only for those campaigns whose STAT_IDs the server actually tracks.
If a campaign’s STAT_ID is missing from the payload the game downloads, its progress won’t be regenerated in a fresh Player.nfp.
Missing STAT_IDs for Campaign Progress
(These must be added so progress is properly recorded and restored.)
Edit: I realise the note above comes off as very dry and technical. That’s intentional: I wanted to lay out the exact server-side wiring problem so the dev team can zero-in on a fix as quickly as possible. I’m not implying malice, just highlighting a configuration gap that keeps hard-won progress from being restored.
Fixing those missing STAT_IDs would be a huge quality-of-life win. Victors & Vanquished in particular demands real blood, sweat, and (sometimes) tears; watching those medals vanish after a reinstall can be crushing for players who did everything “right.” I hope the details here help pinpoint the issue so everyone’s progress, and motivation, stays intact.
i think your theory is correct, my campaign progress and gold medals of exactly those you mention (Victors & Vanquished, Thoros, Ismail, Tamar, Glory of Greece, Voices of Babylon) are the only ones that gets wiped every time i reinstall windows or manually delete the “%userprofile%\Games\Age of Empires 2 DE” folder, uninstalling the app or the game gives me no issue, it’s frustrating that after almost a year this is not fixed yet and it’s not even being tracked by the developers, thanks for the info though at least now i know it’s not just a problem at my end
Hey Tinion, is there any way to erase the campaign progress from the Relic servers? I’d like to start a fresh playthrough of everything. I can delete my Player.nfp and go offline so everything’s reset like I want, and I can do the cloud sync you posted and choose “local”, but when I start the game all the campaign medals are back.
Is there a way to (hex)edit the Player.nfp to reset everything, or do you know if I can block the domains/IP addresses of the servers that sync my campaigns back again? Or push something to the API that wipes my past progress?
P.S. computer science student here too, happy to follow technical instructions.
Personally, I would start by blocking aoe-api.worldsedgelink.com and its IP (currently 20.85.219.61) altogether; if that works, you can then try blocking more selectively.
And yes, you can push data to the API – basically any stat. I wouldn’t recommend that, at least not without a green light from the dev team, as modifying your stats might violate the terms of use. For API read/write examples, see https://wiki.librematch.org/. While resetting campaign progress probably wouldn’t count as cheating, you could set other stats that make your profile publicly look more “successful”, so I can’t provide precise instructions here.
Good luck! And if none of that helps, maybe consider going old-school: a pen-and-paper system, or even programming your own campaign progress tracker, could be a fun side project.
GAME INFORMATION
Missing STAT_IDs for Campaign Progress