We’ve got a PUP for March! Below are the patch notes as they are on Steam
Patch Notes
GAME
Stability & Performance
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Fixed a crash which could occur when loading a saved scenario game.
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Fixed a desync that can occasionally occur with ranged unit animations on different framerates.
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Fixed a crash which would occur when a player joins a lobby and the host adds an AI
Graphics
- Fish Traps now display outlines when visually obstructed by buildings.
Audio
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The correct music track now plays for Romans, Armenians and Georgians when having them selected in History section.
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Horse and Hunnic Horse move sounds no longer play at the edge of the map.
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Background music now correctly loops in Return of Rome campaign menu.
UI
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Updated the checkbox graphics for main and secondary objectives.
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The availability/upgrade level bars in technology tree preview now have more distinguishable colors.
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Relics no longer have armor display on their UI with Extended Unit Stats enabled.
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Javelina in Return of Rome now has correct icon.
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Pending Invitations screen no longer displays ‘Create Warrior Priest’ text instead of ‘Name’.
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The HUD will no longer display units garrisoned in transports if many land units are simultaneously selected.
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The names of map size options now display their base dimension.
Hotkeys
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Ungarrison hotkey now consistently works for Rams when having several garrisoned and ungarrisoned Rams selected together.
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Convert hotkey for military units now functions correctly.
Multiplayer
- The match will no longer terminate for all players when one player in a game with more than two players goes out of sync - only the desynced player will be dropped.
Xbox
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Changed UI Crossplay checkbox to be un-interactable if the cross-network play is blocked in the Xbox privacy settings.
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Create lobby submenu now shouldn’t remain open if the player is disconnected after hosting game and before lobby browser is opened.
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When the Minimap Camera Lock Behavior is set to Fast Pan the [Y] display button on the minimap is no longer shown.
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The [Y] Quick Command does no longer appear when you try to build, but cannot afford a Lumber Camp using the site based radial menu.
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Conversion related warning messages about Atonement and Redemption are now shown in the notification area on the left on Xbox.
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Fortified Church is now shown correctly as age-up requirement for Armenians and Georgians in the Xbox version when using a controller.
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University now has the correct icon in the age-up requirement display.
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The Set Gather Point command is no longer shown in the Donjon’s radial menu on Xbox when using a controller.
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Fixed an issue on Xbox where “ Treason” was not available in the Castle’s radial menu in the Regicide game mode.
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Fixed an issue on Xbox where the [LT] button icon was not shown at the bottom of the Spectator Mode section in the Help Index.
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Fixed an issue where setting a hotkey for Delete Unit command wasn’t working correctly.
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Buildings can now be commanded to attack enemy buildings.
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Fixed an issue on Xbox where the game would crash when trying to select a “Granary”-object with Extended Unit Stats turned on.
GAMEPLAY
General
- Added a new Drop Off Resources command for villagers and fishing ships. It makes the units take the resources they are carrying to the nearest drop-off building and return to work right away.
- Added a new Seek Shelter command for villagers. The behavior is similar to town bell but only the selected villagers will seek to garrison into nearby buildings. This new feature is only supported on PC for now, Xbox will be supported soon.
(I actually wanted to add the respective button icon, but get an error for unappropriate content here.)
- Added a new All Back to Work command for garrisonable buildings. The command sends back to work all garrisoned villagers from this building and all nearby buildings within 25 tiles range (same range as for town bell). This new feature is only supported on PC for now, Xbox will be supported soon.
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Units in line formation will only regroup into a column after a move or attack move command of more than 30 tiles, instead of 10 tiles previously. Patrol command keeps its previous behavior of always forming a column, regardless of distance.
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Upon ringing town bell, villages that have no available garrison slot for them will still walk to the nearest garrisonable building and stay idle. Deactivating the town bell or using all back to work command will send these villagers back to their tasks.
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When tasking a group of units to garrison into a siege unit or a Transport Ship, units will automatically spread themselves out to garrison into nearby siege or transports of the same type. The old behavior of only garrisoning into the single target is now controlled by holding Ctrl when clicking on the garrison target.
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Open UnitSpread.gif
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Drag selection when holding down Alt with Selection Modifier Hotkeys setting enabled will no longer select Mule Carts and herdable animals. Now only civilian unit classes are selected (villagers, fishing ships, trade units). Herdables can still be selected when there are no civilian units in selection, though.
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Healing a damaged Mule Cart by garrisoning it into a building no longer costs resources.
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Siege weapons now do full damage within the radius of a projectile instead of at the center point only.
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Town Centers will hit closer targets more reliably now.
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Drop Relic button and hotkey are now available when having Monks and Monks with Relics selected together. Pressing the button or hotkey will make one of the Monks drop the Relic.
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We made the following cheat codes available for all players:
- grab your pitchforks: Turns all of the player’s Villagers into Flemish Militia (“Women of History” event).
- my cpu can handle it: The player’s population cap increased to 1,000 (“Jolly Co-operation” event).
- flemish reformation: Transforms all villagers into monks.
Fixes
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Researching Spies technology as Chinese no longer substracts more resources than intended.
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Warrior Priests no longer stop automatically healing other units after being tasked in a group.
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Fixed an issue where Monks were unable to put the relic into a Monastery when using the command queue to pick the relic up with the New Waypoint Behaviour toggled off.
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Placing a building foundation on top of a Boar-like animal no longer prevents it from returning to its original location.
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Researching times of queued technologies are now correctly considered for splitting into the bulding with the shortest queue when queueing technologies from several selected buildings.
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Villagers will no longer attack other violent huntable animals nearby when they can’t reach the one they’re specifically tasked to.
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Description of “Hoardings” changed to: “Strengthens Castles, Kreposts, and Donjons by providing +1000 hit points.”
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Ranged units can no longer get stuck in their firing animation and will fire continuously.
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Right-clicking a target multiple times will no longer hinder ranged units from attacking the target as expected.
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Fishing Ships will no longer become idle when finishing constructing a Fish Trap together with a Villager.
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Fixed an issue where standing units would re-group into formation every time when a unit leaves the group.
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Vertical and horizontal gate foundations can no longer get destroyed in one hit when their corner parts are hit with splash damage.
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Stone Gate foundations no longer receive an incorrect HP increase when advancing to Castle Age.
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Fixed an issue where Mangonels would not automatically attack buildings at max range.
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All monks will now lose their faith when a group of monks completes a conversion without “Theocracy” researched.
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Fixed an issue where player could get the same civilization multiple times in a row when playing with random civilzations preferred in the ranked/quick match queue.
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Fixed a legacy issue where units with multiple-projectile volleys (such as Chu Ko Nu), when switched from one attack target to another amidst the attack, would result in loss of damage due to not correctly applying primary projectile damage on the new target.
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Fixed an issue where defensive structures such as Castles could output more damage than intended when switching targets.
Campaign
General
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Changed population limits for the player in several scenarios to match the intended values:
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Le Loi 6: ‘The Final Fortress’: 250 instead of 200.
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Sundjata 2: ‘The Sting of the Scorpion’: 150 instead of 200.
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Yodit 2: ‘The Right Partner’: 150 instead of 200.
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Yodit 5: ‘Welcome Home’: 125 instead of 150.
Campaign Missions
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Almeida 3: ‘Ruins of Empires’: The Bantu will now spawn new forces only as long as they are not defeated.
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Attila 1: ‘The Scourge of God’: The game continues as intended if the player makes the boar attack Bleda but leaves the forest at the same time.
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Bari 2: ‘The Rebellion of Melus’: Dromons are now disabled for the player.
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Bayinnaung 5: ‘The Old Tiger’: Defeating South Rakhine no longer also defeats West Rakhine.
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El Cid 2: ‘The Enemy of my Enemy’: All Toledo villagers leave the map and no longer get stuck on other units.
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Historical Battles: ‘Manzikert’: The player no longer has Pavilions the enemy cannot access.
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Joan of Arc 2: ‘The Maid of Orleans’: Orleans no longer resigns at the game start.
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Montezuma 3: ‘Quetzalcoatl’: Several changes to make achievement “Hot & Spicy” easier to complete:
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Tabasco defends more intelligently - assigns repairers to its TC when it has low HP.
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Spanish attack with lower amount of units on lower difficulties.
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Cannon galleons are held back until 200/275/350 seconds on standard/moderate/hard difficulty.
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The player starts with slightly more food and gold.
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Thoros 2: ‘The Emperor’s Revenge’: On Console, player is no longer able to use Radial Menu during the initial objective.
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Voices of Babylon 1: ‘The Holy Man’: The Lion that is tasked to hunt the Gazelle in the beginning of the mission will no longer fall idle before the Gazelle is dead.
Balance Changes
Georgians
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No longer start the game with a -50 food penalty.
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Cavalry regenerates 5/10/15 HP per minute in Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age civilization bonus changed → Cavalry regenerates 15% HP per minute.
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(Elite) Monaspa train time increased from 11 seconds → 14 seconds.
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(Elite) Monaspa nearby unit requirement for additional attack increased from 5 units → 7 units.
Incas
- Fixed a bug where the food discount wasn’t resulting in correct cost values for Eagle Warriors and Skirmisher-line (new food costs: 21 in Feudal Age, 20 in Castle Age, 19 in Imperial Age).
Italians
- Genoese Crossbowman train time decreased from 18 seconds → 14 seconds.
Tatars
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Flaming Camel no longer requires Timurid Siegecraft to be trained at Castles but now becomes instantly available at the Siege Workshop when reaching the Imperial Age
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Flaming Camel train time increased from 20 seconds → 30 seconds
RANDOM MAPS
General
- Added MORE_MAP_SIZES launch parameter to unlock new map sizes in Editor and Lobbies: Miniature [80], Massive [276], Enormous [300], Colossal [320], Incredible [360], Monstrous [400]. Note that some standard random maps may not correctly support the new map sizes yet.
LOBBIES AND MATCHMAKING
General
- Fixed an issue where the lobby would not be private after selecting “Visibility: Private” when creating a lobby.
AI
General
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AIs will no longer idle a villager when attempting to repair siege weapons.
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AI now requires at least one non-allied player in the game to resign.
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Advanced players now have the option to use hidden taunt 205 to induce the AI to resign earlier.
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Extreme AI: AI will now consider Fortified Churches and Donjons a threat and either retreat or attempt to avoid them in the early stage of the game.
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DE, CD, and HD AIs now obtain Devotion in appropriate situations.
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Fixed a bug where the scout would inappropriately retreat to the town center or guard a villager when playing as Georgians in certain situations.
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Extreme AI: When group micro is active and the AI has many spears against a scout rush, some of these spears will be sent to guard camps in defensive stance instead of supporting the main army.
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Extreme AI: Fixed some rare bugs where the AI would idle its units when group micro is active.
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Fixed a rare bug where the AI would inappropriately use advanced scout micro on lower difficulties.
Pathfinding
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Military units will now more readily attack a specific right-clicked unit instead of freezing or attacking an alternate unit. However, units will still attack alternate units as usual if they are part of a large group or the intended target is impossible to reach.
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When a right click attack command is sent to a unit that is temporarily not possible to path to, units on stand ground will attempt to attack the selected target for longer before attempting to switch to another target.
Scripting
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sn-gold-dropsite-distance now works as intended, allowing AIs to choose whether to place their first camp at gold or stone.
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The editor can now load AIs from all file locations.
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Fixed an issue where the game would prefer loading AIs from one location when “Test Scenario” was pressed and preferring another when the scenario was packed into a campaign.
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A default name for a unit line can now be added to unitlines.json.
MODDING
General
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Added the tool for building widgetui atlases to Tools_Builds folder. It can be used by executing build_all_atlases.ps1 script located in widgetui folder (which can be edited to generate only specific atlases). The tool will build an atlas with the textures defined in AtlasDef of the atlas in materials.json. The correct coordinates of textures in the atlas will be set in materials.json during the atlas generation.
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Added “UnlockScenarios” parameter for campaign layout json files. Setting this parameter to true will immediately allow access to all scenarios in the campaign, opposed to allowing to access the next scenario only after the previous scenario is won.
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Fixed an issue where new unit lines with IDs outside of the unit line ID range in the official unitlines.json were not functioning. Now unit lines can have any ID from -399 to -200.
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Unit lines for buildings now use “Building” parameter in unitlines.json.
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Added “Identifier” parameter in unitlines.json for defining AI constants for unit lines.
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Added “unique_unit_line” for each civilization in civilizations.json.
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Missing civilization settings (such as the new “unique_unit_line” field) in a modded civilizations.json file will now automatically fallback to the unmodified civilizations.json fields for the respective civilization, as long as the civilization’s data name matches. This makes it possible to only override certain parameters of a civilization.
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Directed blast damage mode (Blast Attack level flag 128) can now work with substraction type blast damage.
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Power up task no longer allows invalid right click tasking of power up-providing buildings to the object IDs specified in the task.
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Resources tracking player stats (such as P1 Kills, Razed by P3, etc.) now support Gaia, and have been relocated to the 300-599 range. Any existing references in older Scenario Triggers will update automatically, and the XS Constants for such resources will use new values.
Scenario Editor
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The game can now boot directly into the Scenario Editor if the EDITOR launch parameter is specified. This can be combined with other parameters (e.g. EDITOR LAUNCH_GAME_VARIANT=AOE1).
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Technologies modified by a “Change Technology Cost” trigger effect can no longer be researched when not having enough resources.
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Fixed the frame count for Statue (Civilization) object, allowing to access previously inaccessible statue variations.
XS Scripting
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The XS error checker now checks for a greater variety of syntax errors, and the level of detail in error messages has been increased.
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The x256tech script has been updated to its final version, and a variant called x9tech is now available.
It also comes with a new challenge scenario called “The Siege”:
New Limited-time Scenario: The Siege
Introducing The Siege, a new multiplayer limited-time scenario! Play 2v2, co-op vs AI, or solo vs AI as the Turks or Byzantines at the epic 1453 Siege of Constantinople.
Turks must build up their army to take the Monument before time runs out. Byzantines have defenses but limited resources to hold on as long as they can. Both sides do battle over the massive and historically-inspired city of Constantinople.
Play against other players, team up against the AI, or play solo as either side of the battle.
And if you love The Siege, the new Victors and Vanquished expansion includes two solo scenarios that expand on the battle with voice acting, more objectives, scripted events, and more!
