Is anyone else getting these weird pixelations or is my graphics card dying 
?
time to upgrade the PC
The bug itself is the same one as the next post below.
Does everything else work fine for you? See if you can run the in-game Benchmark (upper right gear button ā select āOptionsā ā āRanked Benchmark Testā) or play the main game without issue.
Additionally, you can try installing the No Embers mod (either subscribe to it on the website, or in-game gear button ā āModsā ā search for āno embersā), and see if that changes anything.
The basic reason you are seeing this, is because you are using a 16:10 monitor (1920x1200 resolution).
The devs of AoE2DE have only seriously accounted for how the game works in the aspect ratio range from 16:9 to 21:9. Its menu backgrounds are generally designed for this: their main āmeaningfulā content is concentrated in the 16:9 center, but have borders that extend into the 21:9 space.
Another quirk of its programming is that it always has a layer of āin-gameā graphics running, even when you have only just launched it. So when the screen is not covered by a menu background image, you can see the in-game graphics hiding āunderā its cover poking through.
Itās normal to see the game looking like this after having started a game (which puts fog on the āin-gameā layer):
Those are ingame particles like flames etc.
It is probably the same issue as the one I reported a while age: