Earlier today, we discussed the update that recently hit the Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition servers, focusing on the new autoscouting feature that the developers added to help new players learning the game. However, there’s much, much more to the patch, including game stability and performance improvements, gameplay changes, and balance changes to multiple civilizations.
To be clear, this update is massive. We’ll do our best to provide a comprehensive TL;DR, but it’s probably a good idea to read through the entire patch notes before you jump into an online match.
Welcome, one and all, to the massive FEBRUARY UPDATE for #AoE2DE! It may be a short month, but we’ve taken advantage of every day to put together a package of changes and improvements to the game!
👉 Read about Patch 35584 right here: https://t.co/F1wFYGO9nU pic.twitter.com/KlRj3r6oKB
— Age of Empires (@AgeOfEmpires) February 27, 2020
The game stability fixes are pretty general. A variety of issues have been fixed causing crashing and stuttering, with eight fixes mentioned in all. Under performance, the devs applied fixes to address disconnects in multiplayer, improve the allocation of RAM, and improve the performance of the Enhanced Graphics Pack dlc.
There are fifteen changes under gameplay all in all. Mangonels will no longer “slide” in combat, which was causing them to fire in directions they weren’t facing. Defensive structures prioritize enemy units over buildings now unless specifically told not to. Villagers will also no longer drop resources once assigned to a new resource, maintaining them until they begin the new task. Gate rotation functionality has been altered as well. There are a few other small changes, such as boar pathing and waypoint adjustments, but these seem to be the most important.
Speaking on balance changes, we’ll place these Civilization changes here in their entirety:
- Genitour: Now receive +1 pierce armor.
- Infantry are now 35% cheaper in all Ages. This bonus previously applied following the Feudal Age.
- The Khmer’s unique farming bonus is now disabled in Full Tech Tree games.
- Hunters: Reduced their work speed from 50% to 40%.
- Now have access to the Steppe Lancer and Elite Steppe Lancer units.
- All Steppe Lancers also benefit from the +30% HP bonus enjoyed by Mongol horsemen.
- Increased the cost of researching the Kamandaran technology from 200 food, 200 gold to 400 food, 300 gold.
- Feitoria: Increased the resources generated per second from 0.8 food, 0.8 wood, 0.45 gold, 0.25 stone to 1.6 food, 1.0 wood, 0.7 gold, 0.3 stone.
- Now have access to the Halberdier unit.
- As a civilization bonus, Farms are now 40% cheaper (was 33%).
- Starting in the Castle Age, Barracks units gain +1 armor.
- Economic upgrades no longer cost wood.
It’s amazing to see the Vietnamese civilization finally getting a buff, as they feel a bit underwhelming at times. Seeing the addition of Halberdier to the Tatars may help them to veer away from cavalry builds. All in all, it seems like most of these are buffs, with the exception of the Persian change nearly doubling the cost of Kamandaran. With all these buffs, it’ll be interesting to see how gameplay is affected and which civilizations rise to prominence over others more often now.
