Update 36906 is a patch in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, released on April 29, 2020.
Game stability[]
- Fixed various crashes which could be triggered when spectating games.
- Fixed various one-off crashes.
Performance[]
- The game client will no longer download additional localized versions of the The Art of War videos other than the selected language and English (as a backup). Excess variants have been removed, reducing the total size of the game's installation by ~5GB.
Gameplay[]
- Fixed an issue where HD AI could not be selected as the AI Difficulty when using any language other than English.
- Added new hotkeys to select all Markets, all Blacksmiths, and all Universities.
- Added a new "Dynamic Grid" option to the setting menu. This allows players to customize the shade and visual intensity of the grid that shows up in-game, as well as the circumstances under which it is displayed—such as when placing buildings, ordering ranged units, etc.
- Fixed an issue where Organ Guns were not always classified as siege weapons, thus allowing them to be converted without the Redemption technology.
- Recorded games no longer break as soon as a player quits, drops, crashes, or otherwise departs from a match.
- Implemented additional tracking and safeguards to defend against cheat programs.
Chat Filtration[]
- Updated the profanity filter to be far less restrictive of normal and contextual (i.e. Age of Empires-specific) chat.
Achievements[]
- The Age of Empires achievement — which requires players to win a match with every civilization — no longer requires players to also win with the "Random" civilization option.
- The Pitched Battle achievement is now correctly awarded when players complete 'The Field of Blood' mission (in the Pachacuti campaign) without constructing walls.
Civilization balance[]
General[]
- The civilization bonuses which provide additional villagers to the Chinese and Mayans and a bonus llama to the Incas have been disabled in the Empire Wars game mode.
- Fishermen can now drop food they've collected at Docks.
- Fire Galley: Increased the training time from 60 to 65 seconds.
- Keshik [Standard & Elite]: Converted Keshiks now properly generate gold for their new overlords.
Bulgarians[]
- Can no longer research and train Paladins.
- The Stirrups technology now affects all cavalry units, not just Light Cavalry and Konniks.
Ethiopians[]
- Torsion Engines: Increased the width of upgraded Scorpion projectiles from 0.3 to 0.5 tiles.
Goths[]
- Now receive the Loom technology as a civilization bonus.
Indians[]
- As a civilization bonus, Fishermen now work 10% faster rather than working 15% faster and carrying +15 food.
Italians[]
- Fishing Ships now correctly cost -15% wood (instead of -15 wood). This effectively raises the cost from 60 to 64 wood.
Khmer[]
- Reduced the work rate of Farmers by 3%.
- Can no longer train Bombard Cannons.
Lithuanians[]
- Leitis [Standard & Elite]: Adjusted the training cost from 50 food, 80 gold to 70 food, 50 gold.
- Leitis: Reduced training time from 23 to 20 seconds.
- Elite Leitis: Reduced training time from 20 to 18 seconds.
- Tower Shields: Reduced the cost to research from 800 to 500 food.
- Tower Shields: Increased the bonus pierce armor provided to Spearmen and Skirmishers from +1 to +2.
Malay[]
- Harbors now (properly) receive the benefits of Chemistry, Murder Holes, and Heated Shot when Thalassocracy is researched before any of these technologies.
Persians[]
- Removed the bonus to the work speed of Town Centers and Docks in the Dark Age. They now work: 10% faster → 15% faster → 20% faster
Slavs[]
- Boyar [Standard & Elite]: Reduced speed from 1.4 to 1.3. Increased pierce armor by +1.
Tatars[]
- Flaming Camels now benefit from the +5 attack vs. buildings bonus provided by an Indian ally.
Teutons[]
- As a civilization bonus, Barracks and Stable units now receive a +1 melee armor bonus (+2 total) in the Castle and Imperial Age.
- Teutonic Knight: Increased speed from 0.7 to 0.8.
Random maps[]
General[]
- Starting villagers and herdable animals should no longer spawn on the same tile.
- Reduced the number of wolves on all maps where they spawn.
- Distant cows and buffalo no longer appear in a single group on standard maps. They are now split into two groups comprised of two and one animal.
The elevation points have been revised and re-balanced on the following maps:
- Arabia
- Baltic
- Budapest
- Cenotes
- City of Lakes
- Coastal
- Continental
- Crater Lake
- Enemy Archipelago
- Farout
- Fortress
- Four Lakes
- Ghost Lake
- Gold Rush (Partially)
- Hideout
- Highland
- Hill Fort
- InnerCircle
- Journey South
- JungleLanes
- Lombardia
- Mediterranean
- Migration
- Mongolia
- MotherLand
- Nomad
- Oasis
- OpenPlains
- Ring of Water
- Rivers
- Scandinavia
- Socotra
- Serengeti
- SnakePit
- Team Islands
- The Eye
- Valley
- YingYang
- Yucatan
Maps[]
Acropolis[]
- Fixed a rare bug where the starting stone nodes could fail to spawn.
- Separated the original 7-tile gold group into one 4-tile and one 3-tile gold group.
- Separated the original 5-tile stone group into one 3-tile and one 2-tile stone group.
- The additional gold and stone nodes located in the lowlands are now more evenly distributed between players.
- Relic spawns have also been adjusted for balance.
- Forest generation has been adjusted for balance.
- Adjusted the spawn locations of distant huntable animals to provide a better balance between all players.
- The upper edges of the rocky slopes have been modified so buildings can be constructed more easily.
- Additional seasons have been added for greater variety in the map.
Alpine Lakes[]
- Forage bushes have been added to improve food production on the map.
- Additional lakes have frozen over in effort to balance the availability of map resources.
- The distribution of gold and stone nodes has been updated for 1v1 play.
Golden Swamp[]
- Four forage bushes will now spawn for each player.
- Reduced the density of fish nodes throughout the map.
- Re-balanced the node spawns on the central island when playing on a 3-player map.
Hideout[]
- Fixed an issue where a player could sometimes spawn too deep in the forest.
- Forage Bushes should no longer grow where they block gates.
- Extra gold and stone nodes have been adjusted for balance.
Hill Fort[]
- Player starting locations are now spaced more consistently from each other, as well as where they begin in the map.
- All huntable animals now appear consistently within the walls.
- Bases are now always surrounded by Fortified Palisade Walls.
Migration[]
- Reduced the number of cliffs spawned throughout the map.
- Fixed a bug where the starting resource nodes would occasionally fail to spawn.
Mountain Ridge[]
- Increased the number of gold nodes and Ibex that spawn on the mountaintop.
- Terrain unsuitable for buildings has been moved further from the starting base spawns.
- Starting gold clusters have been increased to 6 and 4 tiles, respectively.
- Starting stone clusters have been decreased from 4 to 3 tiles.
- Player gold and stone nodes spawn closer to their starting bases.
Nile Delta[]
- Players now start with a Transport Ship.
- The outer lands have been slightly enlarged and now spawn with mild elevation levels.
Serengeti[]
- Forests have been re-balanced to not only scale with the map size, but to ensure that all players start with forests nearby.
- Increased the number of starting gold clusters from 2 to 3. (The third gold cluster can be found further away from the player's base.)
- Far gold has been split into smaller clusters with 2 tiles per group.
- Reduced the total area covered by quicksand, making it easier to build on the map.
- Updated nearby huntable animals to include 5 Zebras and 3 Ostriches per player.
- Lakes have been adjusted to avoid spawning in players' starting areas.
- Elevation has been generally reduced to provide more tactical flexibility.
Other[]
- Bogland: "Bogland" terrain—which is unsuitable for buildings—no longer appears within each player's immediate vicinity.
- Lombardia: Fixed a rare bug where one of the starting Town Centers could appear on the edge of the map.
- Mediterranean: Extra sheep no longer appear when resources are set to ultra or infinite.
Random Map Scripting[]
- Maps using resource_delta will now accurately display HP bars over resources.
- Increased the limit of objects and lands that can be generated through RMS from 99 to 100,000.
- Added enable_balanced_elevation command to improve hill generation in Random Map Scripts.
- Added effect_amount to modify resource values (such a starting resources) through RMS.
Lobbies and matchmaking[]
General[]
- If the Team Together setting is enabled, Team Positions will now randomly choose whether each team is placed in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction with the rest of their team. This is done regardless of how other teams are placed on the battlefield.
- Players are now notified when a match is found if they are browsing the tech tree while matchmaking.
- Increased the spectator delay for ranked games to 2 minutes.
- Lobbies that are swapped from private to public visibility after creation will now properly display in the lobby browser.
- The "No games found" message no longer misinforms players when the Lobby Browser is still loading the list of available games.
- Fixed an issue where custom maps were occasionally not selectable when setting up a game.
- Fixed an issue where the Civilization button would become unavailable after leaving a ranked match
- Fixed a rare issue where a game lobby would not update properly if a player entered and then left the lobby.
- Implemented improvements to how ranked teams are formed. When searching for a match as a pre-made team, the system was inadvertently using the sum rather than the average rating of all party members. This resulted in the system creating imbalanced matches.
- Updated the lobby list to display more than 50 game lobbies.
Audio[]
- Fixed a rare issue where in-game sounds would stop playing for some users after playing several consecutive matches without restarting the client.
AI[]
Pathfinding[]
- Units no longer stutter-step when chasing other units.
- Fixed an issue where lumberjacks would sometimes choose the (much longer) path less traveled when moving to chop a tree.
- Fixed a rare issue where large groups of units would scatter when disturbed after being idle for a long period of time.
Scripting[]
- up-modify-group-flag InConstOn now works with values greater than 1.
- object-data-progress-type now returns 0 if no action is currently being performed.
- Added object-data-full-distance, object-data-tile-position and object-data-tile-inverse.
UI[]
- Units, buildings, and technologies that are not yet available to research or train are now displayed with a darkened icon in the command panel (This new UI feature can be enabled or disabled in the game settings.)
- Building and unit icons will now reflect their player color instead of always appearing as blue.
- The Market sell and buy buttons will now update automatically as resource quantities change.
- The Flaming Camel button no longer conflicts with the "Go back to work" button in the Castle.
- Swapping between players while watching a recorded game no longer resets the map visibility setting.
- Spectator Mode: Players are now ordered by teams and then by their player name in the spectator status area rather than by score. This should make it easier to track what's happening in large team games—where score-based sorting constantly rearranges the UI.
Modding[]
- Color Correction mods are now supported.
- Fixed an issue where some modded campaigns would not display their title and/or mission icons as intended.
Scenario Editor[]
- Making changes to the terrain/elevation of a map no longer causes performance hitches on larger maps.
- The Change Ownership trigger now correctly resets a Wonder countdown timer.
