Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition News

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With the end of the year approaching fast, the winter festivities are kicking off with a familiar celebration in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition! We've prepared an avalanche of new, winter-themed goodies—available alongside last year's rewards—for you to unlock and enjoy over the next month. All of these presents are yours to open as a part of the WINTER FESTIVAL EVENT!

• Unlock three new Winter-Themed Profile Icons!
• Unlock the Snowman-At-Arms mod to replace your Man-At-Arms with festive snowmen! ⛄⛄⛄
  
• Unlock Snowman Decorations for your Town Center!
  
• Unlock Sparkling Winter Bells to replace Gold deposits!

Starting TODAY through JANUARY 1st, complete the in-game tasks within the time limit to unlock exclusive goodies! Here are the challenges available over the next two weeks:

🎯 Sign into Xbox Live.
🏆 Unlocks the Viking Berserker profile icon.
💾 *Required* if you want to save any rewards unlocked during the event!

Each of the following challenges must be unlocked in order and on separate days:

🔒 Play any Campaign mission and receive a medal.
🧱 [Mod] Unlocks Town Center Snowman Decorations.

🔒 Defeat an AI at any difficulty in Skirmish.
🏆 Unlocks the Two-Handed-Snowman profile icon.

🔒 Play any standard game.
🧱 [Mod] Unlocks the Snowman-At-Arms, a visual replacement for the man-at-arms.

🔒 Defeat an AI at Standard or higher difficulty in Skirmish.
🏆 Unlocks the Present Onager profile icon.

🔒 Play The Art of War mission “Booming” and receive a medal. 
🧱 [Mod] Gold Mine visuals replaced by Piles of Bells. 

In addition to this year's rewards, all of last year's rewards are available for you to keep! 2019's profile icons are already in your icon library to select and show off your festive holiday spirit, and the 2019 Winter Celebration Mod can be found and downloaded in the Age mod database!




Remember: if you sign in to Xbox Live during the event, you’ll get to keep all of the mods and profile icons you’ve achieved! Sign in, earn your rewards, and enjoy the winter-themed event!

We hope you enjoy the Winter Festival Event! And don’t forget to sign into Xbox Live to ensure you keep everything you unlock!

—The Age of Empires Team

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Here is the latest Ranked Map Rotation as determined by the developer picks and community vote. For the next two weeks, you’ll be able to pick from the new set of maps listed below!

Map pools as of: 6p Pacific (9p ET / 20:00 UTC / 22:00 CEST) on Tuesday, December 01 to Tuesday, December 15

This week's 1v1 Community Map Picks are in BOLD.

This week's TG Community Map Picks are in BOLD.

It’s that time again! Visit the official Age of Empires forum to vote for your Ranked map pool for the next two weeks.

[h3]1v1 Random Maps[/h3]
✔ ARABIA
✔ ARENA
✔ MIGRATION
✔ SERENGETI

[h3]Team Games[/h3]
✔ ARABIA
✔ ARENA
✔ BLACK FOREST
✔ GHOST LAKE
✔ ISLANDS
✔ MEGARANDOM

To participate in the community ranked map pool vote, you will need to login to the official Age forum using your free Microsoft account. Then, click the images below to jump to this week’s polls.

:alertalert: Polls are open until NOON Pacific on Sunday, November 29 (or 3:00p Eastern / 19:00 UTC), so be sure to cast your vote and check back to see which maps emerge victorious!

Pick up Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition for 50% off during the Steam Autumn Sale.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/813780/

[h3]🕙 Offer ends Tuesday, December 1 @ 10AM Pacific Time[/h3]

[h2]ːGimmeAnAː OTHER FRANCHISE DEALS[/h2]
[hr][/hr]Here are deals on other titles in the Age of Empires franchise. Note that these prices are only available now through the end of the sale!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1017900/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/933110/
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New update coming in 4…3…2…1…0!

Today’s hotfix introduces several critical fixes to issues that cropped up after the November Anniversary Update. Most notably, it brings numerous stability improvements and crash fixes to the game, additional menu narration (when enabled) for the new UI areas of the game, the implementation of missing translations for several languages, and changes which address some clever exploits and issues uncovered in the Battle Royale game mode.

As always, these are based on feedback from the community, so don’t stop now; visit the forum and let us know what you’d like to see next!

💬 DISCUSS: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Forum
🗣 JOIN: The Age of Empires Official Discord

We’ll be watching for feedback even as the World’s Edge team breaks for the American holiday! We hope you enjoy the hotfix and everything the November Update was meant to offer! 🖤

—The Age of Empires Team

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[h3]Stability & Performance[/h3]

• Implemented fixes for the situation where a player experiencing a performance spike in later stages of the game would cause degradation in animation smoothness for the remainder of the match. Note that this does not fix all lag issues everywhere: as individual PC performance, match settings (i.e. high pop, high participant games), and the random turmoil of internet gremlins can still have an adverse affect on the playability of the game.
  
• The game will no longer crash if the ranked queue pops while viewing the tech tree.
  
• Likewise, the game will no longer black-screen if a match drops or fails to connect while viewing the tech tree.
  
• The game UI no longer freezes when the “Failed to Join Match” modal pops while the Select Civilization menu is open.
  
• The game UI no longer freezes when the the UGC warning appears while the Select Civilization menu is open.
  
• Fixed an issue which could cause the game to hard-lock when a player disconnected on the victory or defeat screen.
  
• Fixed an uncommon crash when queuing to join a Battle Royale Quick Play game.
  
• Implemented several additional fixes for uncommon crashes.

[h3]UI[/h3]

• Added the new Battle Royale option to the Game Mode filter in the Lobby Browser.
  
• Halved the animation time of the new UI windows and confirmation prompts within the game.
  
• Unique Unit icons have been added to each civ on the Select Civilization screen playing in non-English languages.
  
• Fixed an issue where using the arrow keys or tab to cycle through the Select Civilization menu would fail to update the details of the currently-selected civilization.
  
• Fixed an issue where the “Lobby Full” popup would constantly reappear after inviting a user to a lobby that subsequently fills.
  
• Fixed an issue which could prevent a player’s selected civilization from showing up on the match loading screen.

[h3]Settings[/h3]

• Added menu narration to the tooltip text for each civilization on the Select Civilization screen.
  
• Added menu narration to the new Quick Play screen elements.
  
• Added menu narration to the Respond buttons in the Pending Invitations modal.
  
• Added menu narration to the Accept and Decline buttons in the Clan Requests menu.
  
• Added menu narration to the Close (X) button on the Yes/No dialogue that appears when exiting the queue.
  
• The narrator now reads the title and tooltips of the Settings Cog, Invites, and Profile UI elements on the home screen.

• Monks can no longer be used to cheat death in the Battle Royale game mode.
  
• Fixed an issue where the object named “Invisible object that keeps player alive” would, contrary to its purpose, slowly inflict death upon nearby player units and buildings. This affected a number of custom maps and scenarios.
  
• Fixed a bug where attempting to remove a technology from the global queue would result in units being removed instead.

[h3]Art of War[/h3]

• On timed missions, the bronze medal timer is now properly displayed when the silver medal timer expires.

[h3]Burmese[/h3]
▶︎ UNITS

• Arambai: The increased reload time added in the November Update now only applies to non-elite Arambai, as intended. So, the reload time of Elite Arambai is 2.0 and 2.2 for non-elite Arambai.

• Fixed an issue which could prevent game invitations from displaying properly for the receiving user.
  
• Restored games will now populate the invite list with the players that were in the original game rather than the full list of players who cannot join the game.
  
• Advanced game settings will no longer be displayed and configurable in Restored Game lobbies.

• Added the missing translation text for an objective in The Falcon’s Nest (Pachacuti 4) scenario.
  
• Spanish (ES-ES, ES-MX): Corrected several percentage numbers which displayed the incorrect values when using the Spanish or Latin American Spanish languages.
  
• French (FR-FR): Updated the description of the Saracen archer bonus to clarify that it affects only archers, not cavalry archers.
  
• German (DE-DE): Updated the Magyar civ description to clarify that a Blacksmith is not needed to benefit from the free Forging, Iron Casting, and Blast Furnace technologies.

• SHIFT+Clicking the Priority Up and Priority Down buttons will now, once again, allow you to quickly prioritize the selected mods as the highest and lowest priority, respectively.

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As always, we are continuing to track issues reported by the community for future updates. Here is a brief update from our Production team regarding some of what is still in the works:

• Scenario Editor Crash: There is an issue being tracked which can result in the Scenario Editor crash when generating a map multiple times. A fix is being worked on and will be implemented in a future, major update when it has been tested and approved.
  
• All previous notes from the November Update continue to be relevant as we prepare the next official build. Keep an eye on the forums, official social channels, and the support site for the latest details!

[h3]:alertalert: DISCLAIMER[/h3]This list is subject to change and should not be considered a comprehensive list of all the known issues we’re tracking. The above is to inform you of the team’s current priorities, which will change as other issues arise or take precedence.

For the latest updates and announcements, please visit our social channels.

Please note that custom mods may not be compatible with the latest game update. If you are experiencing issues launching or playing the game after downloading the new build, try disabling your installed mods before trying again.

Still having trouble? Visit our support page!