Biggest AOE 2 DE PUP changes

[Tocaraca]

Incas and goths I can see (but you're still gonna get wrecked by halbs?)

A mass of lancers doesn't really die to halbs, they plow through them like paladins do (ultimately you might have to do some sort of transition against them though, Mongols have great scorps)

I'd much rather have camel vs berbers

... why? Mongol Heavy Camels are awful, Elite Steppe Lancers will do pretty much every job better even vs Berber Heavy Camels (I've tested this vs a real player, if you can get a nice stack in between buildings or up against a woodline, it's over for the camels), and they have more pierce armor (and 1 range) so they'll be better vs Elite Camel Archers too (Mongol Heavy Camels die in 10 hits whereas Mongol Elite Steppe Lancers die in 12 hits). If you go for camels then the Berber player just mirrors you and you're ****ed.

Not sure what they give you vs sicilians? If it's an anti-cavalier play... why not camel?

Heavy Camel dies to literally anything that is not cavalier/light cav. Elite Steppe Lancer kills both Cavalier and Elite Serjeant and can do okay vs halb too (and with the +1 pierce armor they shouldn't do too badly vs Arbalests either).

vs Viet wouldn't you much rather have onager or siege ram?

I suppose the best composition would simply be Elite Mangudai + Onager, but it might be easier to do Elite Steppe Lancer/Hussar + Onager/Heavy Scorpion

 

[LowEloNobody]

A mass of lancers doesn't really die to halbs, they plow through them like paladins do (ultimately you might have to do some sort of transition against them though, Mongols have great scorps)

This is just factually incorrect. Even mongol steppies get eaten by halbs, and don't trade even remotely close to resource efficient, even ignoring gold cost.
You can afford ~ 1.8:1 halbs to steppies, valuing food/wood equally to gold, and Halbs win against steppies around ~1.45:1
Even then, you are trading gold for trash.

... why? Mongol Heavy Camels are awful, Elite Steppe Lancers will do pretty much every job better even vs Berber Heavy Camels (I've tested this vs a real player, if you can get a nice stack in between buildings or up against a woodline, it's over for the camels), and they have more pierce armor (and 1 range) so they'll be better vs Elite Camel Archers too (Mongol Heavy Camels die in 10 hits whereas Mongol Elite Steppe Lancers die in 12 hits). If you go for camels then the Berber player just mirrors you and you're ****ed.

Sure, if you can stack your entire army into 1 tile while the berber player just lets you kill all of his units you win I guess? In a straight-up fight, Mongol elite steppe lancers trade at around a ~1:1.7 disadvantage vs generic heavy camels. Barring niche stacking cases, It's truly a horrible unit choice.

Heavy Camel dies to literally anything that is not cavalier/light cav. Elite Steppe Lancer kills both Cavalier and Elite Serjeant and can do okay vs halb too (and with the +1 pierce armor they shouldn't do too badly vs Arbalests either).

Mongol elite steppe lancer doesn't even trade cost effectively vs generic cavalier. Not sure what it's going to give you vs sicilians. Maybe heavy camel isn't the play, but neither is steppe lancer 11

I suppose the best composition would simply be Elite Mangudai + Onager, but it might be easier to do Elite Steppe Lancer/Hussar + Onager/Heavy Scorpion

I would much rather have Elite Mangudai, since the Viet player is just going to go halb / BBC

 

[Tocaraca]

Mongol elite steppe lancer doesn't even trade cost effectively vs generic cavalier

They... literally do? Talk about objectively incorrect
35 Elite Steppe Lancers patrolled in line formation and stand ground beat 60 halbs. They absolutely wreck generic cavalier and beat paladins too. Vs these types of units you can also do a form of hit-and-run micro. Lancers are incredible units, but only if you know how to press buttons.

 

[LowEloNobody]

They... literally do? Talk about objectively incorrect
35 Elite Steppe Lancers patrolled in line formation and stand ground beat 60 halbs. They absolutely wreck generic cavalier and beat paladins too. Vs these types of units you can also do a form of hit-and-run micro. Lancers are incredible units, but only if you know how to press buttons.

You can simply match several of the matchups here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxVXRaePPNM
Here's Mongol Elite Steppies vs paladin, total resources with mongols numbers advantage (shocker, they lose) https://youtu.be/ds6qWaSDnr4?t=247
And sure, maybe you clean 60 halbs with 35 steppies. That's 3,600 resources of halbs, including ZERO gold. It's 3,850 resources of steppies (cost even comparison would actually be 33 steppies), and you are spending 1,400 gold. How many steppies do you have leftover that it makes it worth it to dump 1,400 gold into cleaning trash?

 

[Tocaraca]

You can simply match several of the matchups here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxVXRaePPNM
Here's Mongol Elite Steppies vs paladin, total resources with mongols numbers advantage (shocker, they lose) https://youtu.be/ds6qWaSDnr4?t=247

The numbers are way too low and the lancers are not in stand ground. Here is what would actually happen in a real fight
trying to attach a file but aoezone sucks and is giving me an error, wuill send it to you on discord

 

[LowEloNobody]

The numbers are way too low and the lancers are not in stand ground. Here is what would actually happen in a real fight
trying to attach a file but aoezone sucks and is giving me an error, wuill send it to you on discord

I concede that there are niche cases in which MASSIVE amounts of steppe lancers in particular micro situations can be good, as long as your opponent is a complete donkey and does not ever consider a tech switch or taking decent engagements.
For maps in which mongols have ZERO stone access, and the market price of stone is at least 1000 gold, top tier players might occasionally consider using elite steppe lancers in a high-level game

 

[Tocaraca]

I concede that there are niche cases in which MASSIVE amounts of steppe lancers in particular micro situations can be good, as long as your opponent is a complete donkey and does not ever consider a tech switch or taking decent engagements.
For maps in which mongols have ZERO stone access, and the market price of stone is at least 1000 gold, top tier players might occasionally consider using elite steppe lancers in a high-level game

None of these comments make sense.
Firstly, 54 lancers is not a "MASSIVE" amount. If you're pop capped, that's how many you'll have, if not more.
Secondly, aside from the fact that P3 in that video is the AI player which has worse pathing than P1, that is literally the best engagement that paladins could take. It's a COMPLETELY OPEN FIELD with NO CHOKE POINTS. That is quite literally the very worst situation possible for lancers. Anything that makes it harder to paladins to engage is not present in that situation.
Thirdly, never did I even advocate for going for Elite Steppe Lancer against Paladin civs, I said vs specific civs, including Sicilians, because Sicilian Cavalier have 8 pierce armor and it likely takes too long to reach a critical mass of Elite Mangudai (with all the necessary upgrades) to beat the Cavalier flood. However, Elite Steppe Lancer (despite the upgrade being overpriced) is wayyyy easier to tech into and beats Cavalier just the same. It also just makes sense because you'll be making either Steppe Lancers or Camel Riders (or both) in castle age against Sicilians, so it's not like it's some big tech switch. Elite Mangudai obviously is a massive tech switch.
Fourthly, I don't really care what top tier players consider doing. They've routinely showed that they just do what they are familiar with and will only try out new units maybe one or two times and then give up if they didn't work, because they might as well just win with what they know than experiment. Castle age Eagle Warriors were seen as useless for multiple years (even after they were buffed to how they are now) and now they are considered overpowered. Cavalry Archers were also not commonly used at all until DauT showed everyone that they have great potential, and nowadays you even see people using them as Bulgarians and Lithuanians (although not as commonly as those civs' other strong options).
Obviously if you are vs a civ like Goths you are not going to go for Elite Mangudai because they lose to the Elite Huskarl flood. If you're already making Steppe Lancers in castle age I see no reason to not get the Elite upgrade (and to deal with halbs you need to add something else, mangudai would be far too slow of a tech transition, probably champs in front would be best even without Supplies).
Heck I literally won a game with Elite Steppe Lancer once vs Sicilians. I am confident I would have won even if he transitioned to Halberdier in imperial age too.
EDIT:

And sure, maybe you clean 60 halbs with 35 steppies. That's 3,600 resources of halbs, including ZERO gold. It's 3,850 resources of steppies (cost even comparison would actually be 33 steppies)

33 Mongol Elite Steppe Lancers beat 60 Magyar Halberdiers with a little bit of micro according to my testing, which is, again, in an open field (no choke points or elevation). Lancers will always be at an advantage in a mass like that because they are way faster so they can pick and choose their engagements. They're much better than Cavalier or even Paladins when it comes to fighting Halberdiers, due to their 1 range (especially Magyar halbs because they don't get Squires).

and you are spending 1,400 gold. How many steppies do you have leftover that it makes it worth it to dump 1,400 gold into cleaning trash?

Enough to win the game? If you clear your opponent's army and kill all their castles and other production buildings with siege then you just win and don't give a **** about the gold cost. Gold doesn't run out for a long time.

One more edit before I close my scenario editor: 60 vs 33 is also assuming that the Mongol player is not able to stall until 200 pop. If you become pop capped with lancers, you will simply steamroll through halbs, probably even gold-efficiently at that point. Your opponent will never be able to make enough halbs to beat 50+ Elite Steppe Lancers.

 

[kalpit00]

yall worry too much about imperial compositions and forget the best counter to halbs is skirms/arbs or siege. Making the most of your units and transitions are more important than "steamrolling" through said counters. Not only is it a gamble and determined by other factors like hills and micro, if you take a page from Lord Daut's book, the best way to play imperial age is to use your units effectively. Lancers are meant to raid, not fight halbs. Lots of pro players lose games in early imperial age because they don't read where the game is heading and will reactively just upgrade their units. Why tech into Elite Steppe Lancers when your opponent will be teching into Halbs, and then worry about the dilemma you will face. If both players have competitive imp timings, your first imperial age resources should go into a counter in this very specific case, not into Elite Steppes. You will do the same "raiding" damage which you would do with Non-Elite Steppe Lancers (you can get +4 its cheaper and also useful for hussars).

I said specific case because there might be a scenario where opponent doesn't have halb, or you have such an edge to imp timing that you can idle him to death with Elite Steppes, in which case you can choose to deal the finishing blow with Elite Steppe Lancers instead of worrying about a transition

 

[LowEloNobody]

The numbers are way too low and the lancers are not in stand ground. Here is what would actually happen in a real fight
trying to attach a file but aoezone sucks and is giving me an error, wuill send it to you on discord

I concede that there are niche cases in which MASSIVE amounts of steppe lancers in particular micro situations can be good, as long as your opponent is a complete donkey and does not ever consider a tech switch or taking decent engagements.
For maps in which mongols have ZERO stone access, and the market price of stone is at least 1000 gold, top tier players might occasionally consider using elite steppe lancers in a high-level game

yall worry too much about imperial compositions and forget the best counter to halbs is skirms/arbs or siege. Making the most of your units and transitions are more important than "steamrolling" through said counters. Not only is it a gamble and determined by other factors like hills and micro, if you take a page from Lord Daut's book, the best way to play imperial age is to use your units effectively. Lancers are meant to raid, not fight halbs. Lots of pro players lose games in early imperial age because they don't read where the game is heading and will reactively just upgrade their units. Why tech into Elite Steppe Lancers when your opponent will be teching into Halbs, and then worry about the dilemma you will face. If both players have competitive imp timings, your first imperial age resources should go into a counter in this very specific case, not into Elite Steppes. You will do the same "raiding" damage which you would do with Non-Elite Steppe Lancers (you can get +4 its cheaper and also useful for hussars).

I said specific case because there might be a scenario where opponent doesn't have halb, or you have such an edge to imp timing that you can idle him to death with Elite Steppes, in which case you can choose to deal the finishing blow with Elite Steppe Lancers instead of worrying about a transition

Sorry, too busy making steppies against halbs to read this

 

[Kings&Conquerorspodcast]

For those interested in the new patch we have dedicated this month's episode of our podcast to all the changes being made in April 2023. You can check it on Spotify or most other platforms.

 

[hellhammer]

The patch is live and there are some changes compared to the PUP

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Update 81058 - Age of Empires

Hello and welcome to an exciting and fun-filled update for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition! This is a huge one with massive balance changes, bug fixes,

www.ageofempires.com

• (Elite) Elephant Archer train time decreased from 34 seconds ▶ 32 seconds
• Elite Elephant Archer upgrade cost reduced from 1000 food and 800 gold ▶ 900 food and 500 gold
• Jaguar Warrior (Elite) pierce armor increased from 1 ▶ 2
• Woad Raider (Elite) HP increased from 65 (80) ▶ 70 (85)
• Woad Raider (Elite) Attack increased from 10 (13) ▶ 11 (14)
• Chinese Starting Villagers and starting food changes reverted.
• Medical Corps cost reduced from 350 food and 250 gold ▶ 300 food and 200 gold
• Medical Corps effect increased from 20 HP/minute ▶ 30 HP/minute
• (Elite) Samurai cost reduced from 60 food and 30 gold ▶ 50 food and 30 gold
• Farm upgrade bonus increased from +100% ▶ +125% food per upgrade
• (Elite) Teutonic Knight cost reduced from 85 food and 40 gold ▶ 85 food and 30 gold

 

[_Donatello_]

Did they make any changes to control groups?

Say I have my archery ranges on "5". I build two more and I want to put them in group 5. Before, I would just select the new ranges, then hold shift+5, then ctrl+5 and I had all my ranges in the same group.

Now, this does not work for me. I only get the 2 new ranges in the group, not the old one. The same goes for units.

The way I have to do it now is to go around the map while holding shift and mouse click all the archery ranges. Also, the old way of using "ctrl+a" five times to browse them quickly only adds one of them to the group. So, because of my old habit, I ungroup my units/ranges each time I add a new one.

I have not looked deep into this, and I don't remember how the hotkey screen looked before for groups. But I see I now have "append group 5" to shift+5. Is this new or has it always been like this?

 

[kalpit00]

i think they disabled Go-To-Building hotkeys until the building is complete.

For example you cannot use Go-To-Building hotkey while the building is being constructed. I noticed that when I couldn't use my usual Go-To-Barracks hotkey in dark age. Also something buggy is happening with control groups as well, my usual muscle memory hotkey combination for setting ctrl groups was not working as it did before

 

[_Donatello_]

Yeah, it seems like we have the same problem. I asked my opponents and they did not notice any change, so it might just be me who edited the way control groups work by default, but if I did, it was a long time ago and I can't remember.

I see in the patch notes that they made some changes:

• Allowed combining the functionality of several Go to Building and Select All Buildings hotkeys when they are set to the same keys. This allows selecting different buildings together or cycling through them using one key.

• Multiple building queue now works for units which are trainable from different buildings (Huskarls, Tarkans, Konniks, Serjeants) if these buildings are selected together.

Maybe one of these changes caused the old way to add to the group to no longer work? They want us to use "select all buildings" instead and then group them. This works for me, but like you, my muscle memory still does it the old way automatically.

It still does not work for units for me, though. The way I found was to select all military units, and then select archers, but it's like three extra steps instead of the old way. It's annoying, so I hope they come up with a quick fix.


I also think they should add an option to disable achievements in multiplayer games. I haven't played in about four months, but I played about ten games last week, and I think they maybe added a lot of new achievements in the game in this time. I get several each time I play, which is really annoying, but this is just a minor problem.

 

[DracKeN]

I guess the woads buff is there so Celts still play Woads instead of the buffed champs now. But Woads were already one of the best UUs, they'll be ridiculously good now.

 

[uberkerl]

I guess the woads buff is there so Celts still play Woads instead of the buffed champs now. But Woads were already one of the best UUs, they'll be ridiculously good now.

are they? 1v1 they lose to every other Infatry UU and all the Good Champs (TM) which is important vs every other Infatry civ.

 

[Freezing_Point]

are they? 1v1 they lose to every other Infatry UU and all the Good Champs (TM) which is important vs every other Infatry civ.

Yes. It's not about winning 1v1 against infantry (most of the other infantry UUs have anti-infantry bonus or crazy armor or something anyways), it's about having comparable mobility to eagles plus much higher attack.

 

[kalpit00]

These Royal Heirs Shotels be damn crazy I tell ya especially with them Torsion Engine Siege.

 

[_Donatello_]

Spoiler: ---

Did they make any changes to control groups?

Say I have my archery ranges on "5". I build two more and I want to put them in group 5. Before, I would just select the new ranges, then hold shift+5, then ctrl+5 and I had all my ranges in the same group.

Now, this does not work for me. I only get the 2 new ranges in the group, not the old one. The same goes for units.

The way I have to do it now is to go around the map while holding shift and mouse click all the archery ranges. Also, the old way of using "ctrl+a" five times to browse them quickly only adds one of them to the group. So, because of my old habit, I ungroup my units/ranges each time I add a new one.

I have not looked deep into this, and I don't remember how the hotkey screen looked before for groups. But I see I now have "append group 5" to shift+5. Is this new or has it always been like this?

It seems like this bug is specific to my user account. I've tried a lot of things today, but nothing has worked. I were kinda desperate because I have three days alone off work where I planned to play non-stop.

I've reset my hotkeys to default and edited them all, uninstalled all mods, updated drivers, and tried some other small things, but the Shift key still doesn't work. Then, I tried creating a new account and copying my old hotkey file into it, and on this new account, the Shift key works fine.

So not an actually fix since I can't play my account but atleast I can play normally on the new one intill it maybe gets fixed.

I also noticed that I can't go to buildings before they are constructed, and the "bell" hotkey doesn't work like it did before. I don't usually use the bell, but sometimes I panic and use it for a split second while luring deer to prevent any idle time. But now, if I press it quickly ("BB"), they don't go back to work, and wood villagers actually go all the way back. So, I guess I need to stop using it

 

[_Donatello_]

Damn it, now I got this message and game froze 2 times when I try to que up, need to alt f4 to exit it.

Is it possible that my new account that I made via family share is not patched? can't be right?

Thats 1 gaming day down the drain.. I give up for today.

 

[Shakal]

Say I have my archery ranges on "5". I build two more and I want to put them in group 5. Before, I would just select the new ranges, then hold shift+5, then ctrl+5 and I had all my ranges in the same group.

Now, this does not work for me. I only get the 2 new ranges in the group, not the old one. The same goes for units.

There is a setting called "Shift Group Appending", I have it ON and when I do the same steps you described, I end up with all ranges in the group just like you want it (actually, even the ctrl+5 is useless here). With the setting OFF, I get the same result as you.
Maybe you used to have it on and it turned off when the new patch got installed? Or do you not like that setting and it used to work with it OFF before the new patch?

 

[T-West]

There is a setting called "Shift Group Appending", I have it ON and when I do the same steps you described, I end up with all ranges in the group just like you want it (actually, even the ctrl+5 is useless here). With the setting OFF, I get the same result as you.
Maybe you used to have it on and it turned off when the new patch got installed? Or do you not like that setting and it used to work with it OFF before the new patch?

iirc that behavior should have worked just fine without Shift-group appending: select new ranges, Shift+5 to also select the old ranges, Ctrl+5 to set group 5 to all of the ranges.

Shift-group appending just would have eliminated the final step, with Shift+5 working to both select all of the ranges and set the new ranges also to group 5. But with the trade-off that there then isn't a way to select the old ranges along with the new ones without also forming the group.

 

[kalpit00]

Yes the Shift-group appending feature is basically an append to an original ctrl group. In fact, for empty ctrl groups, Shift-Num does exactly the same as Ctrl-Num as far as adding a unit/building, so a lot of people have their muscle memory used to just using Shift when the game starts to number the scout, sheep, TC, vils on sheep, etc.

And from there on for a non-empty ctrl group, Ctrl-Num works to "override" the previous a ctrl group with the units/buildings you have selected, while Shift-Num will append the selected units/buildings to the previous ctrl group. Think of this as a Linked-List

 

[_Donatello_]

There is a setting called "Shift Group Appending", I have it ON and when I do the same steps you described, I end up with all ranges in the group just like you want it (actually, even the ctrl+5 is useless here). With the setting OFF, I get the same result as you.
Maybe you used to have it on and it turned off when the new patch got installed? Or do you not like that setting and it used to work with it OFF before the new patch?

Yes this worked, thank you :D :D :D

 

[LeoMontero]

to me, and im biased because i love japanese, but the discount on samurais it taste few.
now jaguar has 1+p armour, and woad raiders more HP and more attack, and sams are equal? dont like it.