Patch 1.3

Good morning from our castle in Redmond! It’s patch day for Age of  Empires: Castle Siege, and we have some exciting new changes set to go live later this afternoon. Read on for the full changelog.

Note that the servers will go offline while these changes go into effect as of 3 PM PST/GMT-8. We anticipate the servers being back online at approximately 5 PM. If your device does not automatically update to the new build, you can manually download it from the Store page athttp://aka.ms/aoecastlesiege.

Here’s a look at the changes coming to the game:

Stability

• Fixed an occasional crash loading into the tutorial battle.
• Fixed miscellaneous network errors.
• Fixed miscellaneous crashes.

Gameplay

• Longbowmen have been stripped of their wall-busting ammunition and now must break down walls like everyone else—with hard work and siege engines.
• Adjustments to the Acre Campaign to bring its difficulty back in line with the rest of the campaigns.
• Army Camps under construction no longer display scaffolding when the castle is attacked.
• Scaffolding will now be visible where appropriate when visiting another player’s castle.
• Resolved an issue where if storage structures finished upgrading while you were away in battle, the pre-battle value would be used to determine your storage cap, potentially resulting in lost resources.
• Fixed a bug where network disconnections while routing troops would result in the troops not acting for the remainder of the battle.
• Fixed a bug where cycling through many opponents during matchmaking would cause a network disconnection.
• Crossbow tower is now accurately listed as Short range.
• Joan of Arc’s Convert ability now properly states that troops are converted for the duration of combat.
• Conrad the Elder’s displayed stats now reflect Conrad himself and not his mighty siege tower.
• Pennant icon updated in locations where it represents a collection of multiple pennant types.
• Resolved miscellaneous issues with Hero icons highlighting improperly.
• Fixed a bug where routing large numbers of siege weapons could lead to a crash.
• Hero tutorial tips will no longer be shown for Campaign battles.
• Patrolling units no longer get stuck in the Keep when changing civilizations.
• Battle timer will now properly display the time remaining if the pre-battle countdown runs out before any troops are deployed.

General

• Added es-MX as a supported language and locale.
• Achievements earned on Windows 8 should now properly be awarded when logging in on a Windows Phone device.
• Unwatched replays are now marked as such.
• Player names (attacker and defender) are now displayed while watching a replay.
• After watching a replay from the battle log, you will be returned to the battle log screen.
• Fixed an error that could cause total percentage to be incorrect in replays.
• Gold collection from Keep now works like all other resource gathering.
• Fixes to Russian text improperly overlapping objects on certain screens.
• Tweaks to mouse wheel scroll behavior on the battle log.
• Fixed issues with costs displaying in the incorrect color after purchasing Gold.
• Fixed an occasional issue with structures hopping back and forth indecisively while moving them around.
• Fixed a bug where cancelling a troop build that gave you more resources than you could hold would lead to a crash.
• New icons for Gold offers in the Marketplace.
• Additional support for more international currency symbols.
• Fixes to certain currencies where the total amounts could get truncated.
• Added support for links in the News section.
• Miscellaneous loading screen adjustments.

Good luck in battle! May your walls hold strong and your rams batter swiftly.

Patch 1.2

Greetings from AoE HQ! A new patch for Age of Empires: Castle Siege is being pushed live now, and we’d like to share the list of exciting new changes and fixes you have to look forward to. Read on for the full changelog!

Note that as of 3 PM PDT, the servers will be offline while these changes go into effect. We anticipate servers being back online at approximately 5 PM. If your device does not automatically update to the new build, you can manually download it from the Store page.

So, what’s new in this patch?

Stability

• Significant improvements to dropped connections during battle.
• Fixed a crash caused on some devices by deploying many infantry at once at the opening of battle.
• Fixed a crash during transitions in matchmaking.
• Fixed a crash involving soldiers leaving siege towers.
• Fixed other miscellaneous crashes.

Gameplay

• We’ve modified the way we award crowns for players in Ages 5-8. See below for details from the design team.*
• Wall troops have undergone a strict training regimen against the wiles of the Wololo. As a result, Joan of Arc’s Convert ability no longer affects troops on walls.
• Keeps have bolstered their defenses against mounted troops.
• Winrich von Kniprode has found a flaw in these new defenses and now has a damage boost against all Keeps.
• Richard the Lionheart no longer feels it is an efficient use of his skills to boost mounted troops and will now only boost infantry as per his description.
• Roads have been constructed at Aleppo and Constantinople.
• Fixed a bug where Henry V could get stuck in an infinite targeting loop.
• Fixed various path finding bugs.

Tutorial

• The reward chest earned in the tutorial battle will now properly show in the post-battle UI.

Hardware

• Resolved some rendering issues on the HTC-8S phone.

General

• Players will no longer gain achievements from visiting another player’s castle.
• Fixed corruption issues with UI tutorial graphics.
• Battle audio no longer persists past the end of a reply.
• Technological research now properly deducts pennants from your own civilization.
• Help button now properly forwards to our Support forum.
• Phone notifications improvements. NOTE: This is a partial fix—there will be future improvements.

*Changes to the way we award crowns: When you attack another player, the number of crowns you can take is a percentage of their total crowns. If you have more crowns than your target, the percentage is lower, and if you have fewer crowns, the percentage is higher. Also, there is a minimum number of crowns you can earn in battle, which is 5. This minimum exists so that attacking players with very few crowns still grants some reward.

Currently in Ages 1-4, if you have above a certain number of crowns, the minimum you can earn decreases to 0. This is because it’s possible to reliably win in those Ages, and we don’t want players to rise to the top of the leaderboard by repeatedly earning the minimum number of crowns in low Age battles.

Our vision for crowns is that to rise up the leaderboard, players must seek out targets with a lot of crowns and strive to defeat their defenses. To protect their lead, they must build devious castles to keep other players from defeating them. However, that’s not the style of play the leaderboards are rewarding today. It’s still possible in Age 5 to target opponents you can reliably defeat and rely on the crown minimum to steadily climb the leaderboard.

In today’s build, the minimum will also decrease to 0 in Ages 5-8 if you have above a certain number of crowns.

With this change, our hope is that the best way to earn crowns is to pick fights with the most powerful players and defeat them.

Good luck in battle, everyone. Onward, to glory!

Patch 1.1

Age of Empires:Castle Siege has been updated for Windows and Windows Phone. As of today, the title for the phone stands on version 1.0.4.371, which is readily available for download on the store. The update contains a variety of fixes and minor changes to improve the experience.

Today's update includes:

AI Units

• Defending units have done emergency exit drills and will now have less trouble finding and exiting through gates.
• Range units will no longer waste time shuffling their feet when switching targets at the edge of their range.
• Siege unit wheels will not continue to roll when they are halted while receiving orders.
• Deploying squads rapidly will no longer result in some units becoming paralyzed.
• John Kourkouas's Terrorize ability won't cause crazed units to run directly through walls.

Stability

• Fixed various issues related to the delivery of notifications.
• Fixed a crash that occurred if the player lost connection while visiting a castle.
• Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when player lost connection while receiving alliance messages.
• Fixed connection error that occurred when a road piece was dragged on top of a wall piece.
• Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred if the player suspended the phone app.

Usability

• Fixed an issue with scrolling the unit list on battle logs using the mouse wheel.
• Tapping a trap under a road will select the trap, not the road.
• Changed the way the "you are under attack" timer is calculated to be less confusing.
• Players shouldn't see it count down to zero and then reset as often as before.
• Fixed an issue where tapping a text box while on the idle screen would cause the on screen keyboard to pop up repeatedly.

Polish

• Fixed incorrect visual order of cannons on top of cannon towers.
• Removed extra "=" being added to alliance messages when playing in Spanish.
• Fixed an issue where the guardhouse appeared available for purchase in Age 1 even though it could not be purchased.