Wednesday, October 22, 2014

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!