Replay of the Week 12 - HaXyranius

Welcome to twelfth episode of our "Replay of the Week" video series, featuring HaXyranius!
In today's episode, HaXyranius will show us nifty  strategy using Siege Towers.

Replay of the Week 11 - Ian Addrian

Welcome to eleventh episode of our "Replay of the Week video series, featuring Ian Addrian!
In today's episode, Ian Addrian will demonstrate the power of Raiders of Muscovy, under the guidance of Martel and Winrich.

Patch 1.9

Hello Siegers! While Patch 1.10 is in development, we are ready to release Patch 1.9. This is a small patch that focused on some of the bugs that were reported by the community. We’ve also improved the installation experience on iOS to speed up the download process. In addition, we talk about the Matchmaking Redesign in this blog, which details the changes that we have made to dynamically modify player power based on crowns.

Here are the fixes we have implemented in Patch 1.9.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Belisarius would occasionally become stuck performing but never completing his Undermine ability
• Fixed an issue where Musket Towers would occasionally become disabled after being attacked by a Trebuchet
• Fixed an issue where engineers would occasionally freeze in instances where the trap was triggered from the opposite side of a wall
• Fixed an issue where defensive units would occasionally appear in offensive colors
• All error messages encountered will now provide a link to the Age of Empires: Castle Siege Support forum
• General stability improvements and crash fixes.

Replay of the Week 10 - bestawd

Welcome to tenth episode of our "Replay of the Week" video series, featuring bestawd!
In today's episode, bestawd displays great defense techniques as an Age 6 player.

Replay of the Week 9 - doubleUTT

Welcome to ninth episode of our "Replay of the Week" video series, featuring doubleUTT!
In today's episode, doubleUTT will use two of unconventional heroes against an Age 9 player.

Replay of the Week 8 - wildpig333

Welcome to eighth episode of our "Replay of the Week" video series, featuring wildpig333!
In today's episode, wildpig333 will show us great control over various units in different areas.

Replay of the Week 7 - CaicedoPro

Welcome to seventh episode of our "Replay of the Week" video series, featuring CaicedoPro!
In today's episode, CaicedoPro will show us how to tackle difficult castle layout.

Replay of the Week 6 - OwnNeptune1390

Welcome to sixth episode of  "Replay of the Week" video series, featuring OwnNeptune1390!
In today's episode, OwnNeptune1390 will use Winrich to achieve 100% victory!

Patch 1.8

Attention, Siegers: it’s patch time! With Patch 1.8, our goals are to resolve some of the long-standing bugs with heroes’ abilities and to improve social functionalities. We also have good news for those who’re looking to get some extra gold: the Gold Starter Pack is now available! It gives more gold for less, but you must act quickly, as the Starter Pack will only be available for three days after initial offer.

Hit the jump to see the full Patch 1.8 changelog.

Feature Improvements

• The ability to search for players has been added. To perform the search, head to Social > Alliances > Search
• The chat window is now larger

Gameplay

Hermann’s Shield Wall ability will no longer affect siege units. We’re still exploring directions of where we want to go with Hermann in the future. For now, we’re removing the abuse between Hermann and Conrad, as it was promised, and will continue working on heroes enhancements.

Bug Fixes

• Joan’s Convert ability will now properly remove the effects of John Kourkouas’ Terrorize ability
• Charles Martel’s Taunt ability no longer has a chance to make targets immobile
• Richard’s Inspire will no longer affect Edward or Charles, as the ability was never intended to affect any type of Cavalry squad
• Using Henry’s Disable ability on a building right before it is destroyed will no longer lock out the ability for the rest of battle. If the building is destroyed before the arrow hits, the ability use is refunded (Henry will have the same number of ability uses as he did before firing the arrow)
• Cavalry who have been instructed by Charlemagne to Charge a target that exists on the other side of a wall will now continue with their instructions after the wall has been breached
• Patrol Point infantry affected by John’s Terrorize ability will now properly seek out targets after the duration of the ability concludes
• Spear infantry are now properly immune to being charged by cavalry
• Fixed an issue where defending units would sometimes stutter-step when trying to select a target after a castle breach
• Fixed an issue where audio would play out of headphones and the Surface tablet speaker simultaneously
• Fixed an issue where numerical values would sometimes be missing in text strings when English was being used as the fallback language for unsupported languages in Windows.
• Numerous fixes to crashes, connection errors, AI pathing, and general stability.

Replay of the Week 5 - Arifimovic

Welcome to fifth episode of "Replay of the Week" video series, featuring Arifimovic!
Today, Arifimovic will show us great micro-management in fast-paced battle scene.

Replay of the Week 4 - benjer3

Welcome to fourth episode of our "Replay of the Week" video series!
Today, we will watch benjer3's replay, where benjer3 demonstrates power of Maslama and Nevsky, and how to tackle grenadiers in a tricky castle layout.

Replay of the Week 3 - IamtheGMOE

Welcome to another episode of our  "Replay of the Week" video series!
Today, we will be watching one guy from MS staff, IamtheGMOE, who uses Composite Bowmen as tanks!

Replay of the Week 2 - recycle ar

Watch second episode of our video series "Replay of the Week" to witness how multi-tasking and effective time management empower Joan of Arc and Conrad the Elder combo.
Player: recycle ar

Patch 1.7

With Patch 1.7 we take some first steps at addressing underused heroes, make some small improvements to UI and Alliance functionality, progression, and have improved overall network stability. We thank the community for continuous support and encourage you to post your feedback on our forums. Hit the jump for the full changelog.

Heroes

• Some heroes that attempted to pursue targets at unreasonable ranges will no longer do so
• Charles Martel’s Taunt ability will now draw fire from targets for the entire duration of the ability. As Charles moves around, any new targets that enter its range will attempt to target Charles. In addition, the damage reduction that it provides has been dramatically increased
• Tariq ibn Ziyad and his squad have received health and damage increases. Field of Fire has also received a slight damage increase
• Edward the Black Prince’s “Dismantle” ability now treats the Watch Signal Tower as an applicable target

Duplicate Cost and Build Time Fixes

To avoid imbalance in economy and combat systems we will be fixing unintended discounts for the below units. This decision is based on results of recent improvements to general gameplay and looting system and corresponds with future game progression vision.

• Spearman Level 7 upgrade cost increased from 400,000 to 700,000 Food
• Infantry Level 7 upgrade cost increased from 350,000 to 750,000 Food
• Ram Level 6 upgrade cost increased from 350,000 to 700,000 Lumber
• Caltrops Level 7 upgrade cost increased from 40,000 to 60,000 Food

Gameplay

• Fixed the exploit where units could travel to the edge of the map where they could not be attacked while distracting defending melee troops
• Addressed several stability and connectivity issues, including server reload connection error
• Increased storage capacity of Farm and Mill Level 10 from 30,000 to 50,000; and Quarry Level 7 from 14,000 to 25,000
• The difficulty of Thessalonica, Acre, Aleppo, and Constantinople historical challenges has been decreased
• ‘Damage’ was changed to ‘Damage Per Second’ on all information cards
• Peace Treaty times are now displayed when visiting other castles
• Sometimes health and damage when upgrading the Keep would not increase across upgrades. These have been increased accordingly
• Sometimes players were inaccurately notified that they were vulnerable attack while being online. This notification should now only appear when they have in fact been online too long
• Notifications that have been disabled will now properly disable

Alliance Messaging

• We added chat functionality that allows players to report flaming, trolling, cheating and other inappropriate behavior
• The top navigation buttons have been condensed to not overlap the screen on its outro
• The button for accessing chat has been moved up to not interfere with phone functionality
• Blocking button has been added
• Muting / Unmuting options were added to the context menu. Selecting this will hide the player’s messages in the chat
• Alliance chat will no longer jump to the top new entry while trying to read older Alliance chat entries.

Replay of the Week 1 - el7373

Greetings, and welcome to our brand new Age of Empires: Castle Siege video series "Replay of the Week", where we will be featuring best moments from your epic Castle Siege battles!
Today, we will watch replay of el7373, where we will see well played defense maneuvers.

Patch 1.6

Relief Forces

Starting with Patch 1.6, your alliance members will be able to donate troops to each other. Donated troops are deployed as defensive units from the Watch Signal, available starting in Age 4. When attacking units come into range, it will light the torches of the Watch Signal and start a timer. Relief forces will appear from the edge of the map and will continue spawning at timed intervals until the Watch Signal is destroyed or the battle ends. Units are spawned in the order in which they were donated. The number of units your alliance mates can donate to you and the number of relief troops that will spawn at once increases as you upgrade the Watch Signal. Providing Relief Forces to alliance mates can help your alliance climb the leaderboards. Higher level players can donate to lower level players to ensure fewer losses.

The Musket TowerThe Musket Tower will be a new defensive structure available in Age 9. It is unique among defensive towers in that you get to decide how it works. Put the Musket Tower in attack mode and it will do long-range, single-target damage that will smash siege weapons. Put it in defend mode and it will deal damage to all units in a short range around the building. Do you want to pick off trebuchets or counteract a rush? It’s up to you! The best part is that your enemy won’t know until they get in range of the tower which mode you selected.

Diplomacy & EngineeringPatch 1.6 will include a new economic and military tech upgrades. Diplomacy is an economic tech that increases the duration of peace treaties by a percentage. Upgrading the tech increases that percentage increase of this bonus. The first level of diplomacy is available in Age 4 and there are 4 levels of this research technology.

The new military tech is Engineering which increases the duration of any trap effects. This technology is also percentage based and increases with each level of research. Engineering is available from your military research building starting in Age 5 and has 4 levels.

Grenadiers
Grenadiers are a new unit trained from the Siege Workshop in Age 7. This is short-ranged unit that also deal damage in a small radius. Their preferred targets are towers and siege weapons but they are also good against cavalry. Grenadiers can also be used as defensive units for patrol points, guard houses, and atop walls.

InventoryWith this patch, players will be able to put Honor items into inventory. This will give you the ability to remove Honor items you no longer want to use and hold them in storage. You can use this to clean up decorations you no longer want to display, or use it to temporarily remove clutter while rearranging castle defenses. We’re also hoping to do some more fun and exciting things with items in the future using this feature.

Patch 1.5

Age of Empires: Castle Siege is rolling out Patch 1.5 on January 27th. Get your troops ready! For those interested in everything that has change here are the patch notes.

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.

Work in Progress

We are in the process of large scale investigation into the various issues that manifest as the generic “Connection Error.” We realize that the phrasing of this message has caused some confusion and frustration.

Currently we’re seeing six types of issues that result in a connection error. Only one of these issues is the result of poor or lost internet connection. We’re investigating the causes of the other issues, some of which are the client and some of which are the service. We are working hard to make large strides in this area over the next few months.

Stay tuned to all the future Age of Empire: Castle Siege updates on the Age of Empires Forums.

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.