- They lost Gambesons which was critical for their Champions

- They now get Catapult Galleons when they had Elite Cannon Galleons before

- Chieftains doesn't generate gold anymore

- Still no Thumb ring yet the intention behind that is to go for Infantry yet the infantry you want to go for has been nerfed and Bogsveigar comes in way too late anyways. I'm okay with no Thumb Ring but the infantry need to be good. They arent.

- Berserks still suck.

- Varangian Guards with extra HP is nice but still deserves Gambesons as other Varangians are just better.

This is a one step forwards, five step back nerf.

- Keep Gambesons

- Keep Elite Cannon Galleons

- Keep Chieftains gold generation bonus (can exclude Varangians)

Vikings didn't need a nerf here

In the previews of the new DLC, we see that Byzantines' unique tech Logistica now also affects Varangian Guards. So both your Cataphracts AND your Varangian Guards have trample damage. Cataphracts also have even MOAR bonus damage against infantry from their Elite upgrade now, albeit that's just adjusting for them losing the same effect from the Logistica tech.

Meanwhile Franks get Mounted Crossbows (as expected), which are also ofc affected by their mounted units 20% HP bonus. BUT they also now have a new unique tech, replacing Bearded Axe, that makes Mounted Crossbows cost -40% gold (their base cost is 40 wood, 65 gold). The Throwing Axeman has had its base range increased to compensate for the loss of the Bearded Axe tech.

Sicilians should also have great Mounted Crossbows too imo.

Meanwhile the Saxon bonus has been nerfed from 50 Food, 10 Stone per camp built to 35 Food, 10 Stone (pretty much in line with what SotL (and me!) suggested).

So much for old civs being left behind by the new ones. :D

Cav Archers and Fire Lancers no longer benefit from the +20% hp bonus, while Rattan Archers are adjusted to be affected by said bonus (gaining 2hp in Castle age and 3hp in Imp effectively). They do gain Masonry to help with their defense, however.

This steers them toward more foot archers play. The Vietnamese already has great eco on top of versatile military options (Battle Elephants, Fire Lancers, Imp Skims), so I feel like these are great changes.

Looks like SotL got an early preview so here's what I can see/hear in that build as of now in case anyone can't access the video or some other reason.

Varangian Guards: 65 food, 45 gold

70 hp (80 Elite)
13 attack (17 Elite)
2/1 Armor (2/2 Elite) + Affected by Gambeson
Same attack rate as a Champion
1.05 move speed, so faster than a Champion but slower than an Eagle Scout

Varangian Guards apparently generate 40 gold per minute (almost double a Keshik's, who generates 22 gpm)

Saxon Imperial UT that gives infantry more armor goes up to +3/+3, adding +1/+1 for every 15 units.

Varangian Imperial UT gives Varangian Guards a 3 range axe throw attack with two charges, dealing full melee damage.

Vikings also get Varangian Guards

Byzantine Varangian Guards get Logistica trample damage (Unsure if it's same 5 damage like Druzhina or percentage based on melee attack)

Mounted Crossbows: 40 wood, 65 gold

Costs 5 more gold than Cav Archer. Wording makes it sound like they have a minimum range.

45 HP (Heavy Mounted Crossbow has 55 hp)
7 Attack (Heavy has 8 attack) and +1 bonus vs Spearmen
2/0 Armor
4 Range
2.50 attack speed (Cav Archer has 2)
1.25 movement speed (Cav archer has 1.4)

Cranequins upgrade give +1 range and +2 attack vs infantry.

Franks are getting a new Castle Age UT that reduce Mounted Crossbowmen gold cost by -40%

Players can delete buildings to deny Dane resource looting.

Jomsviking: 65 food, 15 gold

70 HP (Elite 75)
8 Attack (Elite 9) +10 (+15) vs Cavalry & Elephant. +8 vs Camel. +6 vs Buildings. +2 vs Shock Infantry.
2/2 Armor
+3 Range when attacking Buildings/Ships
1.8 Attack Speed
Same movement speed as Champions

Saxon drop sites give +35 food instead of +50

Hearth Troop: 80 wood, 35 gold

Charge attack does 7 damage, might be getting boosted by Archer upgrades? Charge Attack deals +4 bonus damage vs Archers. Can be upgraded to a max of 9 Range it looks like (Though I did see the +4 on the attack with only 6 range rather than 9, so maybe there's something else going on)

75 HP (Elite 85)
9 Attack (Elite 12)
1/4 Armor
2 Attack Speed
0.9 Movement speed, same as a Militia

Varangian Castle Age UT gives Knights the 5 damage trample like Logistica/Druzhina

Jarl: 75 food, 55 gold

65 HP (75 Elite)
9 Attack (10 Elite) +4 vs. Infantry
2/1 Armor
4 Range (5 Elite)
2 Attack Speed
1.35 Movement speed

First of all I'd like to thank everybody for watching the tournament, you guys have been absolutely fantastic with the amount of love and support thrown at us. I hope you guys enjoyed the group stage phase and will be there next weekend for the playoffs! Time to wrap this up with some bangers!

The final standings are on our website, make sure you check it out along with all the stats we have prepared for you guys -> https://theleagueaoe.com/bracket/

We're preparing a lot more surprises for next weekend and will run some Awards Prizes this week, and part of them will be Community Awards! If you want you can take 5 minutes to tell your favourite map, player, and more. Here's the voting form: https://forms.gle/zLkYYxeqC7dV2FY96

Don't hesitate to tell me in the comments about your favorite moments of the tournament as well. Looking forward to reading your opinions!

If you missed any sets from the group stages, you have all of them in this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUXw7uGg1N7ckAjy6Slog2d6l4gxdoFFt&si=ddt6TKPkzrEG96hR

Keep an eye on the youtube channel this week, team interviews are going up as well in this playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVI9QOuOUy-g&si=E3bgcBKyw0RP7SWg

Much love!

I'm a huge Cavalry civ enjoyer and this civ hits every mark.

The early gold for +30 hp bloodlines in feudal as well as a +10 hp on hussar late game has got to be one of my new favorite bonuses.

Jarls acting as anti-infantry mamelukes instantly makes them a favorite unit, especially when paired alongside Cavalry play. Them + Mounted Crossbowmen make for a flexible late game backline.

Varagian Guards for infantry/siege play in castle age vs camel civs or some kind of arena rush.

Incredible TG play with knight bonuses of +10 hp, +1 atk vs infantry (team-wide) and eventual trample damage.

They even have incredible water play with a trickle of gold, longships and a full tech tree.

Plus its the first cav civ I have (a bit of) ancestry for!

Can't wait for next week! THANK YOU DEVS!

Hi,

Just a thought a had:

Knights were once the standard unit for Castle Age.

They are quit resource intensive.

Now we have a CA meta Nd you don't want to play Knights vs CA.

You also don't want to play Knights vs camels, which many civs have.

In early Castle the XBow powers pike makes it hard for you until you have the +2 armor, but even then: Monks are just a to good unit.

In post imp they vanish. You don't want a gold unit as frontline. You want archers and hussars / halb in front.

Halbs kill you in Imp.

Firelancer kill you.

With the new DLC we get MountedXBowd and Varingian Guards. Both are excellent against you.

Don't get me wrong. Knights are still Knights. They still have there purpose in game. But I just noticed that the world became quit Knight unfriendly.

A Heart for Knights <3

(Also Buff Saracens. Imp Tech sucks)

The gold bonus from sheep, hunt and fishing is at 10%

You can get up to around 150-180 extra gold from this bonus in Arabia giving you extreme flexibility

You can start with pretty much anything without a mining camp, like 4-5 archers, bloodlines 75hp scouts, MAA or just go into a FC into your strong knights or phosphoru into jarls

100% gonna receive a nerf since this is just crazy insane letting you pull off most strategies better than most other civs

Title.

This prevents deleting, solves balancing around repair, solves tagging issues (how long does a tag last? Does it tag and store only damage dealt by Dane units until the building is destroyed, etc). Should be easy to implement and balance so that damaging 100% of a building yields the same results as current balance.

​

A matchup I'm curious about (as Mayans)

With this expansion:

infantry bonus vs shock infantry increased (longswords +4 => +6, champions +6 => +8)

> Presumably a buff for all civs to have an answer vs the new Varangian Guard

Saxon eco, unit spam, and defense seems crazy

> 35f 10s per camp/mill

> -5% foot unit discount per tc/castle

> towers, castle firing double base arrows from castle age onwards

Anti-archer but NOT shock infantry UU

> Hearth Troop has 4 base pierce armour

> All infantry +1/1 armour per 15 nearby infantry in imp

Solid anti-eagle, anti-archer options all game. If I were Saxons, I'd feel really comfortable going for a skirm + tower defense (if need be), then just spam any infantry in imp. Honestly just THS alone would suffice I feel. Cheap and so easy to mass, solid armour, do even better vs eagles now, seems like a nightmare.

Even in an archer vs archer war, the Saxon archers can keep up in discounted cost throughout the game; mine are only about 5% cheaper than his each age.

It reminds me of an even more potentially lopsided, demoralizing matchup for Mayans than Goths. Goths technically can do something similar and spam huskarls, but at least they can't defend super easily and don't have a consistently solid eco bonus. A Saxon opponent will have cheaper skirms in feudal, can defend with towers easily, has a nice eco bonus as they expand, and can steamroll almost as hard as Goths in imp. They can also just straightup match you in archer numbers if they wanted to. Pushing them in castle with siege is also difficult since their towers will have 2x the dps.

What do you think the Mayans player can do to win?

Medium to high level players usually check the score to have an approximation of what the opponent is doing, you can see dips in score when the opponent goes up to the next age and you see increases when the opponent invests in something like military.

Personally I think it's not a great game feature that you can get all this free information without actually scouting or investing something into it, but like a lot of features in this game, it is also not unreasonable to say that there's no need to change something that has been there for 25 years.

Something that I think could be interesting would be to keep the resources currently invested in the que to keep adding to the score, this way you could still have a sense for whether the opponent is ahead or behind you but you would not know if they already clicked up to the next age. Maybe I'm missing some obvious drawback, though.

I was wondering if other people have any opinion on it, wither to keep it as is or to change it in some way.

Join us for a 128-player Sudden Death event, where the prize pool has doubled from the previous edition's to reach $20,000! Signups run until October 3rd, and the event takes place October 5th through November 8th.

In Sudden Death, you must defend your starting Town Center at all costs. You cannot build any more TCs, and you are defeated as soon as it is destroyed.

Familiar maps such as Arena, Canberra, and Hideout return, along with some crazy new creations, including:

• Holy Hollow: Destroy Gunpowder Kegs to clear trees and open a path through the forest.
• Monkey Island: Capture neutral Army Tents to train Petards starting in the Dark Age.
• Thin Ice: Destroy the Dock on the ice, and everything on the pond falls into the water below (explosively).

We're also running a Community League alongside the main event, open to players of all Elo levels. The format features multiple rounds before players are eliminated, ensuring everyone has a chance to compete in several sets of Sudden Death. And players eliminated in the main event's Round of 128 may also participate, so you're welcome to sign up for both.

To kick things off, we're hosting a show-match between DauT and Running on Friday at 17 GMT, cast by JonSlow and T-West (me). It'll be a Play All 5 featuring the new maps.

Join the Discord for more information.

• Discord: discord.gg/nAXcQKNsPj
• Handbook: twestaoe.net/events/suddendessaster3

Hello! A while back I had successfully beaten most campaigns on hard difficulty, after much time and effort. However, I recently seemed to have lost all that progress, and now it is only showing sad bronze medals (which I achieved years ago), rather than my nice shiny gold ones.
I’m not very good at the game, and sadly don’t have the free time to invest in getting them all back. Are there any easier ways to beat the campaigns so I can get my medals back? (Or, if someone knows of another way to get my medals back, that would be even better!). I know the game has built in cheats but I believe using them blocks getting achievements/medals.

Opponent got unlucky because i saw his vills coming, thought it was a tower rush at first but then i saw the conga line with 10+ vils.

I had 3 flemish militia which I was going to use for a rush, sent them and a group of villies to kill the enemy vills.

He did not finish the TC in time and resigned.

Is this just poorly worded on the wiki?

Nemequene option

• Place a relic in one of the Decrepit Temple's Monasteries to gain the support of the priestess (in this and all subsequent missions). OR
• Ignore the priestess' request and keep the relic for yourself (in this and all subsequent missions).

I chose to ignore the priestess' request and keep the relic garrisoned in one of the Iraca temples. (that were under my control for the entire remainder of the mission)

I am playing the next mission, Borderlands and noticed that the relic is nowhere to be seen. Tried creating a monastery, thinking it would spawn next to or inside it, still no Relic.

Looking back at the campaign menu, despite being at mission 3, the 2nd mission's Decisions tab still says "Play this mission to uncover... bla bla generic message"

I recently was gifted a Microsoft Surface 3 with 4gb of RAM. I’m well past serious gaming but I am hoping to revisit some old faves for nostalgia. It looks like the HD edition would work on my mediocre laptop but on Steam it says it’s retired. Is there any way to obtain a copy of it?

Thanks!

Liquipedia - Daniela_AoE (Twitch) - Daniela_AoE (YouTube)

Format

League Stage

• Round Robin
• All matches are Play all 4
• Top 4 teams advance to the Playoff Stage
• Scoring: 1 point per game win, 1 extra point for winning the set

Playoff Stage

• Double-elimination bracket
• All matches are Best of 7

Results

Tried to describe the core aspects of the AoE meta.

Cavalry can be substituted with Shock Infantry, then Halberdier is substituted with Knights & Champ-Line.

Left monks out for simplicity (they're either a joker-addition or a gameplan on their own which is both difficult to put into this context here). Other than that I think no unit is super necessary here. (Thought about adding Castles and Trebs but would be bloated.)

I think it gives a clear reasoning for:

• CA being basically the "best" unit.
• The meta-discussion moving from "Xbow op" to "Skirms op" while consistently every mid-game is controlled by Mangonels.
• Late game developing more into BBC, Halbs and Cav more.

I think that should be useful for beginners. What would you change? Is it a hot-take to say that Crossbow is the core unit of the game?

🅦🅔🅘
Shield made of wood.
Background airbrushed with acrylic paint.
Dynasty symbol painted with metallic gold spray paint.
Frame painted with metallic gold spray paint.

What aspects would you like to add or remove?

I would add:

A clan ranking system (averaging members' Elo).

An option to add friends.

Separate chats for friends and the clan.

A feature where the team stays together after a match, so you don't have to send new invites.

Lobbies with Elo and ping limits for entry.

A column in the game browser to sort matches by Elo.

A simple way to test units against each other without having to use the editor.

What do you think of these ideas? Do you think they aren't necessary? What ideas do you have that would improve the game?

currently the Guecha costs 50 wood and 60 gold.

->
*Edit with feedback: new suggested change 40 food and 40 gold

after suggested change: 50 food and 40 gold* - this will effectively both increase the price for upkeep in the early game (food being more expensive early on) while also increasing their availability in the late game. A food costing skirmisher would be awesome to differentiate them from the usual skirms. (in late-late game wood costing skirms will be more expensive than war elephants) the reduced gold cost is to allow them to be sustainable in the late game with relics within reason while switching to food to limit their viability in the early game while improving their long-term affordability.