UPDATE: Thank you for your patience. We've spent some additional time investigating desyncs and have updated this Open Beta with four fixes. Please take a look and let us know what you think!

Patch 5.5 is ready for Open Beta! Thank you for your ongoing support and participation as it is fundamental in ensuring that builds are stable and ready for Live release.

In this Open Beta we have implemented password protected lobbies, improved performance and addressed some additional community issues. We are looking forward to hearing from you and we will continue to monitor the forums for your feedback. Here is the new Open Beta discussion thread.


Stability and Performance Improvements:

• Performance optimizations should increase frame rates up to 15%
  
• Researching spies during treaty should no longer causes a desync
  
• Extremely long games should no longer desync due to high turn counts
  
• Quitting via ALT+F4 should no longer cause a desync
  
• Resigning but staying in game should no longer desync after remaining players save/load
  
• The desync message should no longer appear over the post game screen

Community Focused Bug Fixes:

• Hosts are able to set a password for their lobby
  
• Audio for notifications should no longer overlap and cause a loud noise
  
• Audio for garrisoning / un-garrisoning should no longer overlap
  
• Lobby civ pools should now be consistent for each host player
  
• Lobby civ pools should now display the conquerors civilizations correctly
  
• Lobby maps should now display random special and real world at the top of the list
  
• Lobby maps no longer displays random special twice in the list
  
• Lobby maps now selects DLC3 Random Real World maps correctly when appropriate
  
• The password checkbox should now remain when changing datasets
  
• Navigating through aoe.net should now correctly prompt the password popup (when needed)

Additional Balance Improvements:

• Magyars no longer need to build a blacksmith to receive their free blacksmith upgrades
  
• Magyars now receive Siege Engineers
  
• Magyar Scout Cavalry, Light Cavalry and Hussar cost -15% (up from -10%)
  
• Magyars Recurve Bow now adds +1 attack and +1 range (up from +1 range)
  
• Indians no longer have the Arbalest upgrade
  
• Malay Karambit Warrior have +1 attack
  
• Fire ships have -1 pierce armor
  
• Fast Fire ships have -1 pierce armor
  
• Viking warship discount changed to -15%, -15%, -20% (up from -10%, -15%, -20%)
  
• Italians fishing ships now cost -15 wood (down from -25 wood)