Patch 5.5 has now cleared Open Beta and been promoted to Live!

Thank you to everyone who participated in this long Open Beta and we are thrilled to bring these desync improvements and balance changes to the full community! As always, your feedback has been valuable and your assistance playing multiplayer games has ensured that our desync rates have improved.

The new discussion thread can be found here and we look forward to hearing from you and collecting your feedback!


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 no longer desyncs 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 select 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)

Balance Improvements:

• Magyars no longer need to build a blacksmith to receive 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)