AOE3 - Public Update Preview - April Update

[EliteRifleman]

Hello Explorers!

With today’s launch of the Public Update Preview, we’re making the first build available for an early hands look at the work being done for the upcoming April Update. As part of this process, we’ll be updating the build often with additional fixes, so this is the thread to watch – this is where we’ll provide any notes or changes that are worth paying attention to, and we’ll update that information as newer builds come online. Keep an eye on this thread for more information throughout the Public Update Preview.

Below is a list of preliminary fixes we are prepping for this release. Please note that not all potential fixes/items are guaranteed to be in the final update, as we are still actively testing everything and may need to adjust or remove items if they are not ready. Additionally, this is not a holistic list, and some additional items may end up in our final release.

Quick reminders -
For common questions and answers, go here FAQ
To learn how to contact our Support team, go here Support How-To
As with all updates, certain Mods may no longer function as the underlying game code has changed. If you are experiencing issues please try disabling all Mods first to see if that addresses your issue as the Mod may need to be updated by the creator to work with the latest build

Game

Stability & Performance
Added Asset pre-loading improvements, allowing the game to use extra memory and loading times to increase stability.
Added checks to help prevent crashes caused by UI mods.
Fixed a rare desync.

UI
Fixed issue where ping/flare placed outside of camera view would not display a visual effect in the world.
Added a filter option to only show Co-Op Battles in the multiplayer lobby.
Fixed issue where names of random maps, map sets, and Co-op scenarios would incorrectly show in in the host's language (instead of the client’s language) in client lobbies. (Custom scenarios will still use the file name).
Campaign loading screen - fixed occasional string displayed in multiple fonts.
QoL - Game Rules are now displayed within Multiplayer Lobbies
The lobby's Game Rules can now be viewed in a tooltip by hovering the cursor over the "i" icon, next to the Lobby Name & Game Mode.
For example: Treaty Time & Blockade status are now stated in this tooltip if the Game Rules are set to Treaty.
QoL - Improved display of Game Rules in Multiplayer & Skirmish Loading Screen and within the Game Summary, within matches.
QoL - Relocating the expanded mini map button so that it won't clash with other UI.
QoL - Improved expanded mini map UI behaviour so it won't clash with other UI.
Fixed height issue in the Player Summary menu where Players were getting cut off.
British HC Card “Siege Archery” no longer incorrectly displays it affects Rangers.

Scenario Editor
Free camera mode now allows to zoom out as far as before (this was incorrectly affected by Photo Mode in the previous update).

Settings
Hotkey bindings added for flare type menu.
Hotkey for ‘Select Flare Type’ is bound by default to Ctrl-Mouse2Down (Ctrl+RMB).
This resolves previous conflict with the Alt-RightClick Attack Move (Alt+RMB).

Mods
Home City files, tactics files and the UI tech tree data can now be additively modded. As an example the British Home City file can be additively modded with homecitybritish.mods.xml.

Civilization Balance
GENERAL
Culverin: Adjusted as follows
Now inflicts 2x damage to Buildings
Now inflicts 2x to Gatling Camels (down from 4x)
Akan Cocoa Beans: Now improves Cherry Orchard gather rates by 10% (down from 30%)

SPANISH
UNITS AND BUILDINGS
Missionary: Population cost removed (Build Limit of 10 remains)
CARDS
Unction (II): Moved to Age 1; no longer ships a Missionary; Aura no longer improves Artillery or Ships; aura damage improvement reduced to 2.5% (from 4.5); aura range increased to 34 (from 24); ‘range ring’ adjusted accordingly (Note: Max improvement is now +28% attack, down from 55.3%)
Spanish Gold (III): Reduce crate to 300 coin (from 350)
Armada (III): Now also enables different War Ships to train certain Military Units
INF 10 Rodeleros (IV): Increased to 14
13 Rodeleros (IV): Increased to 16
[NEW] INF 7 Lancers (IV): Replaces the current “7 Lancers” and “6 Lancers” shipments
[NEW] TEAM 1 Falconet (III, 200c): Simple shipment of a Falconet to the entire team.
[NEW] TEAM 1 Heavy Cannon (IV, 500c): Simple shipment of a Heavy Cannon to the entire team.
[NEW] Marvelous Year (III): “Settlers train and work significantly faster for 365 seconds. A marvelous year, Viva España!”
Current Training Time Improvement: -27.5%
Current Gathering Speed Improvement: +20%
[NEW] House of Trastamára (II): “Arrives fast! Your next Age-up is cheaper and faster the more shipments you have received in your CURRENT AGE.”
For each card that arrived after the last completed Age-up
Next Age-up time improved by -8.5%
Next Age-up cost reduced by 100 resources
Effects apply once to the NEXT Age-up only
Progress is reset with each completed Age-up
[NEW] Peninsular Guerrillas (IV): “Improves Ranged Infantry attack and enables them to see the location of enemies they’ve recently damaged.”
Damage improvement: 25%
Revealer: Has 24 LOS and lasts 3 seconds
[NEW] Viceroyalty of New Spain (III): “Ships 2 Haciendas Wagons that can transform into Haciendas which Settlers may gather resources from or help spawn Cows, Settlers, or powerful Soldados at.”
[NEW] Reconquista (II): “Ships 1 Conquistador for each 5 Archaic Infantry you have lost (up to a maximum of 10).” All Hand Infantry & Foot Archers are Archaic Infantry
[NEW] Liberation March (III): “All infantry and cavalry train and move faster.” This card replaces Fencing School and Riding School
[NEW] Nuestras Señoras (IV, 2000c): “Ships 2 Mighty Battleships!”
[NEW] INF 1 Battleship (IV, 1000c): “Ships a Mighty Battleship!”
The changes to Unction card intend to considerably reduce its significance in the late-game (paving the way for powerful new cards) and to make it less difficult to use.

Random Maps
Map Updates
Horn:
Fixed an issue that prevented players from accessing the water in games with more than 2 teams.
Lake Victoria:
Fixed an issue that could cause a native settlement not to spawn properly.
Plymouth:
Fixed an issue where teammates would spawn too close together in games with 3 or 4 teams.
Siwa Oasis:
Adjusted team player placement so that players begin farther from the edge of the map in supremacy games and adjusted how resources are distributed around the map.
Unknown:
Added new starting wagons, bonus scouts, and overall increased randomness for you to discover.
Ensured players always start with 2 mines near their Town Center in treaty games.

[Plutonic]

Good time to ask for artillery pfp's I guess

[EliteRifleman]

RIP Spain imo.

[Nightingale]

Where are the hausa and ethopia nerf ?
Where are the lakota and haud buff ?
What did spain do wrong ?

[Plutonic]

Apparently Spain needed more things in common with Mexico besides the language
Interjection always with the AoM spirit

[fei123456]

Disappointed that they bring nothing new here, while destroying a balanced and flexible Spain. Spanish gold was a talent idea, but they denied it and bring dumb new shipments.

And where's the new civ? Where're enhancements to Haud and Lakota?

[Nightingale]

I prefer the old spain ngl

[iron_turtle]

Damn, spain is unrecognisable now. Haciendas and soldados too!

[gibson]

Not sure why everyones surprised, this is like the 4th civ to get a big rework.

[Zeus]

Every patch there is a Spain nerf. Spanish gold consistently gets nerf. RIP spain

[EliteRifleman]

[Miyawaki Sakura]

Unction nerf is quite a big.
The logistician play would also have been weakened.

[helln00]

Nobody expects the Spanish PUP

what a weird mix of changes, they have kinda split the unction buff into 2 cards now, with that age 4 infantry card that gives +25% damage lol

Those team artillery cards though, seem pretty spicy for team games.

The unction changes, eh, I fear they kinda made to combo with logistician

Missionary no longer costing pop is nice, the larger aura range is nice too

That New year card effect lasts for 6 mins lol - I think thats a bit busted.

The faster age up card combos well with logistician play as well since you will be sending lots of little shipments

[Vladimatt]

Spain is really a solid civ so it probably didn't need a rework, but the civ is also a little boring imo with their builds so I'm actually pretty excited for some of these changes, should make for more interesting gameplay.

Unction changes are a little weird, personally I was hoping they would find a way to make it more interesting and interactive instead of increasing the aura range(which makes it even more hands-off), it's always felt out of place in this game and not aesthetically pleasing. example: mansabdars are cool because you see the different uniform, you see the unit fighting on the frontlines with other units so it makes sense, and you could focus them if you paid really close attention, unction is basically just having your missionaries sit close by your army and letting them afk which feels weird to me as a concept in aoe3.

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

The perpetual spanish gold nerf is really sad. It was a great card, and a symbol of the EP era too... Now it's basically useless.

[Squamiger]

Spain is really a solid civ so it probably didn't need a rework, but the civ is also a little boring

what do you mean, spain is an extremely interesting civ. I feel like these changes are just going down the typical DE path of making the civ needlessly complicated / less accessible. which ultimately isn't as bad as everyone assumes at first, because the result is usually just that people ignore all the random stuff with funny names and play the civ like before, it just feels like clutter though.

like with ethiopia, since ive started learning how to play it i've realized you can basically just ignore all the age up techs that cost influence in the monasteries except the fast age one. they are almost never worth it over shipping mercenaries no matter what age you're in. so the techs just become clutter that you have to filter out. needless complexity. The design of the pre-DE civs is just better because everything fits and everything is tuned on very fine margins, except for a few cards here and there

all that said, I don't think these changes will affect how spain gets played very much. spanish gold still seems viable. unction might have some utility now with logistician in age 2, which literally no one uses anyways. the ranged infantry attack card in age 4 will just replace what unction does, which is a damn shame because part of spain's identity is not having any ranged bonus cards. they just couldnt help themselves I guess. the team artillery cards are probably the biggest change but who cares about team balance anyways

[I_HaRRiiSoN_I]

Surprised we didn't see dogs get a bark attack like griots

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

all that said, I don't think these changes will affect how spain gets played very much. spanish gold still seems viable.

Now you need a fourth shipment to break even on spanish gold compared to a 1000 ress shipment. That pushes your return on investment back for at least one minute.

[Realife_Brahmin]

Team 1 falc seems very strong for a timing attack in 3v3 or 4v4.

[I_HaRRiiSoN_I]

After something like 3v fast age card, 5vill, {age} 700w into villager Festival card.i assume now just get better eco return on the festival card than Spanish Goldso the problem is just repla Ed and wasn't a problem to begin with.

Also I've noticed that as build orders and metals are so engrained that new cards have to be super wacky and busted to be considered to replace conventional cards like 3v 700g 700w

[Squamiger]

all that said, I don't think these changes will affect how spain gets played very much. spanish gold still seems viable.

Now you need a fourth shipment to break even on spanish gold compared to a 1000 ress shipment. That pushes your return on investment back for at least one minute.

still good imo, if you want to be aggressive as spain you dont send spanish gold anyways.

[fei123456]

It's said that Spain can send 15 cows, infinite 7 cows, and have 99 vills at 12:00 without map resources.
Every sheep shipment gives you a farm travois. Farm travois can build hacienda (up to 7), haciendas train vills, and vills/sheep in haciendas can boost vill production: is it designed like this, or an unexpected bug?

[Thrar]

Marvelous year producing roughly +15% (considering walking time and market upgrades) for 6 minutes means it's close to 1 extra villager minute for each villager you have.

A villager produces e.g. 33w per minute (with gang saw), so if you're getting it first thing in an FF you're only looking at resources equivalent to 700ish wood gained over the course of 6 minutes - both significantly worse and much slower tempo than sending a resource card.

The train time is harder to calculate. For starters, I'm not sure what it means exactly - is it a 27.5% reduction in train time (so about 3/4) or a 27.5% increase in train speed (which would come out as about 4/5 train time)?
Best case you're getting about 5 extra villagers, over 6 minutes, and you still have to pay for them. A villager on hunt takes about 2 minutes to gather its own cost so overall this portion roughly breaks even resource-wise after 6 minutes, only then you start getting profits.

In other words, I think this card in early age 3 is roughly equivalent to "Gain a resource trickle for the next 6 minutes providing 700 wood (equivalent) total. After 6 minutes, get 5 free villagers."
Sounds like a really slow card. It gets better if you send it later since the gather rate will have a bigger effect, but for an early age 3 eco boost I think it's far worse than Spanish gold even at 300c.

[fei123456]

Marvelous year is designed to be used together with TC wagon age up option. With 2 early TCs you get decent eco boost.
Though, they'd better set Spanish gold to 365 coin for a real marvelous year.

[DNLgibraltar]

Differently from Aztecs, Brits and Inca these cards feel completely random. And for some reason I'm not really excited.

But anyway: I welcome these changes because people have been asking for an update to the europeans. Nice seeing the developers have this commitment.