Age of Mythology: Retold Update 18.7603

Immortal Pillars DLC Coming March 4th!

Embark on a legendary journey in Immortal Pillars, the first expansion for Age of Mythology: Retold! Command divine powers, lead mythical creatures, and build majestic cities as you experience a rich tapestry of Chinese culture and mythology. From its captivating deities to its intricate landscapes, Immortal Pillars expands your strategic possibilities and immerses you in a vibrant, mythological world.  Immortal Pillars is now available for pre-order and launches March 4th!

Key Features at a Glance 

• 12 New Gods: Including Fuxi, Shennong, Nüwa, Gonggong, Zhurong, and more, each offering unique god powers and mythological units. 
• 9-Level Campaign: Immerse yourself in a narrative journey through Chinese mythology.
• Mythical Units: Command creatures such as the Yazi, Zhuque, and Taowu, each with game-changing abilities. 
• 7 New Maps: Explore diverse biomes inspired by China’s iconic landscapes.

Get Early Access to Age of Mythology: Retold on PlayStation 5!

The moment you’ve been waiting for is here – Age of Mythology: Retold is now in Early Access on PlayStation 5! This means anyone who has pre-ordered the Premium Edition has exclusive access to play the base game pantheons, missions, and fun, five days before global launch.

PlayStation 5 Premium Edition Bonuses: 

• Play Age of Mythology: Retold now ahead of the global launch!
• Two exclusive Blessings for the Arena of the Gods mode.
• Plus, get access to the Immortal Pillars expansion releasing on March 4th!

Play Now!

For those who have pre-ordered the Age of Mythology: Retold Premium Edition on PlayStation 5, you can play now ahead of the global launch on March 4^th.

PlayStation 5

Stability & Performance

• Fixed a situation that could cause the main menu UI to disappear on some devices.
• General stability and feature improvements from updates to library versions used by the game.
• Fixed crashes that could occur in some rare situations.
• Minor performance improvements that affect both general gameplay and rendering.
• Updates to network communications to improve network performance.

Localization

• Updates to localization and translations.
• Fixed a bug causing changes in selected UI language to not update as expected in some situations.

Graphics

• Fixed a bug causing monuments to display a different range while placing compared to what is shown after placing.
• Wadjet poison VFX now lasts 5 seconds to match the duration of the poison damage.
• There are many new art and VFX assets to enjoy as part of the latest Chinese Pantheon!

UI

• Many minor updates to the UI in different areas to support both the new Immortal Pillars content and to support additional platform versions of the game.
• Active voice speakers are now shown in the UI.
• Village Centers and Town Centers now have the same site-based commands available.
• Updates to improve accessibility for users who need to use font size changes and narration to engage with the game.
• Updated options in the Skirmish UI to provide more choices.
• Updated the default filters for multiplayer lobby browsing and fixed some minor bugs with how the filters behaved.
• Improvements to many areas of the game to make online IDs more visible.
• Minor fixes to correct some replay UI that appeared incorrectly in some situations.
• Improved clarity in some advanced rollover tooltips.
• When in Photo Mode you can no longer move the camera below the terrain.
• Additional areas of the game now support narration when narration is enabled.
• Players joining and leaving lobbies are now narrated when narration is enabled.
• Fixed a bug causing tooltips to be narrated during cinematics in some situations.
• Potentially researchable upgrades available in later ages displayed in the UI no longer disappear when saving and reloading a game in some situations.
• The loading screen layout has been adjusted to make long player names fully visible.

Hotkeys

• New hotkeys for the new game elements as part of the Immortal Pillars DLC.

Controller/Xbox

• Unavailable quick-action menu items are now shown as unavailable.
• Training buttons will now only display as disabled if all selected buildings have their queue full, rather than just one of them.
• Norse D-pad Quick Find interactions include Berserks in the Longhouse and Huskarls in the Hill Fort.
• The radial menu will refresh when a stance is changed, allowing continued use without closing and re-opening the menu.
• Added a button prompt for garrisoning fishing ships in docks.
• An option to control whether healers should be included in military D-pad Quick Find was added.
• A button to open the Diplomacy UI is now available in the controller Pause Menu.
• D-pad commands in the Find Menu no longer close the menu.
• The controller version of Site Menu commands now prioritizes idle workers.
• Quick Select will no longer occasionally select units inside transports or other unusable places.

Fixes

• Units and buildings with multiple attacks per ranged attack cycle will now re-target to a nearby target and continue, rather than canceling once their initial target dies before all attacks are fired.

Developer Note: Fafnir is a particularly noteworthy unit that benefits from this fix.

• Polyphemus’s ability no longer damages flying units but now damages animals of set and heroes.
• Greek Villagers now prioritize wood and gold equally upon completing a drop site, rather than prioritizing gold over wood.
• Norse Gatherers & dwarves no longer prioritize food or gold over wood upon completing a drop site; they now have equal priority.

Developer Note: This should hopefully address frustrations around completed ox carts near wood lines, which resulted in villagers going to further away food sources.

• Dwarves now prioritize gold over food and wood upon completing a drop site.
• The Troll special attack can now be used to attack Automatons.
• Fixed a bug where Freyr God Pack myth units were not tagged as myth units that generate favor.
• Updates and improvements to the AI to work with all the new additions in the Immortal Pillars DLC.
• Updates to AI behavior, including improvements to AI use of Earthquake and Implode.
• Fixed a bug allowing players to attack buildings that were being deconstructed.
• Using the “Send a Hero” command on a relic will no longer call a Hero already holding a relic.
• Fixed a bug causing villagers to attempt to garrison into buildings with too many existing garrisoned units.
• Atlantean human units will now have the option to become heroes, regardless of which other human units, heroes or otherwise, are selected.

Campaigns

• Minor updates to the tutorial related to prompts when using a controller.
• Minor updates to Fall of the Trident mission 1 to adjust world space prompts.
• Minor updates to fix issues with triggers in Fall of the Trident missions 3 and 4.

General

• Deathmatch: God power cooldown durations have been increased by +50%.

Developer Note: Deathmatch is seeing a lot of god-power casting, more so than originally intended. This change aims to stagger them out a bit more.

Units:

• Siege: Crush armor has been increased across the board, see specific pantheon for the details.

Developer Note: This was done to make siege-on-siege damage less volatile.

Technologies:

• Heavy unit line upgrades: damage increase reduced from +20% → +15%.
• Champion unit line upgrades: damage increase reduced from +30% → 20%.

Developer Note: The line upgrades have been causing difficulty for players down an age to overcome, bringing them down just a little aims to address this

• Heroes: damage increase from heroic age reduced from +20% → +15%.
• Heroes: damage increase from mythic age reduced from +30% → +20%.

Developer Note: These changes are to keep the dynamic in line between heroes and human soldiers, and keep the numbers easier to understand.

• Crenellations: now also increases tracking of towers similarly to ballistics.

Developer Note: The goal here is to provide more anti-cavalry defense options in the early game.

• Bronze Weapons: cost reduced from 300 food 300 gold → 200 food 200 gold.
• Iron Weapons: cost reduced from 600 food 600 gold → 450 food 450 gold.
• Bronze Armor: cost reduced from 300 food 200 gold → 200 food 150 gold.
• Iron Armor: cost reduced from 500 food 500 gold → 400 food 400 gold.
• Bronze Shields: cost reduced from 300 wood 200 gold → 200 wood 150 gold.
• Iron Shields: cost reduced from 500 wood 400 gold → 400 wood 350 gold.

Developer Note: The cost reduction of the copper upgrades were well received, however the bronze and iron upgrades felt left behind too far to be worthwhile compared to other upgrades, so we are bringing their costs down slightly to make them more worthwhile.

Relics:

Please note that these Relics are accessible without ownership of Immortal Pillars.

• New Relics added with the Immortal Pillars DLC.
  • Xirang: Walls regenerate 10 hitpoints per second.
  • Jade Hare: Myth units move 5% faster.
  • Feather of Jingwei: 0.5 Wood per second trickle rate.
  • Tusk of Dangkang: Summons 2 pigs every 120 seconds.
  • Tail of Fei: Summon 1 fei beast, which respawns every 120 seconds.
  • Feather of Bifang: Human soldiers gain +20% bonus damage vs buildings.
  • Wuhao Bow of Huangdi: Ranged soldiers attacks now snare targets, which slows them by 15%, for 2 seconds.
  • Fur of Boyi: Heroes regenerate 0.25 hitpoints per second.
  • Nine Couldrons: All fortress-type human soldiers have -5% Hack and Pierce vulnerability.
  • Ochre Whip of Shennong: Standard farm upgrades grant an additional 5% farm gather rate. (For a total of 15% additional farm gather rate when having researched flood control.)
  • Five Colored Stone of Nuwa: Repairing cost reduced by -50%.
  • Kui Drum: Heroes deal 0.25% more damage per 1% hitpoints missing.

                      Greek Pantheon

Minor Gods

• Athena: Sarissa (Technology) – hoplite attack range increase reduced from +1 to +0.5.

Developer Note: The range increase keeps on proving to be immensely powerful and hard to overcome even with direct hard-counter units, therefore we are tackling that aspect specifically to bring this technology in line with other similar technologies.

Myth Units

• Scylla (Heroic Age Naval Myth Unit): damage per head reduced from +100% to +50%.

Developer Note: This is to address the general dominance of the Scylla unit on water, relative to the other pantheon’s naval myth units.

Hero Units

• Heracles (Zeus): damage bonus vs myth units increased from 6.5x → 8x.
• Achilles (Hades): damage bonus vs myth units increased from 6.5x → 8x.
• Atalanta (Poseidon): adjusted as follows
  • Damage bonus vs myth units increased from 6.5x → 7x.
  • Anti-flying unit attack damage increased from 5.5 pierce → 6 pierce.
• Hippolyta (Poseidon): has ballistics by default.
• Odysseus (Zeus): has ballistics by default.
• Chiron (Hades): has ballistics by default.

Developer Note: This is to help them deal with myth units better, ensuring they are consistently able to attack them, particularly fast and flying myth units.

Siege Units

• Petrobolos: crush armor increased from 50% → 65%.
• Helepolis: crush armor increased from 50% → 65%.

                        Egyptian Pantheon

Major Gods

• Skin of the Rhino (Technology): Villager hack & pierce armor vulnerability reduced from -30% to -25%.

Developer Note: This upgrade was allowing Ra villagers to become near un-raidable, this small nerf aims to address this somewhat.

Minor Gods

• Osiris: Son of Osiris (God Power) – Adjusted as follows
  • Divine damage reduced from 40 → 35. (This is 50.75 divine damage in Mythic Age, and 61.25 divine damage with Iron Weapons researched.)
  • Bonus damage vs myth units reduced from 4x to 3x.

Developer Note: The speed at which Son of Osiris nullifies myth units was immense, making them completely redundant. This change hopes to make myth units not so easily defeated, to keep them relevant for longer even when Son of Osiris is on the field.

• Nephthys: Funeral Rites (Technology) – Gold returned on human soldier and hero death increased from 5 → 8.

Developer Note: This technology felt lackluster and underused, so the effect has been increased.

Human Units

• Chariot Archer: adjusted as follows
  • Pierce damage reduced from 11 → 10.
  • Bonus damage vs infantry increased from 1.25x → 1.5x.
  • Attack range reduced from 20 → 19.
  • Line of sight reduced from 22 → 21.

Developer Note: The Chariot Archer being as fast and long ranged as it is, has been causing a lot of trouble in which it is able to deal with units that are often intended to counter it, such as cavalry or anti-archers. The changes here should make it slightly more geared towards infantry, while letting other unit types have an easier time dealing with this unit.

Siege Units

• Siege Tower: adjusted as follows
  • Crush armor increased from 60% → 65%.
  • Hitpoints increased from 300 → 350.

Developer Note: The aim of buffing the siege tower is to promote more early siege in order to combat booming playstyles more easily, and the siege tower in general was feeling somewhat underused.

• Catapult: crush armor increased from 50% → 60%.

Buildings

• Monument to Priests: adjusted as follows
  • Cost increased from 150 food 150 gold → 200 food 200 gold.
  • Hitpoints increased from 450 → 600.
• Monument to Pharaohs: adjusted as follows
  • Cost increased from 200 food 200 gold → 300 food 300 gold.
  • Hitpoints increased from 450 → 800.
• Monument to Gods: hitpoints increased from 800 → 1200.

Developer Note: The monument favor scaling changes from the previous patch felt fitting, however the other stats of the monuments didn’t quite reflect their new favor rates, so they have been adjusted to be more suited for those rates, increasing in both cost and durability accordingly.

• Migdol Stronghold: cost increased from 400 gold 10 favor → 500 gold 10 favor.

Developer Note: This is to make the stronghold more in line with the relative cost/build time of Egyptians, similar as to what has happened to the Town Center cost changes.

                   Norse Pantheon

Major Gods

Odin

• Human soldier & hero regeneration rate increased from 0.25 → 0.4 per second.

Developer Note: Previous changes left Odin’s regen rate on the lower end, now that Odin is performing somewhat poorly compared to the other 3 Norse, we are bringing it back up a little.

Thor

• Hammer of Thunder (Technology): cost increased from 100 gold 5 favor → 125 gold 10 favor.

Developer Note: This should make it less viable to researching this technology early, therefore limit the early game economic spike of the Thor dwarven armory build slightly.

Minor Gods

• Heimdall: Undermine (God Power) – adjusted as follows
  • Now deals -75% damage vs settlements under construction.
  • Damage increased from 5 to 7.5 crush.

Developer Note: The undermine god power has seen very little use outside of simply casting it on a town center that’s being built to stop it from completing. This change should hopefully steer it more towards other use-cases.

• Forseti: Healing Spring (God Power) – adjusted as follows
  • Heal radius increased from 22 to 25.
  • Heal rate while in combat reduced from 50% to 25%.

Developer Note: These changes are aimed at making the healing spring less good at being cast forward during an engagement, as that was never the intended use-case of the spring.

• Freyja: Forest Fire (God Power) – adjusted as follows
  • Now works on trees that were already chopped down.
  • Attack speed increased from 0.5 to 0.1. (So it attacks 10 times per second, rather than 2 times per second.)
  • Damage reduced from 2 divine to 0.4 divine per attack. (These forest fire changes should hopefully make forest fire more consistent.)

Developer Note: This is an adjustment based on a bug-fix allowing forest fire to be cast on already-chopped trees. We will be keeping a close eye on how this turns out, as it might be greatly improving the strength of the god power, since more trees that are closer to villagers will now also be burned, causing more damage.

• Tyr: Fimbulwinter (God Power): adjusted as follows
  • Duration reduced from 36 → 31 seconds.
  • Fimbulwinter number of wolves spawned is reduced.

Developer Note: We are aware of fimbulwinter having a much larger impact in games with more players, and are looking into addressing this.

• Njord: Vikings (Technology) – Now also gives Raiding cavalry +1 divine damage.

Developer Note: This technology was often ignored. Adding divine damage seems like a nice way to make this technology more worthwhile, particularly coming from a raiding cavalry early game.

Myth Units

• Troll (Forseti): Bonus damage vs Myth Units reduced from 3x to 2x.

Developer Note: This change is aimed at making other myth units more viable into a massing of trolls, which were invalidating myth play into them once massed.

Human Units

• Dwarf: Adjusted as follows
  • Gold gather rate reduced from 1.06 → 1.02 per second.
  • Hitpoints reduced from 60 → 55.

Developer Note: The Norse economy in general has been performing very well, this change aims to bring them in line a little bit, by reducing the gold gather rates and making dwarves slightly more susceptible to raiding.

Siege Units

• Portable Ram: Crush armor increased from 60% → 65%.
• Ballista: crush armor increased from 60% → 65%.

                    Atlantean Pantheon

Major Gods

Gaia

• Economic guild & its upgrades discount reduced from -40% to -35%.

Developer Note: Gaia has been over-performing consistently slightly, so this change aims to reduce her power level just a touch, and to compensate for various other Atlantean-wide changes.

Minor Gods

• Rheia
  • Daktyloi (Technology) – ship heal rate increased from 2 → 3 hitpoints per second.
  • Horns of Consecration (Technology) – adjusted as follows
    • Cost increased from 150 gold → 150 gold 20 favor.
    • No longer gives a favor trickle per town center.
    • Now unlocks Fanatics.
    • Now reduces fanatic train time by -20%.
    • Horns of Consecration is now researchable in the Palace, rather than Town Center.
  • Orichalcum Mail (Technology) – adjusted as follows
    • Cost increased from 125 Gold 15 Favor → 175 Gold 25 Favor.
    • No longer boosts Arcus and Turma armor.
    • Now gives -15% hack vulnerability to all infantry.

Developer Note: Horns of Consecration and Orichalcum mail felt rather underwhelming and didn’t provide much synergy with her other tech, Rheia’s Gift, we hope this rework sparks some new ideas and strategies.

• Helios: Halo of the Sun (Technology) – adjusted as follows
  • Fire siphons attack range increased from +2 to +4.
  • Now also increases fire siphon and fire ship damage by +15%.

Developer Note: This technology felt very underwhelming for the mythic age. Adding in some bonus damage and more range should bring it more in line with other mythic age technologies.

Myth Units

• Caladria (Oceanus): adjusted as follows
  • Burst heal: Hitpoints healed reduced from 100 to 60.
  • Burst heal: Animation length reduced from 4.5 to 4 seconds.

Developer Note: This change is aimed at making the caladria burst heal feel more responsive, but also make them less oppressive.

Hero Units

• Cheiroballista Hero: adjusted as follows
  • Crush armor increased from 50% → 65%.
  • Bonus vs infantry increased from 4x → 5x.

Developer Note: The Cheiroballista has still been performing poorly overall, these changes aim to hopefully make the unit perform better in its intended role, hard-countering infantry.

Siege Units

• Fire Siphon: crush armor increased from 50% → 65%.
• Cheiroballista: adjusted as follows
  • Crush armor increased from 50% → 65%.
  • Bonus vs infantry increased from 4x → 5x.

Buildings

• Mirror Tower (Helios): pierce damage increased from 30 → 35.

Developer Note: The mirror tower felt like it wasn’t able to keep up with fully upgraded normal towers, so a small damage increase seems like a good incentive to use them.

New Immortal Pillars Maps Coming March 4th!

⚠️ Not available until the Immortal Pillars DLC launches on March 4th.

⚠️ You must own the DLC to host games with the new maps.

• Bamboo Grove: You start in a narrow pass within the bamboo forest. Hold the chokepoint, exploit the resources behind your base, and defend against enemy attacks from the front.
• Great Wall: The Great Wall offers a temporary truce. Fortify your defenses and plan your attack before breaking through to the enemy!
• Peach Blossom Land: Players begin together in this mythical paradise, but must venture out into the Peach Blossom Land for resources, or attack early to seize the advantage.
• Qinghai Lake: A mysterious shrine rests upon China’s largest lake, its shallows navigable by land and naval units alike. Capture it to gain an economic bonus.
• Silk Road: With limited resources to gather, players need to capture Trading Posts along the Silk Road which grant resources of your choice. The Trading Posts will stay under your control as long as your units or buildings are nearby.
• Steppe: The generous grassland perimeter offers ample resources, but true power lies in controlling the central open steppe and its vital settlements.
• Yellow River: The Yellow River divides the region and forks in the center to form an island. Shallow crossings offer passage, making attacks predictable and rewarding keen awareness of your opponent. Players must migrate to more fertile banks as the starting resources run dry.

Random Maps

• Polished many of the existing random maps with additional embellishment.

Random Map Scripting

• Added syscalls to automatically estimate the obstruction size of an object and its items, and to subsequently add this size as a buffer to constraints applied to the object.
• Added syscalls for more customized player placement, and allowing multiple locations for each player.
• For additional changes and fixes to the API, please consult the doxygen in the docs folder.
• Added an updated version of the RM library to make use of the new features and changes.

General

• For PC users, PDF documentation about modding Age of Mythology: Retold is in a BANG Documentation folder under the installation directory.
• Doxygen documentation has also been updated.
• Many new game assets are available as part of the Immortal Pillars DLC to use in creating custom maps and mods!
• Fixed various bugs in the alternate editor UI.
• Fixed a bug causing the NPC dialog to appear above other popup elements in the alternate editor UI.
• Control+[number key] can now be used to change the percentage size of the current brush in the editor. Alt+Mouse Scroll can still increase the brush size above the normal limits.
• When using the editor, the game will try to keep the previous water brush size when switching between different water types.
• Updates to the Object Info Panel in the alternate editor UI to fix the trigger list, hide the panel when swapping to a mode using brushes, refresh to show the current state of the selected unit more accurately, and fixed the delete unit button.
• Copy/pasting units in the editor now consider placement checks by default. You toggle the ignore placements option to place anywhere.
• Fixed a bug causing a round brush to appear when interacting with the editor in places where a brush is not expected.
• Added support for modifying player 0 diplomacy settings in the editor.
• New triggers include: Army: Unit Count, Building: In Building Chain, Player: Unit Type In Progress Count, Area: Convert Units Limited, Area: Flash Units, Area: Task Units, Area: Task Units, Army: Ungarrison Contained Units, Army: Add Unit Type in Area, Chinese Favor System: Range Visibility, Player: Bonus Unit Spawning, Player: Building Chain, Player: Building Chain Visibility, Unit: Create Number Group.
• The Advanced Transformation Tool in the editor now includes an option to reset the Y-axis position to match the terrain. Living units that have been moved on the Y-axis using the Gizmo tool can no longer receive movement commands while in the editor.
• New editor functionality, including buttons to load/save camera tracks.
• New Tech KB functions accessible with XS, including kbTechGetID, kbTechGetType, and kbTechGetDataEffectRelativity (replaces kbTechGetDataEffectData2).
• Added new KB functions including kbPlayerGetExtraBuildingEfficiency, kbUnitQueryGetPower, kbUnitIsInBuildingChain, kbUnitIsTemporaryCharmedUnit, kbUnitGetPower, kbUnitsGetPower, kbProtoUnitGetBuildRate, kbProtoUnitGetBuildingChainRadius, kbProtoUnitGetIconPath, kbUnitGetStatFlag, kbDefaultGetProtoStatFlag, kbPlayerGetProtoStatFlag, kbProtoUnitGetActionIDs, kbProtoUnitGetActionNames, kbActionGetName, kbAreaGetIDsByPositionAndRange, kbResourceSetFlag, kbResourceIsFlagSet, kbConvertProtoActionDBIDToEntityActionID.
• Removed KB functions: kbUnitGetActionID, kbResourceSetBlacklisted, kbResourceGetBlacklisted.
• Fixed a bug causing buildings to show incorrectly in the fog of war when custom scaling has been applied.
• Mods containing trigger data modifications are now safe for MP and Ranked.
• Mods containing modifications to the base/default editor UI are now safe for MP and Ranked.

Investigation

As always, we are continuing to track issues reported by the community for future updates.

For other known issues, please visit this page to see what’s being tracked!

Coming Up…

2025 is going to be an exciting year for Age of Mythology: Retold and the party is just getting started! Between this week and next, there’s something for every Myth fan to be excited about. Today’s bug fixes and balance changes are just the beginning of the next step in our journey: we are so proud to bring the amazing Retold experience to a new audience with our PlayStation 5 Early Access. We cannot wait to hear about your first experiences on PlayStation, and are eager to get your feedback about the game.

But that’s not all! If new content is what you’ve been waiting for, we hope you join us next week on March 4th for our global PlayStation 5 launch and the much anticipated release of Age of Mythology: Retold‘s first expansion, Immortal Pillars. If you’ve enjoyed the sneak peeks into the vibrant world of Chinese culture and mythology so far, we have some fantastic news for you. Starting today and going through to launch, some of your favorite content creators will be giving you a sneak preview to the Chinese pantheon, the new gods, and other new additions ahead of release!

DISCLAIMER

Please note that this list is subject to change and should not be considered a comprehensive list of all the known issues we’re tracking. The above is to inform you of the team’s current priorities, which will change as other issues arise or take precedence.

For the latest updates and announcements, please visit our social channels.