Microsoft’s Age of Empires: Castle Siege just updated to Version 1.13 and added an entirely new feature that aims to add a bit more relevance to the game’s Alliances (which are basically teams or clans that players can join but before now offered very little reward for doing so).
The new feature, Wonders, allows for the creation of up to three special in-game items that grant unique bonuses to all of the members of the Alliance who created it. The Alliance leader gets to choose which Wonder is created and then each member must complete tasks, such as donating resources or simply winning battles, to finish its construction.
The three available Wonders right now are Kizhi Pogost, Basilica of San Vitale, and the Tower of London, each providing different boosts. Kizhi Pogost will assist in defending a player’s civilization, Basilica of San Vitale boosts resources and gold, and the Tower of London grants the player some assistance while attacking someone else.
To take advantage of these boosts and participate in the building of the Wonders, a new building, embassy, has been introduced to the game and can be purchased from within the Military category of the in-game store. Once built (after two days of waiting or a lot of gold) the embassy will give access to a Wonder’s monument which can be placed around a user’s city and activated to turn on the associated Wonder’s boosts.
Here are the specific details on each Wonder:
Kizhi Pogost
Level 1
- Brace the walls: Grants a bonus to health of all walls for duration of power.
Level 2
- Sound the alarm: When your keep is first damaged, all inactive patrol points and guard houses activate, guard house deploy time shortens, and a squad of engineers deploys from the keep.
- Advance Scouting: Allows a player to see traps during castle scout phase. Traps will become invisible again once combat begins.
Basilica of San Vitale
Level 1
- Trade Envoy: The daily gold reward to roads is increased.
Level 2
- Expropriation: Extra pennants are awarded when attacking a building that pennants can be looted from.
- Expansion: Farms, mills and quarries all produce extra resources.
Tower of London
Level 1
- Raise the colors: Decoy objects can be deployed during attacks. Enemy troops in range will attack the decoy until it is destroyed. Surviving decoy objects remain in the defender’s castle for 24 hours to remind them of your victory.
Level 2
- Poison the well: Defending troops (except for relief forces) receive a penalty to health and damage.
- Reserve force: Allows for extra troops to be deployed at the end of the fight.
The embassy and Wonders are now available on all versions of Age of Empires: Castle Siege, including the iOS and Android versions which are exceptional for allowing players to sign in with their Xbox Live account to activate cloud saves and unlock Xbox Achievements on their iOS and Android devices. Age of Empires: Castle Siege has been getting a fair amount of support and updates across all platforms since its launch and this introduction of Wonders will go a long way in improving the game’s playability though there are still some more obvious improvements that need to be made such as the much-needed addition of a fullscreen mode on the Windows 10 version and the surprisingly absent ability to attack people on the Friends List.
Have you downloaded Age of Empires: Castle Siege for your device yet? How would you like to see it improve going forward? Let us know your suggestions in the comments below.
