So it goes that the latest ES patch to Age of Empires III has caused the map to stop working. Units do not spawn or something of the sort. I was pretty sure that was going to happen, have quite a good idea of what caused it and how to fix it.

But I think it’s safe to call it a close for now. Given that the 2nd Expansion is due to be released soon, there is no point to create another version, just for it to be abandoned yet again as everyone leaves the 1st x-pack. Then again, I honestly do not feel up to following ES’s every little (but FW-fatal) change with a new version of the map. -_-

One nice thing about this though is the fact that this wipes out all FW clones as well, which were based on FW 1.x and caused OOS. Reason being is that FW 1.x never had its code scrambled or hidden - therefore anyone could freely edit it. Hence why I scrambled the code from 2.x onwards for those wondering or asking for the released source. If I were to release FW again, the modded versions would simply not work in the presence of patch 1.04, thus leaving only the real one standing. That’s a wishful thinking though as I do not even have the game anymore.

On the other hand, there are other maps you can try - from what I can tell in the ladder stats, Castle Blood seems to be taking off fine (it has no spawn or special triggers). AOE3Racer and Cannon Fodder are also not as “trigger-heavy” as Fort Wars and may not have taken the patch changes as hard. If anyone tries these maps on Patch 1.04 - let me know how it goes!