Donjon range indicators are extremely inaccurate at the corners

Game information

  • Build: 101.101.50292.0 6958215
  • Platform: Steam
  • OS: Windows 10

Issue experienced

The Donjon range indicator is very inaccurate in the corners. If you look at the screenshot below, you can see that the length of the straight part of the range indicator is 10 tiles, when in fact it should be 2 tiles to match the width of the Donjon. Therefore, the range indicator is much further away from the Donjon than it should be at its corners. You can have a unit standing entirely inside the range indicator, near the corner, but the enemy Donjon doesn’t shoot at it.

Frequency of issue

100% of the time (always)

Reproduction steps

Here are the steps to reproduce the issue:

  1. In the Game settings, turn on the range indicator. Specifically, I have “Building Range Indicator” set to “Always Show”, and I have checked “Player Color On Building Range Indicator”.
  2. Also turn on the Terrain Grid Display so it is more clear what is going on.
  3. Play a custom scenario where an enemy AI starts in Feudal Age and has one Donjon on flat terrain. It will be unupgraded, so it has a range of 8. Place a unit of your own that won’t immediately die to Donjon fire.
  4. Observe that the length of the straight part of the range indicator is 10 tiles when it should be 2 tiles to match the width of the Donjon.
  5. Observe that your unit can stand in the corner of the range indicator without being shot by the Donjon, like my screenshot below shows.
  6. While you’re at it, I recommend double checking all ranged buildings to see if any of them also have bugs: Harbors, Kreposts, Town Centers, Castles, Watch Towers, Guard Towers, Keeps, Bombard Towers, and there are probably more available in the scenario editor. On flat terrain, every range indicator should consist of 4 straight lines and 4 quarter-circles, and the length of each straight line should be equal to the length of the building.

As always, please let me know if someone on the development team is looking at this bug report; it really helps motivate me to know that I’m not sending messages into a black hole!

Expected Result

The length of the straight part of every range indicator should match the length of the building. A unit standing inside the range indicator of an enemy building should have the possibility of getting fired on by the building.


In this screenshot, you can see that the length of the straight part of the range indicator is 10 tiles when it should be 2 tiles. When my Coustillier stands in the position shown, which is inside the range indicator, the Donjon cannot hit it because it is more than 8 tiles away from the corner of the Donjon.

Game recording

I think you can just look at the screenshot I provided and tell there’s a bug, but here’s a recorded game just because your instructions say you want it.

aoe2de_donjon_range.aoe2record (380.4 KB)


I also find most of the range indicators built into the game to be inaccurate. Any of the mod range indicators found in the mod shop work much better than the DE inbuilt ones do and I highly recommend those over the DE ones. The range indicators seem to calculate distance differently than the buildings do when firing arrows.

But I think those mods are just modified graphics for the buildings, so they will never be able to account for hills or range upgrades. The in-game feature is already way better than the mods and I’m glad the developers added it!

The ingame feature is now identical to how Mandala worked regarding most buildings

I think the only inconsistency that is left over may be the Krepost or Donjon. Don’t have evidence to confirm tho.

I have also observed that the rounded rectangles are incorrect for donjon, krepost, harbour and towers. The straight portion of the rounded rectangle must be as long as the width of the building. This is true for TC and castles. They have 4 width straight sections and the rest is circular. However

  1. for towers the straight section is 3 tiles long instead of 1.
  2. for krepost and harbour the the straight section is 5 tiles long instead of 3.
  3. for donjon the straight section is ridiculously 10 tiles long instead of 2.

This is fire tower in Portugese 3 campaign, very artistic one.


Thanks for the report, this issue is being tracked by our team.

1 Like

It looks like the developers fixed the Donjon range indicators. Thank you!!

This issue hasn’t been resolved yet completely. There are still several issues.
First let me start with the expectations. The desired shape of the range indicator needs to be a rounded rectangle with the straight section as wide as the building. Further, the four quadrant arcs need to have the same radius as the range of the building. In the following image, w is the width of the building and r is the range.
Rounded rectangle

The following information is for patch: 101.101.53347.0 7314341

  1. The Town Center correctly has w=4 and r =6.
  2. Unupgraded castle correctly has w=4 and r=8. However, researching fletching/bodkin arrow/bracer/crenelations incorrectly increases the straight section instead of the curved one. So a typical 8+3 range castle has w=10 and r=8. (expected (w, r)=(4, 11)).
  3. Donjons has w=4 and r=7 (expected (w, r)=(2, 8)). This is much better than what was present earlier but is still inaccurate. With fletching, we have (w, r)=(6, 7). With bodkin arrow: (w, r)=(2, 10) correctly, and with bracer (w, r)=(4, 10).
  4. Towers have (w, r) = (3, 7). Even weirder things happen with tower with blacksmith upgrades. With fletching, (w, r)=(2, 8); and it suggests that towers have 8.5 range. With bodkin we have (w, r)=(4, 8); again suggesting that they have 9.5 range. Finally with bracer, they have (w, r)=(3, 10). Of course the expected result is that w=1 and r=8,9,10,11 respectively.
  5. With Koreans UT Eupseong, after bodkin, the towers should have 12 range. In this case we have (w, r)=(1, 11.5). So again the range indicator shows half less range. With bracer, we get perfect circle i.e. (w, r)=(0, 13.5).
  6. Krepost have (w, r)=(5, 6). With fletching, bodkin and bracer, this becomes (w, r)=(7, 6), (w, r)=(5, 8) and (w, r)=(5, 9) respectively. Harbours also have the same behaviour. For both of them w=3 and r equal to their range is the expected behaviour.
  7. With Lithuanian UT Hill forts, TC’s have (w, r)=(2, 9). This is again incorrect.

I like the fact that the range indicator has been reused for Folwark with (w, r)=(11, 0). I would end this post with a screenshot of a castle being unable to shoot at a unit clearly inside the range indicator.

I don’t understand the reason for the inconsistently varying shape of the range indicator. I doubt that the person who made the range indicator understands how building ranges work in the game engine.


Good explanation, hopefully they fix it that way

Hi @Haladon
Thanks a lot for the very detailed information, i will forward it to our team.

1 Like