The game went free-to-play in , and development ceased in While Starcraft II faltered, a genre classic began to claw back popularity. The game remains in active development: An August update added two new civilizations and three new campaigns. Each has found a winning strategy in old-school gameplay mixed with sensible technical updates. If the genre is to return to its former glory, however, it needs to do more than tweak the formula that made it successful two decades ago—and developers working on the next big thing agree that the next chapter starts with accessibility.
You walk away feeling like you ran a marathon. Magic is so hardcore, but once the barriers are removed, you can get the same core experience, and let way more people experience it. Age of Empires IV updates the visuals, civilizations, and even narration of its spiritual successor.
Classic RTS fans will still have plenty of massive battles to fight on sprawling fields as they try to expand their empire. Its core gameplay will feel familiar to fans of its predecessors. Neither studio has announced its first project, but both developers mentioned spins on the real-time strategy genre as inspirations. But we could pick one of the gameplay slices and make that as great as possible, or another way we can go is, can we do something on a more massive scale, like an MMORTS?
Competitive multiplayer will remain a focus—every developer I spoke to mentioned it. The minds working on the next golden era of real-time strategy started their careers in the last. Real-time strategy is having a moment. The Golden Era. Returning to another chess analogy: everyone knows the Queen is the best piece on the board.
If you have reliable build orders then you can execute the most efficient openings to build a stronger Eco than your opponent and let that snowball into a huge resource advantage. If you know which units are the best to use in specific situations, or you know which upgrades you should prioritize over others, you have a strong advantage over a large percentage of users in the Ranked playlist.
Mechanical skill — the ability to multitask, use hotkeys and micro your units — is what will separate those with equal knowledge. We rounded up the best gaming keyboards that might help with your use of hotkeys. Sometimes, those with greater mechanical skill will be able to defeat more knowledgeable players. Vice versa, those with more knowledge can often beat someone that simply has raw technical skill.
Having reliable and repeatable build orders allows you to start every game as efficiently as possible. The more efficient you are, the quicker your Eco grows and the quicker you can begin pressuring your opponent with attacks.
The strategy you wish to deploy for a game will determine your build order. Fortunately for us, smart people have already run the numbers and calculated the perfect build orders for executing specific plans.
Having a set build order can mean that you advance to the Feudal Age — and even the Castle Age — without ever having any idle time if everything goes smoothly. A very popular strategy, especially at very low levels, is the Fast Castle.
The Fast Castle build order is an excellent example of how the benefits of investing into your Eco can multiply. Remember, this is a numbers game. However, by staying in the Dark Age for longer and working on Eco, you can move to the Castle Age more quickly overall. Depending on your Civ, the Fast Castle build order may differ from the above. This shows that even the build order for an identical strategy might not always be the same.
Needless to say, if you want to opt for a different strategy, your build order will need to adapt accordingly. A common mistake for below-average players is to begin mining stone too early, or to put too many Villagers onto gold too early, when the other resources are a much higher priority in the early game for almost all game plans. At low levels, players will be unlikely to know build orders and using one puts you at a huge advantage. Sticking with the chess analogies, there are only so many ways you can start off a game and any surprise you spring is unlikely to be something other players have never seen before.
Anyone above beginner level will also have a relatively good grasp on how to deal with your opening play. The Drush is the quickest attack you can mount on Age of Empires — other than recklessly charging forward with your Villagers and Scout — and is considered to be an aggressive play.
Short for Dark Age Rush , the strategy here is to build a barracks, create 3 Militia and pressure your opponent as quickly as you can. If you can eliminate a Villager or two then that is a great result, but your primary focus should be to take them away from their tasks as much as you can so that you can start to build an Eco lead. A Drush is never going to win you the game outright but it can certainly help put you on the front foot.
This aggression allows you to disrupt your opponent and try to get an Eco lead whilst also giving you important time to wall up your base. The Man-At-Arms — or [email protected] — Rush is almost identical to a Drush, but ever-so-slightly more delayed. Men-At-Arms do 6 melee damage compared to 4 of Militia and have 5 extra HP too, meaning they cause much more carnage to enemy Villagers and survive a little longer too.
Both Militia and Men-At-Arms are ineffective against archers and cavalry, so it is relatively easy to clear a base of these units after their initial disruption. If you are using a strong archer Civ such as Britons or Ethiopians then you might look to favor an archer rush strategy. Then, once you reach Feudal, get them to immediately build two Archery Ranges and begin producing Archers. Your next objectives are to build a Blacksmith and to research Fletching within there, though you can go on the offensive before this arrives.
You can pre-counter this by creating a couple of Spearmen from your Barracks. If they opt for Skirmishers to defend from your Archers instead then you might need to build a Stable of your own and make a few Scouts, or you can simply take whatever advantage you have and begin to move onto your mid-game plan. One of the main advantages of rushing with Scouts is that it has a slightly easier build order than [email protected] or Archer rushing.
This is because Scouts only cost food to create. Your Villagers will all be going to food or wood with a Scout Rush build order. Like with the Archer Rush strategy, you can create two stables and amass Scouts quickly for additional aggression should you wish, and you can send them in before getting upgrades like Bloodlines or research from the Blacksmith — though you should still look to get these as soon as you can if you plan to continue with cavalry.
As Watch Towers shoot arrows and an increased number of arrows if you garrison Villagers inside them , this prevents your enemy from taking their resources. After one tower goes up, you should build another one within range of the first so that your initial tower can provide covering fire for your Villagers as they create the second. If your opponent tries to attack your Villagers, garrison them within the tower to keep them protected but also to increase the damage that the tower will do.
You should be mining stone within your base so that you can continue to use your forward Villagers to keep making more and more towers. This is an extremely tough and frustrating strategy to deal with at beginner and intermediate levels. Instead, the important thing is to remain patient — do not overreact — and then do the following:.
This just emphasises how effective and disruptive they can be if executed effectively. The best units can be created in the Imperial Age. The Fast Imp simply gives your opponent far too much time to put pressure on your base — even if your map is fully walled they can have siege rocking up minutes before you can even click to the Imperial Age. Booming is where you build a thriving Eco as quickly as you can, amassing resources at a much faster rate than your opponent.
Or, in team games, you might have one member of the team booming if other members of the team are having some success on the front lines. Your Town Centers should be built on resources such as gold, stone or wood — preferably close to two of these if possible — and this offers your Villagers from protection, or a safe haven, in the event of an attack.
If you run out of space when booming, you can always delete walls and expand outside of them as your new buildings essentially become walls of their own. The majority of the strategies above should actually be chained together to be most effective, or should be used or adapted in some way that allows you to be creative and surprise your opponent as well as give yourself an Eco advantage. However, the idea is that you disrupt your opponent with Scouts and cause as much damage as you can.
Whilst doing this, you wall up at home and get to the Castle Age so that you can create Knights. Where Scouts can be a disruption, Knights can deal the killer blow in terms of giving you an unassailable lead. The potential to chain or mix-in various strategies allows your openings to go from a small, predictable pool to an arsenal of unexpected attacks. Instead, it sometimes makes sense to switch into a different unit type to prevent being countered. For example, with something like [email protected] Into Knights, you start with infantry and your opponent might make Archers or Skirmishers to counter them.
Even though resource generation is somewhat random on every map e. However, we will mention some of the more popular or well-known maps and discuss things to look out for.
This means you need to place a big focus on walling your base and protecting your Eco early into the game. There are a number of maps similar to this where smaller, frequent raids are likely to be more successful.
Some will start with water in the middle or in the corners — or the game may even be primarily played on water. Wood is more important than food in the beginning of a water map because Fishing Boats are better than foraging Villagers, and whilst Villagers cost food to produce, Fishing Boats cost wood.
This will allow you to focus on perfecting your initial Eco efficiency whilst making it a little easier to defend early attacks — but be warned, attacks will still come. Once you have the basics down with a good amount of practise, you can look to ban the more closed off maps and learn the intricacies of the open ones.
Another important factor is seeing where your resources have spawned once you load in and begin scouting. Fortunately, almost all build orders begin with 6 Villagers going to food and at least 3 going to wood immediately after, giving you a minute or two to assess things before determining your plan of attack. Map control is something many low-level players have a basic grasp of — but make fundamental errors in judgement over time and time again.
However, beginners often put way too much emphasis on taking the neutral resources and then keeping their safer resources as an insurance policy for if things go wrong.
With your base spread out across the map, there will likely be more holes or weak points for them to pick off. Having a Castle in a position like this can usually allow you to begin mining neutral gold and stone with a good level of protection.
Castles can also be used to build aggressive military buildings. It depends on what kind of units the enemy is producing. Context matters a lot in Real-Time Strategy games. The first thing you do when the game starts already depends on the Civilization the adversary is playing, the one you chose, and the map.
From there, things can take a drastic turn if you find out, for instance, that your opponent is going for a rush build, such as the Royal Knights Rush. Or maybe you saw that the enemy civilization went for an early expansion, and you failed to take advantage of it, forcing you to do your best to catch up.
In Age of Empires, everything you do has a counter and a condition that makes things better or worse. Knowing what to do next to mitigate the upcoming issues significantly alters the course of a match. Having said that, once you learn all the basics, you will be able to quickly figure out what depends on what and have a general idea of what needs to be done. The enemy has too many archers? Time to start producing a decent cavalry.
Do you have too much Wood? Send some villagers from Wood to Rock or any other resource that you need. Most of it follows a logical line of thinking as soon as you understand the fundamentals of the game. Knowing how the game works is vital for your success in Age of Empires 4. Real-Time Strategy games demand skills on top of knowledge.
This is why it is important to improve your point and clicking skills. In this genre, the act of micromanaging and controlling units to do specific tasks is called Micro. Sending all your army to attack is not microing. It is also considered microing to take just the right amount of villagers out of a resource so you can build houses or walls in strategic places and send them back to where they were right after.
If the idea of controlling single units to make the most out of them seems alien to you, it means that you need to urgently learn how to Micro in Age of Empires 4. There are many things that one must learn to micro in Age of Empires. For instance, players must learn how to target the most dangerous units during battles. It is also indispensable that players learn how to kite — also known as hit and run — the enemy units when using their archers.
Doing so will make them live longer, and it can also grant enough time for your Spearmen to surround the enemy Horsemen who are coming for your ranged units. Besides all that, there are advantageous ways to use formations, tactics to bait the enemy, ways to take advantage of choke points, and so much more that you can do when microing your armies.
Just like everything else in this game, learning how to do all this takes time and practice, but it also sounds much more complicated than it is. The biggest challenge is not controlling your units; it is to do that while doing everything else.
Now you know that everything depends. You must also have checked some build orders at this point. What now? Thankfully, in the beginning, the number of things that you can do is quite limited, and the chosen strategy is blindly picked. It does matter, and we will talk more about it later on, but it also means that things are much simpler right when a match starts. After all, the longer the game, the more variables you will have to consider. This is both a good and a bad thing.
Once the game starts, you should have an idea of what you want to do next based on the map and the enemy civilization. For instance, if they are playing a civilization with a slow start, such as the Chinese, maybe you want to try a quick expansion or perhaps an early knights rush. Whatever your decision is, go for it but remember that you might need to drop it and go for something else depending on what the adversary is doing.
Commit to your strategy but always be ready to adapt. Once the game starts, your Scout will be of extreme importance. Scouting will never stop being necessary in Age of Empires 4, but it will be increasingly difficult to gather information on the enemy as the match progresses.
The more walls and armies your adversary has, the easier it is for them to prevent scouts from getting near their structures. After a while, this might have to be done by sending multiple scouts so they can survive while trying to invade or by sending units that last a little longer, such as knights.
A Rush is basically a build that provides you with military units really early in the game. For instance, a French Knight Rush makes you have a small amount of French Knights within the first 6 minutes of a match. The idea is to have specific military units so soon that the adversary will not be ready to deal with them. As stated before, in Age of Empires, everything depends. If you get ready for an archers rush and the enemy sees you doing it with their Scout, they might have a few horsemen waiting for you.
Rush builds tend to hinder your Economy since their focus is to produce units as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the adversary might have been investing in the future of their Civilization by gathering resources and going for a game-changing research.
It is also important to note that besides producing the military units quickly for a rush, those units will have to march through the map until the place where the enemy is located. Going straight up to the Feudal Age is something commonly done by most players. Generally speaking, there are rare cases that might motivate you to delay advancing to the Feudal Age. On the other hand, advancing as quickly as possible to the Castle Age is a strategy with its ups and downs, but it is a valid strategy, and it might make the enemy play catch up for the rest of the match.
In Age of Empires, the way you spend your resources is always a matter of risk and reward. You might be investing in better technology once you reach the next Age, but you will be somewhat vulnerable while building a Landmark. Landmarks are not quickly built, and to mitigate that issue, you will need to send many Villagers to the construction site. Be that as it may, producing an army before advancing to the next Age might cause you to have a less relevant army.
It will also delay the construction of your Landmark since you will be spending your resources on military units. The Fast Castle strategy is powerful because it can lead to a Knights Rush, an impressive boost to your Economy, a strong Boom, and so many other things.
If you manage to safely pull it out, there is no doubt that it will help you get closer to victory. Maps are not just decorative in most Real-Time Strategy games. In Age of Empires 4, they can heavily dictate the pacing of a match and the kind of units you will have to go for.
There are maps with vast bodies of water. Some have enormous lakes, others might not have water at all, but even maps with water might be pretty different from one another. Even maps without any water can be quite different. Some might have a lot of trees that make it difficult for you to scout, while others might be more open and filled with mounts that can provide a tactical advantage to whoever uses the high ground. You have to pay attention to the maps since they can completely ruin your strategies due to their shape.
You have to take all these things into consideration when the game starts. That being said, you might want to have some build orders that work better in specific scenarios. You should not rely on a single opening. Have one for maps where you usually are too far from the opponent, other for maps that have too much water, other for maps that facilitate early aggression, and so on.
The more different opening builds you learn, the more versatile and prepared to fight others in this Age of Empires 4 you will be. Besides knowing the structures you must build, how many you need, and when to produce units, Age of Empires 4 players must also worry about Researches. A Research in Age of Empires 4 is often found available when you click on a structure. Once you decide to do a Research, you will have to spend some resources and wait for the period needed for the Research to be completed.
This part is not that different from waiting for a unit to be produced. Some technologies do the exact same thing as others, and their bonuses can stack up. However, a Research that grants the same bonus again is only unlocked once you advance to the next Age. When it comes to military Research, things can change widely and vary depending on what Civilization you play. Still, there are things that all civilizations share. Researches do not grant you immediate advantages. In order to use a Research correctly, players must trade a little of their resources for stability and power that will help them until the end of the game.
There are several different technologies that can be researched in Age of Empires 4 that will improve your Economy. For instance, Forestry is a technology that can be researched in a Lumber Camp or a Ger and costs you 25 Food and 50 Gold. After waiting the 45 seconds needed to finish the research, the Foresty technology will cause the Villagers to double the rate at which they chop down trees.
This technology alone can cause a massive boost in your Wood gathering. It does have a small cost that might set you back slightly, but it is worth it. There are many different technologies that provide gathering speed bonuses, and they do stack up. As mentioned above, you can research technologies that provide bonuses that will help you gather other resources. On top of all that, there are technologies that do much more than provide a bonus. For instance, the Professional Scouts technology can be researched at a Mill, Ger, or a Hunting Cabin, and it grants Scouts the ability to carry animal carcasses.
Please note that these are just Economic Technologies that all Civilizations have access to. Chances are, the Civilization you are playing might have an exclusive technology that grants you a unique advantage over the adversary. For instance, Bloomery increases the damage of all non-siege units by 1.
It takes a minute for a civilization to research it, and it costs 40 food and gold. Players can research Bloomery when they reach the Feudal Age. Once they advance to the Castle Age, players can Research new technology for even more damage as long as they have unlocked Bloomery. Decarbonization is available during the Castle Age also increases the melee damage of non-siege units by 1. There is much more to Military Technologies than increasing your damage. If you want more hit points to your cavalry units, research Biology.
If you want your Town Center to have more hit points, research Fortify Outpost. An upgrade can be used to counter an enemy strategy or to make your units less vulnerable to the counter units that the enemy produced against you. Research your upgrades wisely by choosing the technologies you need based on the context of each match.
There are only three Religious Technologies in the game. During the Castle Age, you can research Herbal Medicine. This will double the healing rate of your religious units. Once you reach the Imperial Age, there are two other technologies that you can research. These are technologies that, as the name suggests, will improve specific units. They probably affect a single unit type instead of a category, like the others, due to the significant impact that they can cause in a match.
For instance, Extra Ballista makes Swivel Ballistae fire in any direction and deal 15 damage. This makes your siege game much more potent since it turns Ballistas into a defensive unit that can catch enemy infantry coming from anywhere.
Due to their specificity, players must be wise when going for such technologies. Age of Empires 4 has eight different civilizations, and they have done a great job to make them feel distinct and unique. One of the things that help players feel like their civilizations are different is their Unique Technologies.
Not only do they give each faction a more noticeable identity, but they also play a significant part in a match. For instance, the Network of Citadels technology available to the English is scary to any invaders once researched.
This is no small difference. The English Longbowmen have a scary range. They can also go for technology that increases it further, making them able to make rain arrows over the invading army at an overwhelming rate.
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