Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition
Celebrating its first year of delighting millions of global players, the award-winning and best-selling strategy franchise continues with Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition, putting you at the center of even more epic historical battles that shaped the world.
Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition is a strategy, rts and base-building game
developed by Relic Entertainment, Forgotten Empires, Climax Studios and World's Edge
and published by Xbox Game Studios.
Released on October 28th 2021 is available only on Windows
in 25 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal, Swedish and Hindi.
It has received 74,496 reviews of which 64,048 were positive and 10,448 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.5 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 19.99€ on Steam and has a 50% discount.
The Steam community has classified Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64bit | Windows 11 64bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5-6300U or AMD Ryzen 5 2400G | CPU with AVX support required
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD 520 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 11
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 50 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This game is hella fun on campaign. Online is a whole nother thing tho. It’s not for you everyday player and will require all of your time to not get absolutely obliterated every game. The player base for online are extreme try hards. Naturally you’ll look up videos on how to get better but every video teaching you how to get better is on average an hour long. Like jeez… it’s not that serious…. If you want to play campaign and work your way up to playing on harder difficulties it’s a lot of fun but online.. you will face basement dwellers.
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My 7 year old niece watches me play and won't let me kill any deer. Please add more varieties of harvestable wildlife.
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AoE4 pulls off the very rarely seen in modern competitive games: being more than the sum of its parts. I played AoE1 as a child, 2&3 as a teenager, and now I primarily play solo ranked and I'm around the average player skill level (plat), that is the lens I look at the game through: Unlike most all RTS's in the last 20 years, practicing and bettering oneself in AoE4 results in developing your own unique playstyle. Getting better is a fun, personal, and rewarding journey regardless of where you start on ladder. There is, and will continue to be a large playerbase, so it is easy to find competitive games wherever your skill level lays. Wins are rarely determined by who ran the most efficient meta build; instead a win/loss can usually come down to critical mistake or exploiting a niche weakness found in your opponent. 1v1 feels like a sparing match. Game knowledge and experience is king, even those who top out at 150actions/minute can still remain competitive. There is so much variation in regards to maps, civs, and playstyle that it is simply impossible to account for everything. Thanks to this, each game develops into its own unique story; ending at a small skirmish route, a massive epic battle across all the map, or anything in between. I came back 3 years after launch and the devs have greatly improved the competitive aspect of pvp at all skill levels. I couldn't be more impressed by the changes. Back in the day the game was much more defensive orientated and more often than not created Imperial Age games that went on for an hour+ and had massive armies clashing over and over until resources ran out. That sounds epic, but it was mentally draining and honestly the frequency of those games took the epic and fun out of them. Now 90%+ of games end in or before castle and it feels so much better. Water gameplay is still meh and I hope they do a whole rework of it; but even if left as is, it is serviceable and you can always downvote water maps and never play them. Siege units could also use some balance attention in regards to the late late-game. But those games are few and far between. I'm not a single player PvE kind of gamer. But I have played through the English campaign and it is well done, interesting, and better than most singleplayer RTS offerings; certainly worth the price of admission on sale. Single player has wonderful history documentary-like videos between each mission and I am absolutely enthralled watching them. More awesome stuff: -the civs are all unique (some more than others lul) and create great immersion -multiple voices per unit, then per civ, AND THEN per age (super impressive) -starting up a new round, the action is slow, the music is slow, the game is pretty and 'soft", it builds up quickly and it is fun to play that transition, almost like the game plays differently each age and you have to be ready for the transition from microing one critical dood in Age1 to carelessly throwing 20 expendable horsemans into your opponents farms in Imperial. -the unique units and techs, and play style of each civ, incredible -every sound award in 2021 including music should have been given to this game -graphics are great, game runs great always, UI made with console in mind but still great on PC -lots of keybind and UI control customization -No microtransactions, not being sold anything when I boot up the game (refreshing) -game was made with love clearly -more stuff to come The game has a magic about it and it isn't just nostalgia, is good game
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All RTS games - especially if Online PvP is their focus - have their problems, but out of each one I've tried to get into, this is the one that stuck. There are a few reasons for this: Attention to Detail I know some people don't care about this, but for me, it's one of the greatest appeals of AoEIV. From each civ having their own version of the menu music that will fade in when you select them in the lobby of a match to the progression of the languages your units speak (e.g., the Chinese speak pre-Tang Mandarin in the Dark Age but speak Ming Mandarin by the Imperial Age), this game is full with little things that probably go unnoticed for the most part. I love how the architecture and unit designs evolve and are wholly unique. This was something that bothered me in AoE2. The Vietnamese Knight looks the same as every other civs Knight unit, which from what I can tell wears a Barbute (an Italian helmet), chainmail, and a Kite shield (a Norman shield design). When I noticed that Ottoman Men-at-Arms wear the distinctly Ottoman design of Mirror Armor or that the HRE MAA wear 1400s German Sallets the game hooked me in. Even if it might seem easy to get these little things right, they go a long way. To go more in-depth about the architecture, in AoE2, 11 different architectural styles are shared by the 40+ civilizations. Because of this, the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Mongols, and Vietnamese all share the same style - East Asian - despite the immense differences between them in real life. One thing to note about AoE4 is that buildings stick to a default shape and size but are altered to best suit the civ's architectural style. This is for clarity, so this could be seen as a pro and a con. Ultimately I do prefer that the Byzantines have their distinct architecture rather than having to share the same style with the Armenians, Georgians, Italians, Portuguese, Sicilians, Spanish, and Romans the way they do in AoE2. As far as the music goes in AoEIV, each civ has its own unique soundtrack. There are different tracks for when you're at peace and when you're in combat, and on top of that, the music is also unique to the Age you are currently in. The sound design in general in this game is incredible, with distinct audio cues, such as your Scout's whistle when they see an enemy, the thunderous blasts of bombards, and the metallic clashing of blades on armor. Variety The civs in this game, while fewer than those of AoE2, have much more to offer, and have distinct architecture, unit designs, extensive voicework, and music that help represent their real-life counterparts on a greater scale. This goes beyond aesthetics, though, as each civ in AoE4's cast contains unique mechanics that change how you approach a match. A good example would be the Byzantine Cisterns that increase the gathering rate of nearby villagers. They do this inherently, but there is an additional toggle-able choice between increasing the military production speed, and research speed or reducing the damage taken of nearby buildings. Again, this means you'll need to micro your cisterns according to your needs and build your base efficiently to maximize their bonus. Landmarks in AoEIV, you age up by building one of two Landmarks (unless you are playing the Abbasid, who instead upgrade their House of Wisdom). This is one of the biggest things the game has going for it gameplay-wise. In AoE, advancing to the next Age will unlock new buildings, units, upgrades, etc, so it's very important. In AoE2, this was done by clicking "Advance to x Age" in your Town Center, but Landmarks make this decision significantly more interesting, as you have to choose where you're going to age up (each Landmark is 4x4), when you're going to age up (you can assign multiple villagers to construct buildings faster, albeit with diminishing return), and what aging up will actually give you, as Landmarks provide vastly different things, so your choice is important. Overall, matches are much more dynamic and interesting due to this system. Base Design Due to the "Influence" mechanic, civs will have to carefully plan their bases in unique ways. For example, the Ottoman Blacksmith increases the military production speed of all military buildings in the area. The Byzantine Cisterns previously mentioned is another example, and the Chinese Imperial Academy Landmark is an example of a Landmark becoming much more useful when planned properly. The fact of the matter is that this will cause the bases of each civ to look vastly different from one another, not due to aesthetics, but due to the different ways in which they are rewarded for placing buildings in a certain way. Combat I personally love the rock-paper-scissors approach to combat in this game. Each civ, despite having unique appearances, has the "same" (with one main exception, the Malians) cast of units, and by that I mean they serve the same/similar purposes. I.e., a light anti-cavalry infantry (Spearman), a light ranged infantry (Archer), and a light cavalry unit (Horseman). These 3 units create a triangle, with Archers doing bonus damage to Spearmen, Spearmen doing bonus damage to Horsemen, and Horsemen doing bonus damage to Archers. This triangle is expanded upon with Men-at-Arms, Crossbowmen, and Knights, aka heavy infantry, anti-heavy ranged, and heavy cavalry. MAA do no bonus damage but are armored and have more HP, while Knights soft-counter MAA (they just trade better) while still being countered by Spearmen, and Xbows do bonus damage to both MAA and Knights. Unique units shake it up a bit too. I like this system, and it's a lot more intuitive than most RTS games. Unfortunately, the combat does nosedive a bit in the super late game with siege battles, which strip away the significance of the counter-triangle and introduce a much more one-dimensional "anti-siege" siege unit (springalds) that you're almost forced to make if you don't want your army and/or base to be obliterated by enemy siege weapons. The Biggest Issue(s) In my opinion, the biggest issues with AoE4 all have to do with the care put in by the developers when it comes to the competitive ladder. There is a non-zero number of maphackers and smurfs throughout. The map hacking issue should, in theory, be easy for the developers to stamp out, so its prevalence can be irritating (although usually map hackers are not very good). Smurfs are common in every competitive game, though, and are hard to just outright remove, so really it's just something to be aware of. Conclusion AoE4 is a great RTS that does an impressive job at adhering to its chosen historical period (for a game) while remaining competitive, balanced, and - most importantly - fun.
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A fantastic sequel to AoE 2. A terrible sequel to AoE 3. Was sad that it didn't expand on the fun features from 3, but it really knew it's target audience and did well in a sequel to the most popular entry in the series (AoE 2). If you enjoyed 2, get it. If you enjoyed 3, you might want to pass.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 20 November 2024 12:00 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 19 December 2024 20:01 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:48 |
| Steam reviews | 23 December 2024 11:53 |
Online players
11,911
Developer
Relic Entertainment,
Forgotten Empires,
Climax Studios,
World's Edge
Publisher
Xbox Game Studios
Release
28 Oct 2021
Platforms
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