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Age of Empires IV - Reviews Are Out

Kenpachii

Member
I love them elephants in multiplayer

Played a bit of campaign quited it soon after, gameplay is annoying as hell with the ai and immortal enemy's + long training times couldn't stand it after a few missions anymore. the video's are nice however.

Also what does the experience do in this game
 

ne1butu

Member
Really enjoying the game so far. Played some campaign and 1 online game of 2v2. Much better than I expected. They put a lot of effort into the videos for the campaigns, love how much you can learn from aoe games
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
How's everyone finding the campaign difficulty? Hard mode is actually kind of hard, which I find refreshing. One mission I had to restart a couple of times before I could win it.

No one signed up to do an OT for this game?
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Tried out a 1v1v1v1 skirmish on easy to get off the rust. It was very very easy, but still enjoyable and will for sure go back to try with normal difficulty.
 

Kenpachii

Member
How's everyone finding the campaign difficulty? Hard mode is actually kind of hard, which I find refreshing. One mission I had to restart a couple of times before I could win it.

No one signed up to do an OT for this game?

Problem i have with campaign also reason i quited it, was that on hard mode the enemy units are beyond tanky to the point it takes forever to get a fight ending, on top of it, 200 unit cap really cripples the progression. Fighting with 150 units and if they get crushed, u gotta wait for like what? 20-30 minutes just to rebuild your army.

Its a slog.

Also i tanked hard on that mission where u gotta get that guy out of his castle, just to stomp you with 3x the size of your army. It's just not well designed in my view.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Problem i have with campaign also reason i quited it, was that on hard mode the enemy units are beyond tanky to the point it takes forever to get a fight ending, on top of it, 200 unit cap really cripples the progression. Fighting with 150 units and if they get crushed, u gotta wait for like what? 20-30 minutes just to rebuild your army.

Its a slog.
I think on hard, the AI actually bothers to use unit upgrades, which makes their armor better, so it's important to upgrade your damage at the blacksmith and arsenal quickly. I also find mangonels to be very useful against the AI since the AI has a lot of units, therefore area of effect damage is that much more effective.

Also i tanked hard on that mission where u gotta get that guy out of his castle, just to stomp you with 3x the size of your army. It's just not well designed in my view.
That one was pretty tricky. I had to restart that one once. I won by only ever reinforcing with archers. I had eighty of them by the end lol. Use your hero unit to bait the enemy into running into an arrow volley, since your hero unit has regenerating HP. On hard mode missions like those, it's imperative to keep as many units alive as possible.
 

ebevan91

Member
How's everyone finding the campaign difficulty? Hard mode is actually kind of hard, which I find refreshing. One mission I had to restart a couple of times before I could win it.

No one signed up to do an OT for this game?

Got my ass kicked one one of the Norman campaign missions on intermediate. Ended up just loading an earlier save and trying a different strategy and it worked pretty well.
 

hussar16

Member
its a 7/10 awful camera angle that wount let u zoom out even age of empirese let you see more. i deleted the game after 2 hours becuase ofnot being able to zoom out and see my whole castle
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
The campaign is great, what really struck me is how much I learned along the way, and it never felt forced but generally interesting, it should be used in schools.

However skirmish and multiplayer struggles, largely down to the whole AoE2: DE existing and us being spoilt by faction choice. However I will say its much better than AoE3 which it shares in terms of having a 3D engine rather than 2D. As its included as part of games pass I would not recommend buying it unless you really enjoy the multiplayer as it would take 4 months of subscription to hit it'd retail asking price.
 
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Tams

Member
The campaign is great, what really struck me is how much I learned along the way, and it never felt forced but generally interesting, it should be used in schools.

However skirmish and multiplayer struggles, largely down to the whole AoE2: DE existing and us being spoilt by faction choice. However I will say its much better than AoE3 which it shares in terms of having a 3D engine rather than 2D. As its included as part of games pass I would not recommend buying it unless you really enjoy the multiplayer as it would take 4 months of subscription to hit it'd retail asking price.

Just like AoE II did introduce me to some history, it absolutely should not be used in schools. It's got just as many inaccuracies and opinions/stances.
 
Anyone know if an Intel X58 Xeon X5675 would be able to run this? I'm looking at the system requirements and it says AVX support is required. Looking online, it looks like my CPU doesn't support that?
 

BlackTron

Member
For some reason I'm having a really hard time giving a crap about this game...I have this feeling everyone will just go back to AOE2 and I may as well save myself some time and distraction and skip it.
 
For some reason I'm having a really hard time giving a crap about this game...I have this feeling everyone will just go back to AOE2 and I may as well save myself some time and distraction and skip it.
Every new game will feel that way. I love it, its very polished but with plenty of room for improvements for online. eg watching pro players in real time
 

tr1p1ex

Member
For some reason I'm having a really hard time giving a crap about this game...I have this feeling everyone will just go back to AOE2 and I may as well save myself some time and distraction and skip it.
Yeah it's been there, done that with rts games for me.

The developer would have to care about the non-sexy aspects of rts for me to get back in. Like how to make playing 4v4 matches fun again. How to overcome the 1 player drops ruining the experience problem. How to keep matches from going 2-3 hours and still be fun.

RTS's golden age was pre-3d graphics. When 3d graphics hit, it was the beginning of the end for rts.

They would have to do more than better graphics to get me on board. I don't really care about the graphics. Get off my lawn.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Well the tutorial is broke. Lol. It gets to a point where it keeps asking the player to left click the icon for their spearmen, then the ground near the enemy, and keeps looping and spawning the same enemy over and over and won't move on. So that's not a good sign. Already glad this was on Game Pass so I didn't have to pay for it. When even the fucking tutorial is cocked that's not a good sign.

Very high presentation value for the campaign out of the gate though. Entertaining and informative.
 
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AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Didn’t have that glitch. I just have the glitch where I don’t know how online players produce so many units so quickly and trounce me.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Didn’t have that glitch. I just have the glitch where I don’t know how online players produce so many units so quickly and trounce me.

Leveraging civ bonuses maybe? I haven't played online yet, but the English can stockpile some resources very quickly and crank out spearmen early. I did to quickly overrun an AI in my second round of testing the English out.

Edit: I'll tell you what, even on easy the AI is able to produce far, FAAAAAR more units than they have resources and means too. I hope there's ways to adjust this through mods or something later because it's absolutely retard-level, amatuer hour design as is. To test it I destroyed every thing but their town center and left some peasants alive. Within five minutes they were back to sending a steady stream of siege weapons and entire armies. Just like that.
 
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BigBooper

Member
Leveraging civ bonuses maybe? I haven't played online yet, but the English can stockpile some resources very quickly and crank out spearmen early. I did to quickly overrun an AI in my second round of testing the English out.

Edit: I'll tell you what, even on easy the AI is able to produce far, FAAAAAR more units than they have resources and means too. I hope there's ways to adjust this through mods or something later because it's absolutely retard-level, amatuer hour design as is. To test it I destroyed every thing but their town center and left some peasants alive. Within five minutes they were back to sending a steady stream of siege weapons and entire armies. Just like that.
You playing skirmish mode or campaign levels? In the campaign levels, the enemies just spawn in groups around the map. They don't have to produce them.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
You playing skirmish mode or campaign levels? In the campaign levels, the enemies just spawn in groups around the map. They don't have to produce them.

This was skirmish I was doing.

Just finished a coop match, that was fun. My partner focused on Calvary while I focused on rapid creation of English archers and spearmen. We didn't plan it, just happened that we complimented each other. Fucked the other team up bad. I took the front line, he kept hitting their flanks. It was glorious.
 

TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
I must say I really enjoy the documentary style campaign with its extra videos about various topic-related stuff (medieval surgery, how were arrows crafted, etc.).

While I'd be more invested in a story if it was told from the perspective of actual characters (in that sense, AoE1/2 was more immersive), I can't help but approve of games that provide some actual educational value without becoming some cringe edutainment software.
 
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BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
I must say I really enjoy the documentary style campaign with its extra videos about various topic-related stuff (medieval surgery, how were arrows crafted, etc.).

While I'd be more invested in a story if it was told from the perspective of actual characters (in that sense, AoE1/2 was more immersive), I can't help but approve of games that provide some actual educational value without becoming some cringe edutainment software.

Reminded me of a slick Nat Geo or old school Discovery Channel doc. Also made me want to visit York and the surrounding areas.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Leveraging civ bonuses maybe? I haven't played online yet, but the English can stockpile some resources very quickly and crank out spearmen early. I did to quickly overrun an AI in my second round of testing the English out.

Edit: I'll tell you what, even on easy the AI is able to produce far, FAAAAAR more units than they have resources and means too. I hope there's ways to adjust this through mods or something later because it's absolutely retard-level, amatuer hour design as is. To test it I destroyed every thing but their town center and left some peasants alive. Within five minutes they were back to sending a steady stream of siege weapons and entire armies. Just like that.
Campaign or skirmish? Campaign AI is scripted so depending on the map sometimes they just have reinforcements just appear from off map. Custom skirmish mode is fair though, as far as I can tell.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Campaign or skirmish? Campaign AI is scripted so depending on the map sometimes they just have reinforcements just appear from off map. Custom skirmish mode is fair though, as far as I can tell.

As I replied earlier, skirmish. I made sure to destroy everything but their town center and one peasant, had the entire map covered, then retreated to see what would happen.

I just did another test against an AI using a civ with no housing bonuses, to see if their unit count is truly limited. Set myself up for defense and went about my day. When I came back and moved into their territory (about an hour later) on one screen alone I counted over 250 units before I gave up. They're supposed to be capped at 200. So they're not even abiding by that.

Uninstalled for now. Will wait for updates or mods to fix things. The presentation value is better than 2, and some QoL elements are nice, but this game ain't worth a dime IMO.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
As I replied earlier, skirmish. I made sure to destroy everything but their town center and one peasant, had the entire map covered, then retreated to see what would happen.

I just did another test against an AI using a civ with no housing bonuses, to see if their unit count is truly limited. Set myself up for defense and went about my day. When I came back and moved into their territory (about an hour later) on one screen alone I counted over 250 units before I gave up. They're supposed to be capped at 200. So they're not even abiding by that.

Uninstalled for now. Will wait for updates or mods to fix things. The presentation value is better than 2, and some QoL elements are nice, but this game ain't worth a dime IMO.
Oh weird. Have you tried playing on Intermediate? I did a quick test on Easy and it seemed like the AI was rushing a lot more than it should be for an "easy" AI. Perhaps it's tuned wrong.
 

BigBooper

Member
I just did another test against an AI using a civ with no housing bonuses, to see if their unit count is truly limited. Set myself up for defense and went about my day. When I came back and moved into their territory (about an hour later) on one screen alone I counted over 250 units before I gave up. They're supposed to be capped at 200. So they're not even abiding by that.
I hate that kind of thing. If the only way AI can win is to cheat, they need to go back to the drawing bored or at least make the rules clear when you select your difficulty.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Oh weird. Have you tried playing on Intermediate? I did a quick test on Easy and it seemed like the AI was rushing a lot more than it should be for an "easy" AI. Perhaps it's tuned wrong.

More than likely I was hit with a bug. I may be being harsh but man it was frustrating. I attacked their center of town, and units poured out of every building so quickly my game actually froze up for about 20 seconds while trying to process them all.

I'll revisit this game after some patches.
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
It's great if you're a fan of history.
Tired Sick Of It GIF by U by Kotex Brand
 

Kenpachii

Member
Played it now for a few weeks and here's my review:

Price: 60 euro's. In my view not worth it. I think the price was placed that high for the simple reason to push people onto gamepass. There is no other reasoning why.

Single player campaign:

The single player campaign is well crafted, the video's are well done its like watching a documentary but with interactive gameplay its kinda interesting however in didn't spend much time on it as multiplayer is my main solution so can't really say much about it and will move on as result.

Multiplayer.

It's a mess, the game is riddled with exploits, from infinity resources, to map visible entirely for some players, walking through walls, some units not having upgrades or get lower stats while upgrading towards civs being completely useless.

After endless complaining and no communications from the team, they pushed out a patch 3 weeks or so after release a tiny patch that would solve a mongol rush solution, which absolutely destroyed the multiplayer game. But its just 1 of many issue's the game has.

They did nothing else in this patch other then that, which was after 3 weeks and tons of bugs from wall clipping ( people just walk through walls ), resource exploits, to straight up map exploits and so much more.

With no communication from developers like at all ( absolute worst interaction with the playerbase ) they decided to make a simple picture with 4 things they would do with support for the game in the upcoming year with the first thing on it 100+ fixes in the winter, no date specifically.

As the game was gaining massive traction from RTS players as everybody wants a new RTS after so long that is competitive, and the game is in a unplayable state already for weeks this was kinda the breaking point and it broke most RTS fans completely to dump the game after the announcement. The game should have launched in playable stage on release date, and now with this patch with no information taking even more longer without a date = people deserting the game.

The devs got a bit worried after they saw there playerbase tank, because they suddently saw a huge drop in there playerbase with endless people shitting on the game in there discord so they labeled the patch to be done the week after there announcement which for most players was already to long, because lets be honest here. if a exploit is found it needs to be fixed the same day or the day after and progress needs to be reset, but devs rather tell you the exploit exists and let u sit on it for months.

So again to long people bailed yet again and devs started to drop some fixes that people wanted to see which put the game on life support.

1 week later, the patch drops and to nobody's surprise. It basically did nothing but kill the game even more.

China which was weak in the early game, but strong in the late game now became practically the best in every area ( nice balance ).
Horses of france are kinda useless now, only strong point its shit now.
Dehli elephant civ, completely pointless to even play. they nuked the weakest civ in the game for absolute no reason at all to such ridicilous degree's, its unplayable.
Ram push which was the most annoying thing in the game, got even buffed.

And the list goes on and on and on with changes like this.

Then for the exploits

they fixed nothing. People are simple destroying whatever building they builded and rebuild it straight away to get 130% resources back which results in shit like this

Basically guy named sweet, just deletes and rebuilds endlessly to get 1k resources for free every time he does it.

dc86d7921833626f9c9a3d13a82c30d4.gif


But it doesn't stop there, new bugs are introduced that are even more worse then this, spearmen with basically map wide range. U target whatever on the map and it gets hit and dies as it has infinity range.

Shit goes on and on as even the simplest thing to give leavers some punishment early or that people that dodge maps because they don't favor there civ is something alien towards these devs which results in endless leavers in games.

Leaderboards:

Officially they don't really have leaderbords, they just have something in place right now that temporary ( because the game simple isn't done and probably never will be ). whenever the real thing is going to launch in the game nobody knows, and frankly i don't think people at this point care anymore anyway.

Performance:

It runs smooth for me so no complains there, however cpu taxation is on par with early 2000 games. It clearly feels like a game built on a engine that came out of the single core period but just gets brute forced to higher performance because of faster hardware these days.

Visuals:

If you don't play it at 4k something many MS games seem to have these days, the game is riddled with grass shimmering, the filtering doesn't remove it. once u notice it on the grass u can't unsee it. its visually simple below par on what u would expect for a 60 buck game. Not much time was spend on this department. Also no technology's like RT and DLSS something MS also seems to have problems with adapting for a game like this simple, showcases how ancient the game engine really is and honestly MS with forza 5 / halo infinity / and now age of empire not supporting any of it, feels like they are behind the curve in the PC market.

Conclusion

Frankly the writing was on the wall with this game.
- to expensive to push gamepass subs
- terrible developer that has no clue what he's doing
- game engine comes out of the year 2000
- basic features are missing that RTS needs
- Online heavily flawed.
- Spended way to much resources on campaign, which isn't what this game is going to be played for or is going to keep this game alive mulitplayer is.

3/10.

U can still have some fun if you turn your brain off. And your team allows you to play the game for longer then 10 seconds before they leave, disconnect or kill you with exploits.

Microsoft fucked up
 
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I have been enjoying the game, playing 1v1s gives a nice feeling when you win. Yes there are bugs but what game doesn't? And kudos to Relic for releasing a major patch and balance quickly
 

JTCx

Member
I have been enjoying the game, playing 1v1s gives a nice feeling when you win. Yes there are bugs but what game doesn't? And kudos to Relic for releasing a major patch and balance quickly
Lmfao

Balance is in a more terrible state and bugs are gamebreaking.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Lmfao

Balance is in a more terrible state and bugs are gamebreaking.
After some thought, it got more things right than wrong, but the things it got wrong were pretty bad. The top tiers are now a liiiitle bit more on par with each other, at the expense of Delhi which is trash tier now. With the remaining bugs left, and the additional bugs it created, it's like one step forward, two steps back.
 

Tams

Member
Played it now for a few weeks and here's my review:

Price: 60 euro's. In my view not worth it. I think the price was placed that high for the simple reason to push people onto gamepass. There is no other reasoning why.

Single player campaign:

The single player campaign is well crafted, the video's are well done its like watching a documentary but with interactive gameplay its kinda interesting however in didn't spend much time on it as multiplayer is my main solution so can't really say much about it and will move on as result.

Multiplayer.

It's a mess, the game is riddled with exploits, from infinity resources, to map visible entirely for some players, walking through walls, some units not having upgrades or get lower stats while upgrading towards civs being completely useless.

After endless complaining and no communications from the team, they pushed out a patch 3 weeks or so after release a tiny patch that would solve a mongol rush solution, which absolutely destroyed the multiplayer game. But its just 1 of many issue's the game has.

They did nothing else in this patch other then that, which was after 3 weeks and tons of bugs from wall clipping ( people just walk through walls ), resource exploits, to straight up map exploits and so much more.

With no communication from developers like at all ( absolute worst interaction with the playerbase ) they decided to make a simple picture with 4 things they would do with support for the game in the upcoming year with the first thing on it 100+ fixes in the winter, no date specifically.

As the game was gaining massive traction from RTS players as everybody wants a new RTS after so long that is competitive, and the game is in a unplayable state already for weeks this was kinda the breaking point and it broke most RTS fans completely to dump the game after the announcement. The game should have launched in playable stage on release date, and now with this patch with no information taking even more longer without a date = people deserting the game.

The devs got a bit worried after they saw there playerbase tank, because they suddently saw a huge drop in there playerbase with endless people shitting on the game in there discord so they labeled the patch to be done the week after there announcement which for most players was already to long, because lets be honest here. if a exploit is found it needs to be fixed the same day or the day after and progress needs to be reset, but devs rather tell you the exploit exists and let u sit on it for months.

So again to long people bailed yet again and devs started to drop some fixes that people wanted to see which put the game on life support.

1 week later, the patch drops and to nobody's surprise. It basically did nothing but kill the game even more.

China which was weak in the early game, but strong in the late game now became practically the best in every area ( nice balance ).
Horses of france are kinda useless now, only strong point its shit now.
Dehli elephant civ, completely pointless to even play. they nuked the weakest civ in the game for absolute no reason at all to such ridicilous degree's, its unplayable.
Ram push which was the most annoying thing in the game, got even buffed.

And the list goes on and on and on with changes like this.

Then for the exploits

they fixed nothing. People are simple destroying whatever building they builded and rebuild it straight away to get 130% resources back which results in shit like this

Basically guy named sweet, just deletes and rebuilds endlessly to get 1k resources for free every time he does it.

dc86d7921833626f9c9a3d13a82c30d4.gif


But it doesn't stop there, new bugs are introduced that are even more worse then this, spearmen with basically map wide range. U target whatever on the map and it gets hit and dies as it has infinity range.

Shit goes on and on as even the simplest thing to give leavers some punishment early or that people that dodge maps because they don't favor there civ is something alien towards these devs which results in endless leavers in games.

Leaderboards:

Officially they don't really have leaderbords, they just have something in place right now that temporary ( because the game simple isn't done and probably never will be ). whenever the real thing is going to launch in the game nobody knows, and frankly i don't think people at this point care anymore anyway.

Performance:

It runs smooth for me so no complains there, however cpu taxation is on par with early 2000 games. It clearly feels like a game built on a engine that came out of the single core period but just gets brute forced to higher performance because of faster hardware these days.

Visuals:

If you don't play it at 4k something many MS games seem to have these days, the game is riddled with grass shimmering, the filtering doesn't remove it. once u notice it on the grass u can't unsee it. its visually simple below par on what u would expect for a 60 buck game. Not much time was spend on this department. Also no technology's like RT and DLSS something MS also seems to have problems with adapting for a game like this simple, showcases how ancient the game engine really is and honestly MS with forza 5 / halo infinity / and now age of empire not supporting any of it, feels like they are behind the curve in the PC market.

Conclusion

Frankly the writing was on the wall with this game.
- to expensive to push gamepass subs
- terrible developer that has no clue what he's doing
- game engine comes out of the year 2000
- basic features are missing that RTS needs
- Online heavily flawed.
- Spended way to much resources on campaign, which isn't what this game is going to be played for or is going to keep this game alive mulitplayer is.

3/10.

U can still have some fun if you turn your brain off. And your team allows you to play the game for longer then 10 seconds before they leave, disconnect or kill you with exploits.

Microsoft fucked up
I'm not suprised at all.

The attitude and focus of the developers leading up to its release was full of warning signs. And even the hype was very limited, with a poor amount of social media interaction with their content.

People just aren't interested in this poor rehash.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm glad this is bombing for Relic, as they made a bad game. However, it bombing also means that we may never see another Age of Empires game. Not only that, but it might put off investment in RTS games in general.
 
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