Age of Empires 4 Festival of Ages Update Brings Ton of Changes and Editor
Age of Empires 4 has received its first major update in 2022. It brings a ton of new features to the title, including a beta version of a map editor.
Fans of Age of Empires 4 have reason to be happy. The latest installment of the iconic historical RTS series has received its first major update this year. It symbolically inaugurates the first ranked season (although the competition itself will start only on April 13), titled Festival of Ages. The term "major" is not an empty word here. Relic Entertainment has not been idle and introduced a lot of new features and improvements to the game, some of which were suggested by the players. Their full list can be found here. Let's take a brief look at the most important changes.
New features
- First and foremost, yesterday's update introduces the beta version of the map editor. In short - it enables us to create new content, including our own scenarios on custom maps.
- The developers have also created the so-called Global Building Queue. This is an option that enables us to track everything that is currently being produced or discovered by our buildings in real time, on the interface screen. It is visible both in the game mode and the observer mode.
- The ability to assign functions to more mouse buttons (if available) has been improved.
- Added a patrol function that enables units to travel along a specific path and attack any enemy they encounter.
- Added the ability to view the skirmish map after dropping out of a battle.
- Added a new challenge in Art of War mode, offering advanced skill training.
- Added option to randomly select a civilization when preparing for a match.
- Added a timed cooldown on consecutive attempts to avoid the waiting queue in multiplayer mode.
- Improved the appearance of the Chinese civilization interface.
Mods
On the occasion of the update, the creators have prepared a number of maps. They are intended to present the various capabilities of the editor. Their full list can be found here. In addition, a number of bugs related to the creation and operation of fan-made projects have been eliminated.
Balance
In order to improve gameplay, especially before the upcoming start of the ranked season, the creators of Age of Empires 4 have decided to introduce a number of changes to the game's balance. These include the construction speed and cost of certain structures, the carrying capacity of villagers, pathfinding of naval units and the strength of selected units.
It has also been decided that moving the research of certain technologies from one building to another. Geometry, for example, can now be researched in the siege machine shop and not in the university as it was before. All changes are both general and related to specific civilizations, such as the Abbasids or the English.
Maps
The maps have also been changed. The developers have tried to eliminate bugs and improve the balance of the appearance of resources on 1v1 (Micro) maps, relics or holy places. Moreover, changes have affected specific battlefields. These include Nagari, Black Forest, Boulder Bay, Danube River, Mountain Pass, Confluence, Ancient Spires, Altai, Mongolian Heights, Hill and Dale and King of the Hill.
Campaigns
As for the single player campaigns, the developers have decided to change their order. It is currently presented as follows: The Normans, The Rise of Moscow, The Hundred Years War, and The Mongol Empire.
- The difficulty of some of the story missions has been lowered based on player suggestions. Some of them were also shortened.
- Several errors related to the missions (especially The Battle of Zhongdu) and the functioning of individual civilizations have been eliminated.
General improvements
Finally, the developers did not forget about the general improvement of the interface and the removal of minor bugs. This applies, for example, to the operation of keyboard shortcuts. More detailed descriptions can be found here.
What's next?
All this, however, is the present. What awaits Age of Empires 4 fans in the future? First of all, the developers want to see how the latest update will be received and on an ongoing basis, approximately every month, make all adjustments based on community feedback. A special survey, which will be sent to players in the coming weeks, will help in this.
Then the team from Relic Entertainment would like to focus more on features that will appear in season two. We are talking about the voting system for maps, player color selector and additional hotkeys. So there is nothing left for us to do but to observe the development of Age of Empires 4.
