| Title | Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition |
| Platform: | Steam |
| Available on OS: | Windows |
| Genre: | Realtime strategy, historical, base building |
| Date completed: | October 2023 |
| Notes: | – I do not have the DLC for this game – This game is not well scaled for resolution 5120×1440 (though this should only apply to an extremely small number of people) |
Summary review: A very competent real-time strategy, with some-what entertaining historical documentaries in between play sessions.
Graphics: I wasn’t that impressed with the graphics but then graphics aren’t needed for such games and I ran the game in an unusual resolution.
Music: I like music for what it is – it ramps up when needed and stays out of the way when it’s not.
Controls: Standard grouping and right-click moving for any RTS, convenient quick keys are always useful. Learning the keyboard shortcuts is something of a requirement.
Replayability: I have been replaying this game (in mid 2024) having finished it in late 2023 – so it seems high enough. Although strange there doesn’t seem be a way to reset the campaign to un-played for a new game. So it’s almost like they want you to. I would still rate this high. I have also been enjoying the skirmish mode for a while now.
Total score: 80 / 100 – Some might say this teeters on the edge of “edutainment” but the game play itself is solid enough I think it manages to be solidly on the “game” side. I actually watched and enjoyed the historical clips as they unlocked and I thought the scenarios were interesting to play through.
Introduction
Between the time the CD-ROM first started to became available and around the time the games based on the Lord of the Rings movies came out, it was something of a dream (amongst some) to have a game seamlessly integrate game play with video footage. I’m not sure if this is the penultimate realization of that dream or an homage to a long outdated dream after 20 years of DVD movies and CD-based console gaming.
This game – more than any other game I own at least – has put far more emphasis on historical context of what I’m playing and the relevance of the battle I’m playing.
For instance I don’t think I knew Genghis and his Horde made it all the way to Kiev and were about to break into Europe.
This game lets you play out Russians defending against Mongolians, then as Mongolians, burning down Kiev, and also Joan of Arc fighting the English and the English fighting the Normans/French.
Each civilization unique
As would be expected from history, each civilization is going to have unique capabilities and characteristics. The English have this setup pikes skill to devastate charging cavalry, for instance, while the Mongols can pick up their whole town and redeploy a couple miles down the road. The French actually have a really great unique structure I only realized recently (via skirmish).
These unique characteristics are emphasized through scenarios outside the campaign as well. You actually don’t get to play every civilization in the campaign. Which isn’t really a negative because once you’re done with the campaign the scenarios are about what you have left.
Map Jumping and other tales
There is something of a learning curve to figuring out how exactly each system works. This can be frustrating when you’re thrown on to a map with a countdown timer. There’s no way around this but to keep playing and figure out what is happening.
One example: The Mongols in a battle versus the Polish army. Your told to destroy the roaming armies before relief forces arrive but there are no villagers so collect lumber, food and gold (Mongolians have a unique thing for stone).
If you’re not expecting it this might throw you off. But there’s a solution involving destroying buildings and use of a unique artillery piece. It can be frustrating but it forces you play a different way than you have been.
There’s also something of a skill to maintaining “situational awareness” for lack of a better term. For instance you don’t want villagers idle for longer than absolutely necessary and they have to be replace if they enemy kills some of them off. Priorities have to be constantly shifted to compensate as things happen.
As a wise man once said, “Here’s your sign”
Just a hint: the larger a unit queue the longer it takes to fill that queue. Okay that seems obvious. And the game is constantly saying “build your economy up as fast as possible”. So yes: there’s stone, gold, lumber and food (and caravans for trade as an aside). And sometimes only one town center to produce villagers. You need to get to a point you have at least two of each military producing building (melee, archery, horses and in some cases siege equipment).
So you need a constant flow of villagers to build things and collect resources and just as important you must produce military units as fast or faster than resources are collected. With most civilizations there’s the added balance of buildings that increase the population until reaching cap of 200.
Now some negatives…
There aren’t that many things to complain about here. If you loved the prior AoE entries, this is the penultimate version of those games. If don’t like RTS games you’re likely not going to have a good time.
I did actually encounter a few bugs. Actually one time I sent some villagers up a hill and they just instantly dropped dead. There were visual hints what might be causing it: there was a red colored area around there on the mini map. So I’m guessing an enemy got clipped into the ground and the only way the game found to deal with was to insta-kill any units that went that way. I kind of wish such things were ironed out by now.
Post-game and skirmish mode
As mentioned above, I can’t seem to find a way to re-play the campaign from scratch. I wanted to play it as a higher difficulty level but I don’t see a way to do it. I haven’t tried manually deleting all my saves, though.
There’s also a series of tutorials to demonstrate things like getting an economy up and running quickly, using unit types that cancel out other unit types, and proper siege tactics. I didn’t finish them all. I mention this because the one time I looked at the multiplayer screen it warned me I hadn’t finished those tutorials and asked me if I really wanted to do multiplayer. To which I thought “well not now“.
I have run through some “skirmishes” in single player though. There’s a 1v1 mode as well as 2v2 and 3v3. I’m probably missing something but the AI allies are kind of useless. I mean I can’t apparently trade or take resources or give them resources for that matter. Nor do they help in attacking or defending a particular location.
Actually it’s kind funny the way I play – I had a 1v1 game with an intermediate AI take ~4 hours this one time. I think the game has a memory leak because it was not doing great. Another skirmish I was playing I had a crash-to-desktop (no error or warning). That was annoying. It shouldn’t take four hours to beat the AI by the way. That is not good.
There was another skirmish, it might have been 3v3 I don’t remember, it taking hours and it got to the point the framerate was so bad I just had to quit. Which makes sense given the 200 population cap: that’s 1,200 things to keep track of. Not to mention the sheep, wolves, deer, boars and whatever else the game has to track.
There’s an in-game mods menu where you can instantly install modifications for the game. I only tried the one that ups the population cap to 400: the AI beat me in an hour by building a wonder. Apparently I should have been sending raiding parties instead of playing Simcity with my base. Probably best I avoid multiplayer.
Conclusion
I happen to like RTS as a genre even if I’m not very good at them. And I happen to already watch historical documentaries for fun. So this merging of those two things was kind of perfect for me.
I’ve actually barely touched the surface on all the things this game has to offer: the map types, the civilization variations, creative solutions to problems and so forth.
If you love RTS as a genre and don’t mind a little time to learn how everything works this is about as good as its going to get at moment. If you happen to also not mind learning historical context you’ll love it even more. The videos are skippable, of course.
Metadata
| Method of control used | Keyboard/mouse | ||
| Controllable via both one analog stick or digital four-way (“HAT”) | n/a | ||
| Hardware requirements: | About midlevel in ~2015 | ||
| Supports 21:9 aspect ratio screens? | yes | ||
| Device(s) tried on | AlienWare Laptop | ||
| TV | n/a | ||
| Initial setup required | None required – xbox login | ||
| Sound setup | Noise cancelling headphones | ||
| Total time to completion for campaign | ~25 hours (I lost track) | ||
| difficulty level | easy mode first time | ||
| Steam UID | 1466860 |
Tildes on the side 