Age of Empires remains popular, and a new game should entice both existing fans as well as bring in newcomers. The core loop remains unchanged: build your town, recruit villagers, research technologies to advance through four historical ages.
The eight civilizations (factions) within this formula are unique and well-balanced, featuring different unit strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, religious victory conditions as well as building wonders of the world add depth.
Gameplay
Since 2004, fans of Age of Empires games have been waiting 14 years since a new title in this series has been released. Recently, a trailer showed players will travel back in time and experience medieval life for themselves this time around.
Players in this game must guide a civilization from four ages: Stone Age, Tool Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. Each era brings with it different units and buildings. As players move through each age basic technologies can be researched at specific buildings to enhance military units with improved armor (better protection against enemy attacks), economic upgrades (faster resource gathering rates), religious enhancements (increasing priest abilities) or architecture upgrades – improving military, economic or religious abilities as well as architectural capabilities.
Players can construct Wonders, nonmilitary structures that serve as victory conditions across several gameplay modes; each Wonder is inspired by real landmarks of historical cultures from around the world. Furthermore, there is also a scenario editor to create user-made campaigns and support for up to eight player local and online play.
Civilizations
Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition boasts 35 diverse Civilizations that players can select. Each provides different bonuses, technologies and unit upgrades; For example, Byzantines excel at defense due to a huge boost to building HP that increases over time; free upgrades like “town watch” and “town patrol.” Cumans excel as cavalry civilization with units such as Tarkan and their unique technology called Keshik.
Chinese archers excel at long range warfare thanks to rapid training and longer attack range. Additionally, their Great Wall and Rocketry technology provides their units with extra armor protection and an additional 4 point attack bonus.
Teutons are an ideal starting choice for beginners. Their balanced infantry lineup features the Cataphract unit as well as some of the game’s premier artillery units; furthermore they have cheaper villagers to build their economy upon as well as Thalassocracy technology for upgrading docks to harbors and increasing food gathering rates.
Warfare
Age of Empires features all of the key elements of warfare; units can fight on foot or mounted and are deployed for close or distant attacks. Players have access to a diverse selection of units for creating an army, from villagers gathering resources (wood, gold and stone) and gathering wood, gold and stone from trees in forests to buildings providing food, housing or increasing unit strength and speed.
Each civilization features distinctive technologies that can be researched at specific buildings, with upgrades providing military (better armor and weapons), economic (faster resource harvesting or cheaper technologies), religious (more powerful priests), and infrastructure benefits (effective fortifications). All 12 civilisations feature active god powers throughout the game.
Some civilisations have an edge in combat, like the Britons with their Knight rush capabilities and useful tech bonuses, the Byzantines with their Cataphract unit which causes trample damage to units and buildings, the Persians with extra town center speed, and Burgundians who can create their unique Coustillier cavalry to deal additional damage against infantry units.
Economy
Economy is an integral component of Age of Empires games. It enables players to build units and structures, store resources deposited, research upgrades for technologies, outwit opponents or quickly claim victory by arming oneself with fully upgraded military units that can quickly overthrow an enemy base.
Ideal players should strive for an early economic advantage by quickly building buildings and researching technology upgrades; this also enables more military units to be produced more rapidly with faster upgrades.
Booming is an economic strategy used to outwit an opponent and gain an unfair edge. This involves building more granaries, storage pits and farms to increase food production as well as increasing population so units can be constructed and upgraded more rapidly.
Chinese economies can experience significant economic expansion thanks to Imperial Officials who can collect tax from all economic buildings and supervise them closely, speeding up construction and technology research. Acquiring the Imperial Examination tech can further bolster gold counts. Furthermore, Song Dynasty time reduction for Villagers as well as Town Center upgrades of Wheelbarrows and Hand Carts give these countries great potential to wreak economic havoc.
Graphics
Age of Empires’ real time strategy game gameplay relies heavily on both graphics and gameplay to provide an engaging experience. The Definitive Edition boasts stunning visuals with lifelike character models and picturesque environments to evoke ancient world. Meanwhile, its soundtrack offers majestic melodies with authentic instrumentation to capture its spirit of ancient world history.
The Definitive Edition also comes equipped with several graphics improvements that enhance its appearance, such as more realistic unit armor and terrain LOD enhancements. Furthermore, there’s an all-new rendering system offering better ambient occlusion that makes landscape more alive as well as reduced blurriness of cliffs in game.
Though Microsoft has yet to release official system requirements for Age of Empires 4, it can be assumed that any PC equipped with a dedicated GPU should be able to play this game at its highest settings without issue. For optimal performance, any platform overlays like Origin or Steam should be disabled and ensure anti-virus software does not interfere with your gameplay experience.