Age of Empires IV

Let’s ask people who have ruined Company of Heroes 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III to ruin Age of Empires IV.

This game leaves a terrible first impression. I tried it soon after the release and it was extremely uninspiring. It looks like absolute puppydoodoo both in terms of the art-style and of AI’s behaviour. The spears are the size of mast pines the bowstrings are arm-thick shiny white ropes and the arrows are battering rams. The palette is iOS-tier and the atmosphere is as cartoony. The sabers and swords are human-size plastic toys. Meanwhile the units get stuck in places and each other and are spazzing out.

This medieval setting is done to death — it’s a yet another remake of the Age of Empires II and we already have like five of them. There are eight factions with mostly the same units and there are only four bad campaigns.

Well. Since our fascist government made our population into citizens of a pariah state, and generally norther than korea, i’ve got an idea to test one potential payment method for Steam. Which is just spending someone else’s money.
When picking a target, for some reason i started thinking only about this game. My justification was that Microsoft was not just content with the fact that there is no way to pay for steam games anymore so it entirely left the market, blocking access to the storepages. Getting a region-locked game was an interesting experiment. The lore goes that they’ve also blocked the services but were made to back down because that’s utterly illegal.
So yeh, my dawg gifted it to me with no region-related problems and now i owe him 60€ and that is like 300 years of me working for rubles and no way to transfer that to him on the horizon.
Since the precious money were spent on a full-price thing i didn’t like, as opposed to my accumulated from sales backlog i never launched — i decided to actually finish the game. And damn the campaigns are as bad as this game’s first impression. But being pressured by the circumstances i accumulated 155 hours of playtime, got all the achievements and finished everything i could. Now i can say that this game that looks like absolute garbage is not absolute.

Half of the english campaign is a tutorial. It’s just tiny restrictive and entirely scripted battles that are no fun. Yes, William the Conqueror, again. The french one is Jeanne d’Arc, again. The only new content is the rus\mongol campaigns. It’s a pretty rare topic, but they are having only the fights, which leaves most of the period unexplored. They are hyping up stupid events and ignore all the political relations and co-living. Rus knyazes exploited mongols to consolidate power, meanwhile mongols were requesting warriors to fight their eastern wars and to protect the empire from the europeans. The notorious saint Nevsky who is hailed as a hero by the propaganda was just a horde’s thug sent to deal with pesky swedes.

The campaigns are just chains of over-scripted unrelated battles, instead of stories. They even have hero-units but those are one-time extras instead of being actual characters. The stupid power-points in AoE2 with terrible fake accents are still better than what we have here. At least they follow a real story. All we get here is a fake news lecture. Just stupid iPhone movies instead of any cutscenes. And the rendered framerate is struggling even when it’s a 2D power-point presentations. The whole style is dull and looks bad. And i bet it probably took a ton of time and money to make, just to look like crap. Like a film by larpers with a drone, an iPhone and a GoPro. The editing is not on par with TV. It’s a lot of close up shots to not show anything at all. A lot of shots of stupid forests, fields and river. Sometimes with ugly yellow armies outlines. All additional videos about weaponry are made of close up shots. Even when they show firing and impact it’s never shown as a continuous cool action, it’s separate boring fake shots. Compare that to amateurs playing with a traction trebuchet where a shoddy thing becomes impressive in context of you seeing the projectile’s flight and impact.
And of course most of the footage has terrible lens-flare.
The player has no pause or rewind, there is no volume controls either. If you are gonna include separate video content at least make it convenient.

The maps are limited and most of them are walled from empty voids with trees. They could have at least filled that with trees instead of leaving it all empty and letting our peasants to break the woodth wall. Sometimes the devs just didn’t bother and put invisible walls here and there in the middle of the map. What the hell.
There’s no progression between the missions. It’s not like you start with melee infantry and have to do some economy, and the next time you get basic archers. You know, like Warcraft 2. A lot of the missions start with most of the upgrades being already unlocked. And as a reward for completing them all we get is more dumb movies.
In a lot of games campaigns just act as a tutorial for the multiplayer, but these campaigns have weird tech and buildings, not present for factions. So that doesn’t work even like that.
Usually the lack of campaigns means that the faction is dead and unenjoyable. But these campaigns are so bad its more fun just doing civilisation masteries and achievements. With custom skirmish settings and different goals civilisation masteries do feel a bit like faux campaigns.These history channel ancient aliens cut-scenes are extremely uninspiring because they are pretending to be historically accurate documentaries. But they are a disjointed mess and didn’t help me to learn any history. Like, the mongol campaign starta in the future and then jumps to the past. And in a chunk of it you play as chinese anyway.

So since campaigns are boring because they are “historical”, at least they do offer good research and pure facts. Right? I’m not gonna check up on all of them because they don’t make the topics appealing. But i did study rus a lot. So i can use rus campaign’s quality to estimate the quality of the rest of the campaigns.

It’s dogshit. It’s as fake as it can be, while it pretends to be true and sacrifices the fun for that. Utter dogshit. And no the campaign does go against the western sources too.

They tried to build the story around the moscow as the protagonist and it turning into the great knyazdom and then into tsardom. But for it they disregarded all the sources and discarded all the truth. In their world rus lived as apes in the jungle with no connections or knowledge at all. Following the moscow as the kernel of all rus is not only offensive to all of the post-rus nations, it also is a very bad idea. Rus is a pretty old interconnected heavily federalized territory, focusing on moscow means they sacrificed a lot of important events and replaced them with garbage.

The movies depict moscow to be near some british(?) countryside river. But they filmed both english and french campaigns in the modern cities. So this context make it look like the modern moscow is just some field. Or that it moved away and the current moscow is as unrelated to old moscow.

The first mission starts in 1238 when mongols burned it to the ground, and now you have to rebuild the city and its wooden fort.
But there were no city. At that time moscow is a stupid-posterior forgotten 3,5 houses village on a swamp in the middle of the forest. It didn’t have any regular federal government until it was given to Nevsky’s youngest son Daniil. During these events moscow was erased and everyone was killed. There was nothing to rebuild and no one left to rebuild. This was a non-event, only future generations started to care about it retroactively. Some borderlands tiny village got destroyed, who cares.
They can’t distinguish between Kiev rus, Vladimir rus and Moscow rus periods. And / or they pretend like there was no government at all.
The players have to repair wooden fortifications (and whole rus civ is based on wooden fortifications instead of red brick walls), but even a hundred years later in 1338 moscow only had an earth mound and a small trench. The first wooden fort it got was built in 1339, and that was very soon replaced by a white stone fort in 1366.

By the time of the mongol invasion kievan rus was already no more. The federal government was in vladimir. And if the game pretends that the loose federation is not centralised enough, they should not have holy roman empire in it at all in any capacity. Because it is not holy, it is not roman and it is not an empire. Vladimir rus federal government was recognised even by the notoriously independent novgorod.

The mongols finished off any memory of kievan rus, the capital was semi-abandoned and the territory was controlled by the federal government from vladimir rus and later directly by the horde. This is where the ukraina has started. Unlike the most of the rus territories a big chunk of galitsko-volyn managed to fight off the horde. Vladimir rus went into vassality as the loose federation, meanwhile galitsko-volyn winners negotiated the entrance into vassality as a separate great kyazdom independent from vladimir rus.

This same year when mongols burned tiny moscow in the wild boonies, robbed some lands in the east and went home, galitsk knyaz defeated high-tech german knights as if nothing has happened.

The next mission starts in 1375 with Donskoy. They literally skipped everything that is the most important for moscow. The skipped Daniil turning the village into a fine knyazdom. They skipped the civil wars where his son Yuri fought and scammed everyone including the mongols to get the great knyazdom. By the law when Daniil has died his bloodline could never had the great knyazdom because Daniil never was one during his lifetime. The next great knyaz had to be Mihhail from tver and his bloodline. He got the vladimir rus federation throne (including novgorod) and was confirmed by the horde. This whole part how moscow’s knyaz illegally got the great knyazdom by licking mongolian khan and killing his sister while blaming it on tver is just ignored.
But it gets even worse. When the vladimir great knyazdom has returned to tver’s bloodline for a bit, Yuri’s brother Ivan I became the moscow’s knyaz. This mission with Donskoy is about moscow buying out other small knyazdoms, but that is exactly what Ivan I did. He started to undermine the great knyazdom’s authority, by negotiating a separate from the federation vassality for moscow. He was promising khans twice the tributes in each small knyazdom that was transferred from vladimir’s to moscow’s rule. He fleeced all the new territories to deliver the cash. He even became the great knyaz of vladimir, and handed it over to his sons. Who mostly dissolved the federation and his grandson outright transferred the capitol to moscow.
This mission says “moscow discovered knyazdom X and bought it”. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Moscow always knew where all of the lands are, moscow is literally obliged to the khan to gather all of the money federation owns him and not to lose a coin.
But wait, there is more. All that knowledge actually required several days of research and reading several books in english and russian. The best part is that the devs never bother to even use google. Moscow can “discover” colunma. Which doesn’t exist. I think it was supposed to be kolomna. Yet no one proof-read or fact-checked it. The people who brought to you lieutenant Lev Abramovich Isakovich and burning civilians with the Enemy at the Gates copy-paste strike again. It’s not just a typo, they paid an actor to say it out loud.
The next great thing is that “moscow discovered wlodimer”. Google can’t find anything about it either, so i bet it meant to be vladimir. And you literally play as Donskoy, vladimir is still the capitol of the federation(‘s remains) and Donskoy is the great knyaz of vladimir and small knyaz of moscow. He dissolved the federation only on his deathbed.
By that time almost whole of the rus became a unitary state under moscow’s control, the rest is either conquered by neighbours or is enjoying last days as independent republics.
These three missions take place in 1300s, but you already can build streltsy from 1550s.

In 1478 you take over the Novgorod republic that became independent after the dissolution of the vladimir rus federation. In 1480 on Ugra the game talks in many places about Ivan III’s big hot hard long glistening cannons. But it doesn’t elaborate on that or explain how it came to be.
Then the campaign switches to Ivan IV and with all wannabe historical pretence the game calls him by the fake yankee propaganda name “terrible”. That’s instead of his also fake 230-years-late, but at least existing nickname [thunderstormy/just/threatening].

The additional videos talk about ancient moscow kremlins in 12 century. First time that word was ever used is regarding tver’s fort in 1300s. Then there’s ancient tradition of moscow’s horse archery. What tradition? Moscow basically didn’t exist before the mongols. And when it was finally established it was vladimir’s feudum under vladimir rus. The video about tributes shows hot single robable couriers in your area handing a tiny purse. Tribute was always being delivered directly to the khan and it took several horse carts to haul all those pre-paper money riches and all the diplomats and all the gifts to the khan. Each such occasion was always an excuse to participate in some more scheming and bonding with the current khan. There is an entire video about the facemasks, yet there is zero historic evidence. There were ever found like two separate masks left by mongols. Also all the mongol campaign maps pinpoint the location of moscow instead of vladimir or kiev. Why not new amsterdam then? Might as well.

So. The rus campaign ends in 1552, rus has streltsy from about this time and 1491 Spasskaya tower from the red brick fort started in 1485. Yet rus is stuck with the dumb wooden walls, wooden towers and wooden huts like some forest barbarians. Instead of having red brick walls rus has nothing. I would understand if it was general rus, but no it is moscow rus with moscow flag. And moscow barely used the wooden fort.
So what the damned hell is “warrior monk”? Is this D’n’D or damn what? There were no warrior monks until putler started to print icons of stalin. Christianity prohibits battles and violence, only catholics do crusades and inquisitions.
Then there are lance knights. There was no chivalry, knights should be chain-mail horsemen with maces.
And there are rus trebuchets. Well some siege engines did exist a little bit. But rus was not into them that much and by the time they started to attack forts they already had terrible early tüfäks.

It’s all a damn mess, and it means the rest of the campaigns are as fake. Казаки and AoE 1-2-3 feel fine, and this feels like a bunch of terrible anachronisms and fantasy elves. Those games never pretended to be true, but because here it is presented not as outright fiction but as a history lecture it all is just lies.

Well. But at least i did finish the whole game. And i couldn’t do that in 2000 hours of AoE 1-2 and of Казаки. So that’s at least something. Campaigns are boring bad and a chore, but they all are finishable and there is even a “story” difficulty, which does not just disable the AI.
But then again i did finish the campaigns in Age of Empires III and Age of Mythology and they are damn great.

After playing this game for so much time, to be fair i had to point out that after indoctrination and cultivation it doesn’t look that disgusting. And besides the terrible art-style the resolution of the assets is fine. And there is a lot of grass and the forests look fine.
Age of Empires II does actually have a cartoony art-style but it was created in such a way to look very realistic. The only joke there is the gunpowder units and in that regard AoE4 is an improvement — guns look fine.
They made melee units throw torches at buildings, but throwing torches at castles and stone structures looks no better than smashing them with swords. And all ranged units still attack them the regular way. Burning arrows is one solution, but riflemen just shoot them full of lead. Also that makes ranged units many times weaker than melee units against the buildings.
While all the civs have the same end-game units (and few of them) they actually use different models. So all the civs look unique.

The AI behaviour is also not the end of the world. Казаки allows any amount of units to occupy the same spot, yet that look so much more natural than this solution — the first row of melee and ranged units just block the path and everyone else is spazzing in place behind their backs. If you have, say, 30 cannons, the first four will be attacking the target and the rest will stay behind them and watch ignoring all commands.
To combat it AoE2 had units to spread out and pick a random target. It looks good, but also it makes controlling own units akin to herding cats. While unit AI in AoE4 is terrible, i will still take it any second over the second game.
Combined arms maneuvers are terrible and slow, it kills your scouts (and your healers for Rus), but nothing can be worse than formations in AoE2.
When you are attacked your units will stand and watch instead of defending your buildings.

Easy AI opponent starts with several strong rushes, but then just gives up, unless it can overwhelm you with town centres. Medium AI behaves about the same. Hard and hardest AI can put up a fight by rushing you midgame with strong army and economy. But they just give up against islands and stone walls.

This baby’s first GUI looks dull and has poor functionality. There are no real numbers on half of the upgrades, they just do something. There is no proper tech tree with dependencies and possible upgrades for a unit. Age of Empires 2 HD lists everything that can be upgraded and where. It’s impossible to see a building’s stats if units are garrisoned in it. Advancing an age is moved to the peasants. But so is the alarm. Instead of just pressing one button in a hurry you have to manually select the peasants across many screens. Because there is not much zooming out.
The default bindings are unconventional and they are very hard to rebind. The refuse, resist and require a restart to take effect.
It’s very hard to micromanage the units in combat. Not only the front line is surrounded and can’t move away, it’s super hard to pick individual units. That is especially irritating when you try to get the gold medals in the art of war mode.
AoE2 packs were outdated back then and now it’s even worse. But Battleforge showed than you can have both. Up to nine units have their portraits with HP and more than that turns into a number. Control groups are made worse, they are as fiddle as in the Battleforge. Relic tried so hard and got so far and ended up overcomplicating it.
Another good addition is that buildings and peasant show all the possible upgrades and productions. In AoE2 you don’t get archery range without barracks, and no gunners without chemistry. And there is no way to see if you forgot something or if this civ just doesn’t have that unit. The new economy-related GUI is pretty fine. You can see the number of workers assigned to each resource and pick up free guys.

AoE2 has early-game unit parity, which makes sense — anyone can make a bow, but not everyone can make a complex arbalest. That kinda gives different civs different strengths. AoE4 has late-game unit parity. That probably protects against the early rush in PvP, and gives some civs strong units early, but that makes the late-game always play the same. A lot of cannons and a lot of knights. Ranged units do poor against the buildings.
Also AoE2 has a system of counters, AoE4 advertises itself as having one too, but actually you only pick between hobo units and strong units. Maybe spearmen should be good against knights and swordsmen are not, but against fully upgraded cavalry they fall the same. Neither spears are useful against the elephants. Archers shoot a bit faster, but crossbowmen still can reload on the run, so why bother taking the weaklings.
While the civs are not that different unit-wise late-game and there are less units, the civs are more diverse economically. Mongols don’t need houses and use stone only for mega-upgrades, rus can generate gold, holy roman empire can boost the units, abassids advance through the ages in a building, dehli has free research but it is very slow.
But since it is a clone of AoE2 the core gameplay is very outdated. The units are produced one by one instead of in packs, and relic were ones of the first who moved to the pack unit production. Single unit production of infantry fits only Stronghold with its complex economy. Same goes for healing the units one by one and a total lack of out of combat regeneration. The medics are pretty fast, but still, they should instead just set up field hospitals with aoe, like english archers do. The unit limit is just 200 (as opposed to 500 in AoE2HD), half of which is taken by the peasants. And a lot of units require more than one slot. Казаки offer 16000 units, and this Dune 2-tier limit (and even in Dune 2 the infantry comes in squads) in 2021 looks bad.
Also Казаки have great ship battles. Early units are fun to micromanage, late-game ships are mobile armageddons draining the resources on par with Total Annihilation‘s end-game towers. Here the ships are better than in the second game, but they are still not that cool.
You genocide peasants and destroy all buildings. Including fields, and you can steal fields in AoE2. You can steal buildings in Dune 2. In AoE4 there isn’t even an option to convert the buildings. And the conversion itself was entirely re-worked. Now the conversion is aoe and is available only while holding a relic.
This genocide gameplay is a bit screwed up. It’s more interesting to steal civilians and buildings and that fits the medieval feudal setting more.
New scouts separated from the light cavalry are now much more involved. No one but them can steal sheep, and after an upgrade they steal deer carcasses from the enemy side of the map. They have the best vision and can help with “stealth” forests. Which are just a half-useless gimmick for PvP. The problem is that they are melee, in combined arms they are placed first and they always die.

A skirmish game can be set up to be played solo, like a simple city building game, you can even win with a sacred or a wonder victory.

The music for mongols, delhi and abassid is pretty cool. The rest is white noise.

Technically the game mostly works, but it is still messy. I had a couple of crashes on my 3080Ti. Besides the behavioral AI the units are often can’t deal with their off-hand items. Streltsy carrying axes wrong, doods with shields insert them up theirs or just flip them. When ovoo is destroyed the attackung units can be trapped in stone. And in the mongol campain one mission was bugged and didn’t spawn the enemies, i had to restart after wasting 1,5 hours on it.

All achievements are working. While civ masteries are fun, some of them are insane. 1000 horses killed with camels is a grind, and then the game asks you to have 10000 landsknecht kills. What the hell.
The campaign achievements are mostly asking for a specific way to play or to perform a specific task. The killer feature is that if you save and load the game it prevents achievements from unlocking. So you have only one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment.

The hypothetical Age of Empires 3 was stuck between Казаки and Rise of Nations, so it chose to innovate. Age of Empires 4 instead is just the same Age of Empires 2, again. And that setting was also done to death by Total War and others. I’d even prefer it to be set during the stone age over this. Because the remake of AoE is a broken-ass mess that no one wants to fix.
Age of Empires 4 is maybe the best version Age of Empires 2. It’s Age of Empires 2 but the way it should have been from the start. But the Age of Empires 2 market is over-saturated and anyway the surprise is already ruined. It’s impossible to be excited for medieval age for a millionth time.