Age of Empires 4 season one kicks off next week
The first major update for the 2022 RTS game Age of Empires IV, called Festival of Ages, is coming next week. The update introduces ranked multiplayer seasons, content editors, mods, seasonal events, and a host of balance and quality of life tweaks. Developer Relic Entertainment showed off the new updates and features in a trailer and a developer livestream.
Probably the most exciting introduction for players will be the content editor, which launches in its initial beta state, allowing players to tweak a wealth of options, create their own maps, and rebalance units to their wishes, so you can finally give Your favorite civilizations they always deserve overpowered units. Players can also make entire mods if they wish – some examples of which are currently available in the public update preview beta.
Another major addition to this update is the introduction of seasons. As the name suggests, the first season will begin after the update is released, and the second season will follow in the coming months. These will include ranked seasons for competitive multiplayer, allowing players to prove who’s the real standout, as well as seasonal events that will offer rewards for completing in-game challenges.
After an initial test in January, the first Ranked Season will run for 12 weeks, following a fairly standard ranking system, with players attempting to climb from Bronze all the way up to Diamond and eventually to the elusive Conqueror rank. Completing matches in specific sectors will reward players with monuments to place in their town centers, as well as matching portrait and badge parts to customize their player profiles.
Another very welcome change is improvements to hotkeys – while the highly sought-after fully remappable keybindings aren’t expected to arrive until Season 2, this update does bring some improvements to hotkey functionality , such as support for extra mouse buttons, the added functionality of adding and removing units from control groups, and new global hotkeys to more easily cycle through categories like idle villagers and structures.
There will also be some additional quality of life improvements, including patrol movement, random civilization selection, and the option to fully display the map at the end of a match, so you can see exactly what’s going wrong. Of course, you can also expect some balance changes, but full details on those changes will arrive when the update lands. While an exact date for the first season’s release was not given (an initial date was provided, which was later said to be incorrect), it was slated to go live next week.
Check out the first season trailer below:
Our reviewers were impressed with the game at launch, but pointed to the lack of ranked multiplayer as a standout in their Age of Empires IV review, so it’s good to see it finally on the cusp of launch. If you’re looking for other games to meet your real-time strategy needs, we’ve got you covered too.
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