Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition News

The Age of Empires 4 beta starts this week

Age of Empires IV is due out in just a couple of months now, and we hadn't yet gotten major details about the game's planned beta - until today. The Age of Empires IV closed beta has been confirmed for August 5, and as this story goes live you've got a limited amount of time to get signed up for a chance at access.

The Age of Empires IV closed beta starts on Thursday, August 5 and will last until Monday, August 16. It will be available on both Steam and the Microsoft Store, open to "thousands" of players who've signed up for the Insider program. In order to get access to the current beta, the devs recommend you sign up as an Insider by Tuesday, August 3 (that's today) at 4:59pm PDT / 7:59pm EDT, or August 4 at 12:59am BST.

The beta will include access to the tutorial and eight-player skirmish matches for multiplayer or AI battles. You'll also be able to spectate other players. Four playable factions will be available in the beta: the Mongol, English, Delhi Sultanate, and Chinese civilisations.

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Age of Empires 4 civilisations - a quick guide

Age of Empires 4 will be releasing in October, and we now know what all eight of the launch civilisations are going to be. Initially we were only told about four during the official gameplay reveal back in April, but as part of E3 2021 we learned about the final four.

Age of Empires 4's launch civilisations are meant to represent a wide breadth of cultures and polities that existed during the game's timeframe - which is from around the 11th century through to the start of the Renaissance. There is a European flavour to the launch roster, as three out of four of the launch civs are firmly within the borders of Europe. A fourth - the Rus - are an emergent culture from the inter-mingling of Scandinavian adventurers and the local Slavic population living in western Russia.

The remaining four Age of Empires 4 civs come from other parts of the world - North Africa and the Mediterranean, central/south Asia, and then the steppes and the far east. Plenty of areas don't have any representation though, such as North/South America, central and southern Africa, and parts of south east Asia and the Pacific.

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Age of Empires 4 fans are upset over regional pricing differences

June 18, 2021 This article has been update to incorporate more information around regional pricing strategies

We got a lot more information on Age of Empires IV this past weekend thanks to Microsoft's E3 2021 showcase. Two new civilisations were revealed, as well as the AOE4 release date, and more importantly, the price. The RTS game currently has an RRP of $59.99 / £49.99 for the standard edition, and $79.99 / £69.99 for the Digital Deluxe edition. There are concerns, however, regarding how the game is being priced in other regions.

A fan on the Age of Empires IV subreddit is reporting that there's a big price difference between the price of the game in the US, and the price of the game in Australia. The standard edition's $60 price point translates into roughly 80 AUD, depending on the exchange rate, but the strategy game is listed on the Australian Steam store for 100 AUD.

Other fans are complaining about pricing as well. On the official Age of Empires 4 forums, a couple of threads have cropped up complaining of prices in other regions. One user reports that the standard edition on Steam is R$200 in Brazil, with similar reports cropping up of inflated regional prices in Latin America, Turkey, and Russia.

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Age of Empires IV - Echtzeit-Strategiespiel erscheint Ende Oktober

Xbox Game Studios und das kanadische Entwicklerstudio Relic Entertainment haben zur diesjährigen E3 einen neuen Trailer zu Age of Empires IV präsentiert und damit gleichtzeitig auch den Releasetermin für das Echtzeit-Strategiespiel bekannt gegeben. Nach den drei "Definitive Editions" der bisherigen Spiele der Reihe, [...]

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Age of Empires 4 mod tools won't be coming until next year

We got a lot more information about Age of Empires IV during Microsoft's E3 2021 presentation this week. Not only do we now have a release date, two more of the RTS game's eight launch civilizations were revealed. We also got a glimpse into the future, specifically on the subject of AOE4 mods.

According to the strategy game's Steam page - which leaked over the weekend but finally went live after the conference - mod support won't be coming until "early" next year. The full description entry reads: "Customise your game with mods - available in early 2022, play how you want with user generated content tools for custom games."

So there you have it - you'll have to wait a bit longer if you want to do some Age of Empires IV modding. There'll be plenty of other things to do in the meantime, though - four historical campaigns have been announced, which combined feature around three hours of documentary-style footage to set the scene.

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