Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition News

Editors Note - June 15th, 2022
The corrections to Rank Points noted below are now complete.

With the release of our Season One update and the launch of our first ever ranked ladder, it’s been an exciting couple of months for Age of Empires IV! We’ve enjoyed watching you all climb the ladders, and we’ve appreciated all your ideas about how we can continue to evolve the Seasons and ranked ladder experience.

Recently, you’ve told us that something feels off with the number of Rank Points assigned following victories and losses. We realize you haven’t heard back from us specifically on this topic just yet, and that as we enter the final weeks of Ranked Season One, understanding how the Rank Point calculations are working (and whether they’re working as expected) becomes increasingly important. While we’ve been quiet, the team has been looking into the issue and developing a plan forward.

In short, our investigations revealed that there is a bug impacting how Rank Points are assigned following Ranked matches; specifically, we’ve found that both the ranges and average number of Rank Points awarded or deducted for a win or loss don’t match our design intentions. Ultimately, this bug has resulted in a lower number of awarded Rank Points and a lower total Rank for participants. You can find some of the math provided by the team below.



Thankfully, this is something we can fix, and we plan to do so starting tomorrow, June 15th. We’ll not only be issuing a change that ensures the possible number of Rank Points received or deducted for a win or loss mirrors the intended design for ranked Season One, but we’ll be retroactively updating calculations from ranked Season One.

So what does this mean for your Rank? Starting tomorrow, you may notice a higher Tier or Rank than you have today. We’ll note that in some cases, this change could be slight – so individuals may not climb the ladder multiple tiers as a result of this change, or jump from Silver to Conqueror. We expect this will see more ranked players in Silver or higher.

Not only will Ranks be corrected tomorrow, but calculations should no longer fall out of sync through the remainder of Ranked Season One, set to end on June 30th. We’ll also be sure this bug fix carries over to future ranked seasons, and while we can’t share any information just yet on other ways Rank Point calculations may change in the future, we’ll be sure to follow up with any major changes coming in Ranked Season Two.

Our Public Update Previews (PUPs) not only present a sneak peek to owners of the game but also provide an opportunity for passionate players to step up, give feedback, and help us squash potential issues ahead of our major updates. PUP builds will generally contain new features, content, or bug fixes. Take a step behind the curtain and preview everything that’s coming to the game in the weeks leading up to a major update!

Owners of Age of Empires IV on Steam are invited to join us for a public preview of this upcoming update. During the timeframes listed below, you can access a preview branch of the game, and provide feedback and bug reports here on the Steam forums.

Starting with this PUP session, when launching the preview, you will receive a pop-up confirming if you want to launch the preview version of either the main game OR the Content Editor (trying to access the Content Editor outside this path will always take you to the LIVE version).

For this preview, please concentrate your feedback on expected functionality, including major bugs, notable crashes and more. Players should submit bug and balance concerns in the Steam forums, as well as prepare to complete a survey regarding the experimental camera angle/zoom introduced in this PUP—survey coming soon!

Along with our standard Bug Fixes and Balance Changes, Season Two will introduce a handful of New Features which the community has been asking for:

• Customizable Player Colors
• Refined Hotkey options
  
• A Map Preference System for multiplayer
  
• And more!
  

A detailed list of changes can be found on our Release Notes, and a deeper look at the Map Preference System is below.

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[h2]When[/h2]
START - Tuesday, June 7th @ 1:00 pm PT (2100 UTC)
END - Monday, June 20th @ 10:00 am PT (1700 UTC)
FORUMS CLOSE - Tuesday, June 21st @ 10:00 am PT (1700 UTC)

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[h2]Map Preference System[/h2]
For some time, we have heard community requests for a way to give players a say over the maps they play in Quick Play and Ranked multiplayer matches. With this update, we are adding our first version of a Map Preference system that will give you influence over the maps that you will encounter in ladder play.

Each queue (Quick Play and Ranked) will provide players with a set of Downvotes that they can apply to maps that appear in the respective queues. In Quick Play, you will have up to 5 downvotes you can choose to apply; while in Ranked, you will have up to 3. Your downvote choices can be made in the search preference screen before you start your match search.

The map that ends up being chosen for the match will be selected from the subset of maps that receives the lowest collective number of downvotes amongst players in the match. Due to how many votes can be present in larger Team Games (up to 40 votes in a 4v4!), you may sometimes still load into a map that you individually downvoted, since that map could be tied for lowest number of overall downvotes in the lobby.

For example, in 1v1 Quickplay, if Player 1 decides they do not want to play any choke point maps during their play session, they can downvote maps like Black Forest, Mountain Pass, Confluence, Mongolian Heights and French Pass to be left with a selection of more open or hybrid maps. If Player 2 decides to downvote only water and hybrid maps, the two players will be left with open maps having received no downvotes, and the final map selection will be chosen from those maps only.

In order to help players quickly find maps that fit into various playstyles, we have added filter tabs to the Map Preference window. These will allow you to quickly see things like all naval maps in your queue. Categories showing a blue dot indicate that a map within that category has been downvoted, for quick at-a-glance reference.

If playing in a group for Team Games, the Map Preference selections of the group host will be used for the group search.

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[h2]More Info[/h2]

• How To Access Preview
• Support FAQ
• Release Notes, Known Issues, & New Features
• How To Report a Bug

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From all of us on the Age of Empires Team, we thank you for being a passionate member of the Age community. Together, we can build a better Age!

-The Age of Empires Team

And then there were four! Check out the final weekend of the Age of Empires IV Golden League, hosted by Elite Gaming Channel TV.

See Puppypaw, BeastyQT, TheViper, and Marinelord compete for the crown and their share of the $125,000 prize. Tune in 8:00 AM PST / 15 GMT Saturday and Sunday to see who will emerge victorious.

📺 Watch Here!

For the third Seasonal Event in Age of Empires IV’s Season One, we invite you to join us for a bit of lighthearted fun with a Friendly Competition.

Go for the Bullseye as you challenge the A.I. in a 1v1 Custom or Skirmish match, satisfy your Quest for Knowledge by researching 10 upgrades in a Skirmish or Multiplayer match, and more as you earn rewards that let you show off your festive spirit!

• Unlock new Portraits! 
  
• Unlock new Coats of Arms!
• Show off your earned rewards while celebrating the Festival of Ages! 
  

[h2]Event Rewards[/h2]

From May 26th through June 9th, complete in-game tasks within the time limit to unlock exclusive rewards!



[h2]Show it off![/h2]
You can show what you’ve earned by changing your portrait or flashing your sweet coat of arms, so show off your rewards with pride!  

We hope you enjoy our third event of Season One, Friendly Competition, and look forward to the rest of the events in this Season. Don’t forget to keep letting us know what you’d like to see in upcoming seasons – it excites us too!

The latest patch for Age of Empires IV is now available!

Patch 15965 brings fixes to the shift-queue bug that we know you’ve been asking for and more!
For full details be sure to head over to the original Patch Notes using the link below.

NOTE: Upon updating to this patch, you will no longer be able to utilize replays and saves from previous updates. While we do our best effort to minimize impact on saves, Campaign and Skirmish saves from the previous patch are impacted and will no longer be accessible after you update. Campaign progress will NOT be lost with this patch update.