Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition News

Age of Empires IV – Season One Update Release Notes

We’re thrilled to officially welcome you to Age of Empires IV Season One: Festival of Ages – our first major update of 2022 – launching tomorrow morning, April 7th! As we shared with our updated roadmap, our view for these major updates is that we should be offering something for everyone, so whether you’re a competitive player, a campaign enthusiast or someone who’s eager to get your hands on the Age of Empires IV Content Editor (Beta), we hope you’ll enjoy diving right into our largest set of release notes to date!

Read on to learn more about the new features coming to Age IV tomorrow, how we’re approaching civilization and map balance, and more below! We’ll also spend some time sharing what we learned from our first ever Public Update Preview (PUP) and some of what we have planned following the official release of the Season One update.

As a reminder, we’ve already shared a deep dive on the Content Editor & Mods as well as Ranked Season One, which is set to kick off next week, Wednesday, April 13th, so you’ll have some time to explore these changes before you hit the ranked ladder to demonstrate your prowess and earn rewards!

NOTE: Upon updating to this patch, you will no longer be able to utilize replays from previous updates. At times, saves will also be impacted, though we’ve taken additional steps to ensure your campaign saves are not impacted by this particular update. Skirmish saves from the previous patch are impacted and will no longer be accessible after you update.

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You can find details on these changes and more below!

All About Seasons in Age of Empires IV

Season One: Festival of Ages is upon us!

We’re excited to share our first Season with all of you, so let’s dive in and learn more about what exactly a Season entails.

What is a Season?

Seasons in Age of Empires IV consist of new content and rewards to progress towards and unlock over a set period of time.

Season One: Festival of Ages runs from 10AM PT on April 13th through 10AM PT on June 30th, during which time you will be able to participate in Ranked Seasons, complete Seasonal Events and earn Login Rewards.

Compete in Ranked Matches against fierce opponents throughout the season as you progress through the rankings, forging your path to conquest and triumph.

Demonstrate your strategic prowess as you compete for exclusive rewards.

The Ranked Season covers the entirety of Season One: Festival of Ages, running April 13th through June 30th.

Complete challenges for rewards and show off your accomplishments in your matches.

Numerous events will also take place over the course of Season One: Festival of Ages, each lasting for two weeks long, with a one week break between.

Event 1: April 13 – April 27

Event 2: May 4 – May 18
Stay tuned!

Event 3: May 26 – June 8
Stay tuned!

Event 4: June 15 – June 29
Stay tuned!

When you log in for the first time during each event period (as indicated above) you will receive an exclusive Login Reward. No tricks, no challenges, just log in and it’s yours!

Season One Overviews

Be sure to check out our other blogs on everything that’s coming to Season One:

Season One Overview

Customize Your Battle with the Age of Empires IV Content Editor Beta!

Season One: Festival of Ages is finally here and we’re celebrating with everything related to the beta launch of the Age of Empires IV Content Editor!

What is it?

The Age of Empires IV Content Editor will be your one-stop shop for custom play. Want to create your own highly specialized map? Want to play with a French Knight that’s overpowered to the nth degree? With this tool at your fingertips, you get the complete say on how to play.

With the launch of Season One, the Beta release of the Age of Empires IV Content Editor will allow you to play around with several customization options.

Crafted Maps

Create your own custom map for multiplayer, skirmishes, or custom games with Crafted Maps! Crafted Maps will be the easiest tool to use when customizing your match, containing terrain elements, wildlife, resources, units, and scripted events.

Difficulty Level: Beginner

Tuning Packs

Customize and modify the stats of your units with Tuning Packs! With this tool, you can modify the unit cost, speed, toughness, attacks – and anything else that affects unit behaviour.

Difficulty Level: Intermediate

Generated Maps

Love how maps in the game change each time you play them?

Now you can make your own Generated Maps using the Age of Empires IV

Content Editor Beta. Using the Generated Map mod, you’ll be able to create randomly generated maps that adhere to a set of rules of your choosing, while continuing to offer variation each time you play using our map generator. Get started with our templates and documentation and when you’re ready, put your programming skills to test as you create your own complex maps!

Generated Maps allow you to create randomly generated maps for skirmishes or multiplayer. It differs from Crafted Maps as you create scenarios based on data to nudge the random map generator in a specific direction you choose.

Difficulty Level: Experienced

Game Modes
Game Mode is the ultimate way to script your matches! This is for expert modders, requiring knowledge of both Lua and SCAR (short for SCripting At Relic). Re-write the fundamentals and change behaviours (I.e. Victory conditions) – create an entirely different game within the engine!

Difficulty Level: Expert

Watch the Tutorials

Ready to get started?
Take a look at the detailed tutorials for you on how to navigate and use the official Content Editor:

[previewyoutube][Content Editor Interface] [/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][Customizing the Editor] [/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][Tuning Packs] [/previewyoutube]

Plus stay tuned, as more tutorials will be coming soon!

Season One Overviews

Be sure to check out our other blogs on everything that’s coming to Season One:

Season One Overview

Age of Empires 4 Season One kicks off the Festival of Ages next week

2022's first major update for RTS game Age of Empires IV, titled Festival of Ages, is due to arrive next week. The update introduces ranked multiplayer seasons, a content editor, 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.

Possibly the most exciting introduction for players will be the content editor, which is launching in an initial beta state and allows players to tweak a wealth of options, create their own maps, and rebalance units to their desires, so you can finally give your favourite civilisation the overpowered units they always deserved. Players will also be able to craft entire mods if they wish - a few examples of which can currently be experienced in the Public Update Preview beta.

The other major addition with this update is the introduction of Seasons. As the name suggests, things will kick off with Season One upon the launch of the update, with Season Two set to follow in the coming months. These will feature Ranked Seasons for competitive multiplayer, allowing players to prove who's truly the best of the best, as well as Seasonal Events which will offer rewards for completing in-game challenges.

Read the rest of the story...

Welcome to the Festival of Ages!

Celebrate with us as we welcome you to the Season One update to Age of Empires IV: Festival of Ages!

Landing soon, the first major update of 2022 brings Ranked Seasons, the Content Editor beta (and Mods!), Seasonal Events, Major Balance changes, as well as a ton of quality-of-life changes to Age of Empires IV! But don’t let us just tell you about it – check out the Season Update trailer:

[previewyoutube][TRAILER] [/previewyoutube]

Read on to see all the changes and new additions that are coming to Age of Empires IV, as well as where to check out specific deeper dives into the major features that will be released with the Season One update.

Plus, join us on stream TODAY, March 31st, at 2:30PM PT on Twitch for a preview of what’s to come in our Season One update!

Customize Your Battle with the Content Editor

In the coming days, we’ll be diving deeper into the newest tool that will change how you do battle in Age of Empires IV – the Content Editor. The Age of Empires IV Content Editor (Beta) will be your one-stop shop for custom play. Want to create your own highly specialized map? Want to play with a French Knight that’s overpowered to the nth degree? With this tool at your fingertips, you get the complete say on how to play. 

We’ll be taking a closer look at some of the internally made mods by the dev team, as well as some of the more specific features of the Content Editor (Beta), along with helpful tips on how to start making your very own mod.

Plus, stay tuned for an upcoming livestream as we talk about the Content Editor (Beta), mods, and maps with the development team.

All About Seasons

After that it’s all going to be about Seasons! Seasons in Age of Empires IV consists of new content and rewards to progress towards and unlock over a set period of time. This includes both the Ranked Seasons for those who want to take on the challenge to climb the competitive ladder, and Seasonal Events where you can unlock rewards by completing in-game challenges.

We’ll be previewing these soon, including what kind of challenges and rewards will be available when the update goes live!

Balance & Game Updates

With the Season One Update, it’ll come with a whole host of balance and quality-of-life changes, including global build queue, hotkey improvements, and more. Stay tuned for the entire release notes, as they’ll go live when the update goes live later next week.

That’s not all – there's also two additions to the Age of Empires IV line-up including a brand-new Advanced Combat Art of War challenge, aimed at preparing you for more complex combat scenarios, as well as the new MegaRandom map.

And this is just the start – as mentioned in our updated roadmap, Season One is only the beginning. Check out the Roadmap to see what else is in store for Age of Empires IV later this year!

Edit 3/31/2022: A previous version of this blog indicated an incorrect date for the upcoming patch.