"Age of Empires IV" is a time machine. Medieval strategy games bring players back to their youth. It is better to liberate Scotland with William Wallace after school than to do homework in history class. This is a journey back to the golden age of real-time strategy. At the turn of the millennium, you can still debate whether "Command and Conquer", "Warcraft" or "Age of Empires" represents the climax of that type.
Today, none of these game series still play an important role. With the sequel, now 16 years have passed since the third part, and people have to wonder why. Because "Age of Empires IV" is not only nostalgic, but also as fun as ever. And, even though this hardly changed his secret of success: you build a medieval village, train some riders, knights and rammers, and then burn down the enemy’s village with them. So everything is as usual?
As promised by the game itself, getting started is easy, "whether you are a long-term fan or a novice". Developer Relic Entertainment does not experiment, which means that veterans will immediately feel at home, and beginners will not be overwhelmed. As always, only four resources are needed for a business cycle: food, wood, gold, and stone. With the click of a mouse, lazy villagers can be sent to chop wood, cultivate land, and build barracks.
After a few minutes of the game, the first group of troops jumped from there. The rangers lay down their infantry, the spearmen fought against the cavalry, and the fast cavalry eliminated the archers. This rock-paper-scissors principle reveals more exceptions than German grammar during the game, at the latest when eight unique units of playable races intervene in battle. In the end, simple scissors, rock and paper often become more advanced versions of scissors, rock, paper, lizard and Mr. Spock. When the Mongols riding archers rushed into the barricades of British longbowmen suddenly set up by special abilities, simple rules of thumb have long lost their meaning.
The closer the decisive battle is to the end of the game, the more important this tactical villain is. If you don’t group your units, let them form a formation, place them favorably in the terrain, and use the shortcut sequence to trigger the appropriate special skills at the right time, you will soon experience the first medium difficulty Waterloo. Age of Empires IV is controlled with the mouse, but at least with the keyboard.
Despite all the preparations and plans, the knights did not maintain their military or military ranks in battle, and their armor melted into a big ball. Then at the latest you will not be able to remember the keyboard shortcuts-double click, CTRL 1, Y, long press the mouse, Q, V, A -. By the way, this combination marks all visible longbow archers, assigns them the shortcut "1", and moves them out of the battle continuously, where they set up fences and then maintain their position. call!