Age of Empires IV features two new launch civilizations, a newly revealed campaign, naval combat, and Joan of Arc.

The teams at both Relic and World's Edge have shared that players will have the choice of the English, Mongols, Chinese and Delhi Sultanate at launch, and two more civilizations have been revealed: the Abbasid Dynasty and the French.

The Abbasid Dynasty's focus on technology, powered by their unique landmark, the House of Wisdom, will allow players to choose unique upgrade opportunities. Their unique units include Camel Archers and Riders.

The French were revealed alongside the 100 Years War campaign, allowing players to place themselves in the battles fought between the English and French in the 14th and 15th centuries. The French thrive in trade, with the Chamber of Commerce and Royal Institute landmarks helping strengthen a player's late game. Royal Knights are one of the civilization's special units with a fearsome charge ability.

Making a heroic appearance in the trailer is French heroine and icon Joan of Arc. Teenage Joan rallied her country and led armies into battle against the occupying English.

Taking the battle to the water adds a whole new dimension to player strategy and adds new meaning to "sink or swim"!

With updated controls, intuitive UI and a fresh approach to the campaign, Age of Empires IV is the most accessible Age of Empires game yet while taking everything fans love about the franchise to the next level.

With Age of Empires IV’s first ever ranked season ending in a few short days on June 30th, it's time for an update on Season Two as well as a quick overview of Season Three, tentatively planned for the October/November timeframe!

Not only has the modding community published more than one thousand mods since the Season One update was released on April 7th, but more than 42,000 competitors made their mark on the ranked season one leaderboard.

Season Two: Just on the Horizon

We shared a little bit about Season Two back in March, and we’re here today to say that features like the Map Preference System, Fully Remappable Inputs, and Player Color Picker are on their way in July… along with a few other exciting changes!

Those of you who participated in our recent Public Update Preview may have already had the chance to test some of these features out (and thanks for the feedback, by the way!). Here’s an overview of some of what you can expect:

• Introducing the Player Color Picker! You requested it, and it’s almost here. With this new setting, players can choose a color or have a color randomly assigned at the start a match that will surface in-game and on the mini-map in single-player skirmish, multiplayer custom matches, quick matches and ranked matches.
• Based on your feedback, we’ve continued to refine hotkeysto ensure you’re able to customize and play as you wish. In Season Two, we’ll be introducing the new Fully Remappable Hotkey layout, along with making changes to how hotkey conflicts work and reorganizing remapping menus so hotkeys are easier to find. 
• 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. When the Season Two update releases, we’ll be sharing FAQs and other details further outlining how the system works!
• Speaking of maps, we’ll be introducing a brand new map in Season Two, called The Pit! This map has a competitive focus with a mostly open layout. 

We’ll have more to share in the coming weeks, including significant balance changes, new Seasonal Event rewards and our Season Two theme!

With all this and more coming to Age of Empires IV very soon, it’s the perfect time to join in on the fun! Age IV is featured in the Steam Summer Sale starting today, June 23rd, and also available with PC Game Pass or Ultimate.

Season Three: What’s Still to Come

At the start of Season One, we sent out a player survey asking a lot of questions about how our players felt about the update and requesting guidance on our next steps. In some cases, your responses validated some work we already had underway (such as the Map Preference System), and in other cases, your responses helped us change our priorities.

One thing we learned is we have a lot of players who like ranked in theory but would prefer to enjoy with others. As a result of that feedback, we made it a priority to introduce our first iteration of Team Ranked in Season Three. We’ll explore some other meaningful changes to Ranked based on other learnings resulting from the survey, and we’ve also started early discussions on what we can do to provide more opportunities to allow players to enjoy Age IV in more social and less competitive ways.

We’ll also be looking to introduce two features you’ve been asking after for a while: Taunts and Cheats! While our starting point with Taunts and Cheats is heavily inspired by what you’ve seen and experienced in previous Age titles, we’ll be looking to expand upon this space as we go. When it comes to Cheats, we’ll be offering up some of what you’ve seen in the past, as well as some new things – both functional and playful. When it comes to unique units, we expect we’ll be asking you for your input once our first offering of Cheats releases so we can continue to entertain.  

And of course, it goes without saying that this is just a small peek at what’s to come. There’s a lot more we expect to share with you as we get closer to Season Three.

Key Features:

• Stunning 4K visual fidelity
• Eight diverse civilizations, including the Mongols and Chinese, along with naval gameplay support
• Four campaigns with thirty-five missions spanning 500 years of history
• Cooperate or spectate with up to seven of your friends in PVP and PVE multiplayer modes
• Best-in-class game and platform services, including a World Editor in early 2022, tutorials and a story mode to help onboard new RTS players

Age of Empires IV is available on PC (Steam) for $59.99.