Then I did some scouting and discovered that the enemy had a big town surrounding the stronghold and this was generating a lot of gold, wood, and food for the replenishment of the enemy’s army. I retreated back to my base and rebuilt the army. So I moved straight at the enemy stronghold. My army wasn’t the strongest, but it did have a lot cavalry. And when I did so, I marched straight into the stronghold of York, which had walls defending it. I had to take over some villages and start building a big army. After that first mission, I marched north as William into the rebel stronghold of York. The history was told in an interesting way, and that kind of storytelling kept me engaged with each mission. It gives players a proper appreciation for the importance of a battle that changed England forever. Each stage of the battle is narrated, and you even get a sense of a “you are there” feeling because the devs included videos from the battle location. It turns out this is a great way to teach the rock-paper-scissors nature of medieval combat, where the spear soldiers did well against cavalry, which could easily take out archers, which could take out rows of infantry when properly shielded behind a line of sword infantry. Then he brought up cavalry to attack Harold’s archers and finally kill Harold. And he brought up archers to take out the stragglers. Then William picked off the smaller groups with his reinforcements. But William feigned retreat and got Harold’s army to run down the hill and open gaps in the line. The tutorial teaches you that a head-on charge against a shield wall of Harold’s soldiers was a bad idea. Harold’s army had to first go north to defeat a Viking invasion, and then rush south to meet William at a place called Senlac Hill. I didn’t mind that I never had more than 200 soldiers on the battlefield because the game did such a good job of making me feel like I was in a battle as the commanding general. While you have no real way to compare the number of soldiers on the battlefield to the actual numbers in the real armies, the game does a good job of representing the right scale of the forces and the look of the battlefield in a way that will leave you marveling at the graphics. The armies of King Harold, the defending king of Anglo-Saxon England, squared off against William, who came from the Norman province of France. The first mission after the tutorial is the Battle of Hastings, which turns out to be great choice for learning the game. The single-player campaign starts out with the Norman conquest of England by William the Conquerer in 1066. This new game takes advantage of the last 15 years of graphics improvements that allow for much more detail to be used in the individual characters and buildings that make up the scenes in 4K HDR battlefields.Įight civilizations appear in Age of Empires IV.

It’s easy for Age of Empires IV to look pretty compared to its predecessors. Other games had higher priorities at Microsoft. Microsoft’s success with Age of Empires started in 1997, and the marriage of history and RTS generated so much revenue that, in addition to Microsoft Flight Simulator, it enabled a vast expansion in the company’s game investments and ultimately led to the debut of the Xbox game console in 2001.Īge of Empires and its sequels sold more than 20 million copies, but Microsoft shut down Ensemble Studios in 2009 during the Great Recession after attempts to branch out (think Halo Wars) met with limited success. Other startups working on RTS titles are Frost Giant Studios and SunSpear games.īut Age of Empires IV could exploit a much bigger opportunity in RTS for the mainstream. Meanwhile, Eugen Systems has been doing a great job with World War II titles with its Steel Division series. Sega’s The Creative Assembly has a thriving Total War series, with Total War: Warhammer III coming, Total War: Rome Remastered out, and Total War Saga: Troy, also in the market. While Microsoft’s Age of Empires franchise has been stalled since 2005 (with the exception of some retro remakes), other key players have been carrying the RTS flag.

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