Age of Empires IV AOE4 Beginner guide

Introduction

I am not very good at this game actually. I just hope to share the findings for the community.

I made this Traditional Chinese guide almost 1 year ago before this English version.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2910560927

The new update might change a few things since Jun 2023.

Please feel free to provide the feedback in the comment.

The following game reviews from master-level players are the international famous YouTubers that I would recommend. I learnt a lot from them.

https://www.youtube.com/@AussieDrongo

mainly focuses on game reviews

https://www.youtube.com/@BeastyqtSC2

top players, with tutorials on how to start each civilization, and skills for novices Recommend

https://www.youtube.com/@AgeofNoob

for in-depth study of AOE4 principles

Basic Guide - Part 1

1. Recommend using English Civilization for beginner

The game mode for English Civilization is closer to Age of Empires 2 (AOE2), which has less alternative game principles, and has economic and military advantages in the early and late stages. Moreover, the longbowman have the characteristics of long-distance attack and rapid troop production, and do not consume precious gold resources. It makes it easier for many novices to form their first wave of powerful armies.

2. Find videos online and copy the basic build steps

Mark down all the steps for first 5-10 minutes of work arrangement, and then make use of the NPC opponent to familiarize yourself with the steps. Their steps are all improved through different experiences and have great value. However, some players are more aggressive for their gameplay style. You might need to pay attention to more reference points for the same result. So, choose wisely.

Some videos are made before the new update, and some game parameters have been changed since then (such as building resource requirements). It is better to use the latest videos. After having some experience, you can take reference from the latest live broadcast clips of the world's top players.

3. Try to stay focus on villager work allocation

Don't let them keep changing the resources they collect. It's time-consuming to go to new resource gathering point on foot. Only send a small number of villagers to collect certain resources in advance. Try to understand the collection speed and timing for each resources regarding your next upgrade or production.

4. Press shift to provide multi-step instructions

For example, assign villager to build several farms and mills in one command sequence, and assign scout for routes with multiple checkpoints. It would reduce detailed operations and focus on more other things.

5. Find out the hotkey to cycle the view for all idle villagers (default is "." period key).

The more idle villagers there are, the slower the resource collection will be.

6. Find out the hotkey to cycle the view for all the religious units (default is " ' " apostrophe key).

After the priest mentions the relics, the relics marker will disappear on the mini map. The position of the priest will be more difficult to search for. Also, idle religious units would not be consider as idle villager.

7. Try to mix two or more type of unites during the army production to cover their weakness

When your opponent knows what you are producing, they will produce units that will counter your units. When you are producing more than one kind of units, the counter strategy would not be straight forward. It also tests the opponent's understanding on wider range of different unit types. Sometimes the opponent will use a small number of troops to lure you on producing massive counter units, and then they will silently produce another batch of counter arms to get your counter units all in one go. You need to be careful. Always scout your enemy and try to understand what they are working on.

8. Watch your own battle records

Have a look on what your opponent did in the last game, what they have found, and how they reacted to put you into bad situation

Every civilization has its weakness and strength. The same applies to each unit types.

If you think that your opponent have better civilization, you can write down his build order and try to use his game style to win the next battle. Even if you won in the last game, you can also still learn the mistakes made by your opponent and understand the common weakness from different players.

9. Don’t stop producing villagers until the economic unit has 120 people.

The number of villagers has a great influence on the speed of resource collection. The longer the battle drags on, the more obvious it will be. Build the second/third town center as soon as possible and try to keep up with the food collection. To have constant villagers production, each town center requires about 4 villagers to collect the food at least. 120 people are just a reference number and try to keep 80 population for the army production.

10. Use villagers to stop the ram attack on early age

If you opponent have launched ram attack in the early age, Try to make good use of villagers leaving the town center to light the ram up. The fire attack from dozens of villagers is very effective. Dont just hide all the villagers and rely on the arrows from town center. The ranged attack from the arrows will be blocked by the ram effectively.

12. Build observation towers everywhere and discover the expansion of your opponent early.

Real-time strategy games emphasize collecting the correct and appropriate amount of resources and producing units to defeat the enemy in time to attack the opponent's weaknesses and slowly widen the gap in strength.

If you prepared a large number of troops and your opponent is too focused on the economy, your opponent is likely to be unable to protect the villagers and lose the game quickly.

But if you prepared for too long and the opponent has already started to produce advanced units, or if your opponent found out your main unit types, then your opponent may produce a small number of counter units in time and successfully change the situation of the battle.

Therefore, intelligence is very important. You might accidentally find that your opponent sends dozens of villagers to new resource gathering point without any defensive troops or towers. It would be good opportunity for you to sneak attack and weaken their economy. In addition, there is no limit on the number of towers to be built in the game, which can provide nearly unlimited additional attacks and shield with the 200 population limit. For civilizations with unlimited stone resources, such as Mongolia, the advantage is even more obvious.

The observation tower can also show the ability of invisible units. If you discover the scale of the attack and the types of the units early, you can deploy or produce appropriate troops earlier to protect your weak points.

12. Use more scouts to understand the opponent's resource collection.

- If the opponent has started quarrying a lot of stone in the early stage, they may want to build a new town center or build a stone wall for defense with a late age battle.

- If your opponent collects a lot of gold via mine or trading troops, it is likely that they want to upgrade their age, or produce units with high defense cost such as armored infantry or cavalry.

- If the opponent does not mine/trade gold, they are probably preparing to produce pikemen, horseman or archer, which are the unites that have no gold consumption.

- However, there is no certain standard for the above situation, it is just the best effort prediction. Sometimes players also send villagers to collect resources from the most unexpected location, such as your backyard.

13. Don't underestimate the long-term bonus of trade/relics/sacred site for the gold income, especially when the war lasts for more than 30 minutes.

Try to stop it if the opponent traded or occupied sacred site, you should build a monastery as soon as you enter the castle era and seize relics. Send out scouts to find out if your opponent is doing trade, and then send cavalry units to stop the trade as quickly as possible.

Gold income can be used for many different upgrades and heavy units.

Basic Guide - Part 2

14. Don’t underestimate the upgrades such as wheelbarrows and armor/attack bonuses.

The sooner the wheelbarrow is completed, it can improve all resource collection by 10-15%.

Armor/attack bonuses often became key battle factor whether the unit can return safely for the next battle

15. Producing second scout in the early age

In the beginning, scouts are particularly useful in early sheep snatching game, and are also useful on detecting enemies in the mid-game. However, it is not advisable to over-produce scouts and affect the villager production. For the first scout, it is best to go directly to the enemy in order to take control for the sheep in the middle. For the second scout, it is suggested to find sheep near home and take them home. And then start running the map. There is limited number of wild sheep in the map. One more sheep on your side means the opponent has one less sheep.

Once the opponent took all the food from the sheep under town center, he will have to take the risk leaving the town center to hunt, or cut the tree to build the farms.

In addition, sheep are the fastest and safest way to collect food. Collecting food from farm is much slower food gathering method. In the mid-term, scouts can understand the opponent's expansion areas and deployment so that you can respond quicker.

16. Try out all the civilizations and understand your opponent's strengths and weaknesses.

- For example, Rus will have a permanent economic bonus when hunting animals, so your scouts should also hunt deer and wolves in the early game to lower their chance for gaining the bonus point.

- For English civilization , when someone is farming under the mill range in Imperial Age, there is one gold collected every 3.5 seconds for each farm. You should take down the farms early or preventing their villagers farming.

- After upgrading the "chivalry" upgrade, the French knights will recover 1 blood every 1 second after leaving the battle. Therefore, when you have the chance, you should try to hunt down the knight to death.

- They are just few of many examples from the long list of civilizations.

17. Try to make use of F1, F2, F3, F4 to cycle through all buildings/units most of the time

it is especially useful for finding pending unlock upgrades in the late-game.

18. Use Control Key to reduces mouse clicks and improves efficiency

Use Ctrl + 1/2/3/4/... to set the unit group shortcut key, then press 1/2/3/... to switch between them.

You can use it on buildings and units.

(note: I rarely use it and often forget to configure it)

19. Don’t underestimate the impact of springald on opponent's siege engines.

Siege engines take up a lot of resources to build and time-consuming to build and move. It is rare to have large number of siege workshops in the mid-game, so taking down several siege weapons in a row could often result a great impact on the battle situation.

20. Build a large number of military production buildings in the middle and late stages.

When resources are sufficient, military production buildings should be built more often. The frontline buffer zone could be used to slow down the opponent's attack speed. Try to allow the opponent's units to attack buildings in order for you to buy time producing counter units.

On the other hand, this move will also increase the speed of producing new units and refill the troops way faster. Last but not least, it will also prevent the opponent from easily occupying the land and have military buildings against you, such as towers.

21. In the mid and late-game, build stone walls, towers or a large number of outposts near landmarks. Beware of raids on landmarks.

Destroying all landmarks is also one of the ways to win. So sometimes some players will produce a large number of scouts, horsemen or knights to raid the landmarks, and win by surprise.

When the defensive buildings are built with enough amount, this kind of raid will not work. They need to bring slow-moving siege weapons to demolish all the defensive buildings first.

22. Try to place early-age buildings near the center of the town to make them easier to defend

More importantly, the two connected buildings will not completely block the road and have no walling effect. Please be careful that the unit from your opponent could get passed though it.

Details That Are Not Directly Stated In The Game

1. Most of the opponent's positions are at the furthest diagonal.

When your scout approaches those area, pay more attention and don't send sheep to the opponent's door. Once you find the opponent, especially the town center, go around it. Once the scout is killed by the arrows from the town center, the sheep could be collected by their scout easily

2. When the opponent's scout is very close to the town center, you might as well send sheep pickers. If the villagers stationed in the town center for a while,

if the opponents did not notice that their scout was being attacked, it would take just a few seconds for the group of villagers in town center to shoot down their scout and take over their sheep. Sometimes it can be the key to early game. But keep in mind that only scouts can lead the sheep away/make the sheep changing their side. Villagers can only kill the sheep on the spot to get the food. Villagers can not guide the sheep to new location anymore in AOE4.

3. It is best to pull the new stone wall plan from the existing stone wall.

It is not recommended to pull it from the edge of the map. There is the internet video to explain the detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjKZeuVwUhA

4. Stone walls should not be built one to two blocks away from resources

This is again very different from AOE2. The walls in AOE4 have many different angles. And there are also some restrictions that are visually feasible but not allowed to be built in the game. You need to know more about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjKZeuVwUhA

5. Detailed additional damage bonus based on unit types is not displayed in the game sometimes.

It would be a huge factor when you have large number of units. Each unit and building in the game will occupy different spaces. Unit with long ranged attack distances or the unit that can attack while moving could be game changer. The fight while flight tactics can completely pin down the whole slow-moving units, so the chance of winning a small fight cannot just base on the number for attack and defense alone.

Some troops have AOE attacks, especially English Counterweight Trebuchet with the "Shattering Projectiles" upgrade and Holy Roman Empire's Landsknecht. There is also unit that could attack while moving include Mongolia's Mongolian assault cavalry.

The Trebuchet can also attack buildings blocked by city walls because of its projectile attack. Cannon, on the other hand, can only fire in straight line. It needs to break through the city wall first, or go around the city wall.

Finally, it is recommended to refer to online tutorials or discussion forums, because the AOE4 team is still constantly adjusting parameters to make the game more balanced.

The following video is about the recommended order for upgrading armor and weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JrcyLXci4Q

6. If the sheep is very close to the assigned building, it will enter running mode.

You can assign the sheep to different buildings to keep running and speed up them for running toward the town center.

The Differences Between Age Of Empires 4 (AOE4) And Age Of Empires 2 (AOE2)

Although playing the previous generation of the AOE series will help you in macro level, there are still a lot of details that need to be paid more attention for these 2 different series. Otherwise, some misunderstandings will waste a small amount of resources, or lose the game in the end. It could cause long-term impact on your ranking.

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1. Infantry units can now walk on stone walls.

Units on stone walls will take 66% less damage. Archers on the stone wall will increase their attack distance by 2 tiles.

2. The direction of the stone wall gate would affect the stair for stone wall could be walked on.

If it is placed in the wrong direction, it is possible for the opponent to walk up to your city wall. But at the same time, it can block the connection for the siege tower. Therefore, some people will place them inside out under special circumstances

(Note: Because the entry and exit control of the siege tower is complicated, and the number of soldiers entering and exiting at the same time is limited, not much people use it for the time being)

3. Any unit garrisoned in a building will not automatically restore to full health anymore

It requires monks or special units/buildings with different health restoring abilities.

4. Villagers will be affected by their position in the farm according to the food level in the farm. But the long-term effect is very minor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VvsA3wVNyI

5. The default winning conditions now include the occupation of scared site and the destruction of landmarks.

6. The farm is a resource that can be regenerated indefinitely without extra cost. Besides the construction costs, no additional wood will be consumed during reset. And there is no need to control villagers to re-cultivate.

7. Mongolian buildings can be folded, moved and opened again for use, except for observation towers and world wonders. All progress in the building will be reset. The population limit remains unchanged to maximum. And there is no need to build houses for Mongolian.

8. There is no garden in the center of the town center. Like other buildings, sheep cannot be brought to the garden in the center of the town center for food collection. Soldiers cannot run into the garden to increase the number of units attacking the town center at the same time anymore.

9. After the death of animals, the amount of food will not decay over time.

10. There is in-game native 1v1 ranking game and team ranking game for each ranking seasons.

11. In addition to walls, two connected buildings will no longer completely block the road. Units can walk between buildings.

12. Catapults will not cause damage to friendly units.

13. There is no option for ringing the bell in the town center to call nearby villagers to flee on their own. Players need to select the villagers and issue them escape or garrison orders.

14. There are less civilization options in AOE4, only 10 for now. AOE2 have 13 civilizations and there are 42 in total when DLC is included. But there are way more differences between different civilizations in AOE4.

15. The population limit is 200, and the latest population limit of AOE2 is 500. However, you can increase the AOE4 population limit through the mod.

16. The number of players is half less. AOE4 has an average number of 8,394 players on steam in December 2022, and AOE2 has 15,709 players.

AOE4: https://steamcharts.com/app/1466860

AOE2 DE: https://steamcharts.com/app/1466860

17. Stone walls can only be damaged by siege weapons and cannot be attacked by ordinary units.

18.The units do not have 2-side division formation control instruction anymore

19. Monks can no longer take over units from opponent, unless they are holding a relics.

When holding a relics, they can take over the opponent units within range after the singing. It will have cool down time after each singing.

20. Age up is no longer done in the town center. Instead, villagers will have to build landmark buildings as age up. You need to choose one of two landmark buildings and complete the construction.

21. AOE4 is a 3D three-dimensional game. Players can rotate the perspective at any time in the game at multiple angles. There is a chance that a few objects may not be selected due to the perspective. Sometimes it is necessary to push the camera forward or backward.

22. There is forest land type where some unit is not invisible, and some civilizations also have the function of hiding soldiers anytime anywhere.

Only tower and scout can see the unit in the forest and the Malians Musofadi Warrior: https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/civilizations/malians/

23. Sheep cannot be controlled by villagers, only Scouts can lead

Villager can only collect food from sheep on the spot, but cannot lead sheep to the town center.

24. There are two different color signs for the town center meeting point.

If it is a blue flag, the new villagers will automatically collect resources on the assembly point.

Otherwise, the assembly point will be a yellow flag. The villager will become idle after the production.

25. All buildings will be burned to the ground when the health bar is lower than 25%. Mongolia will have a resource reward after burning the building .

26. Computer players will not surrender, and will not have last words when defeated.

27. Trees have no health bar, and all the siege weapons cannot use fixed-point attack to clear trees. However, those animals, such as sheep and deer, still have health bar. And siege weapons can use fixed-point attacks to cost damage to them

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There are many other not-listed AOE2 vs AOE4 differences ....

Other Useful Resources

https://aoe4world.com

You can check the statistics of all the matches. It has ranking, battle records and statistics for each player.

One Last Thing

Although it is just a list of bullet points, it still took me 4 hours of hard work to translate it from my original Traditional Chinese guide.

If this guide is helpful to you, please like it or rate it to show your support, or create other guide for the community.

Thanks. Happy Gaming!

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3075929086

AOE4 Beginner guide