Relic Entertainment, the freshly-independent developers of Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Age of Empires IV, have confirmed a number of job losses. The layoffs come just a week after the studio announced their sale from former owners Sega, returning them to independence after two decades.
]]>Over 25 years into Age of Empires’ history, it seems the storied strategy series is riding a high. Developers World’s Edge have announced their plans to follow up last year’s The Sultans Ascend DLC for Age of Empires 4 - said to be the best-selling expansion in the entire series’ history - with some new additions to the latest RTS instalment this spring.
]]>Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
]]>Age Of Empires 4 is the first RTS I've taken seriously. I've practised build orders, memorised specific civ counters, watched pro matches and agonised over key bindings. I have gone down into the nitty gritty of sheep micro, just to shear off microseconds from early villager gathering times, but I've never seen a good reason to build half of the landmarks in the game. It's a blessed relief, therefore, to see "landmark improvements" on the roadmap for Season 4, alongside a new mode and a funky purple-looking biome.
]]>When Adam Isgreen, creative director at World’s Edge, first played the Age Of Empires series, he was still working at Westwood Studios on Command & Conquer. “The first thing I was impressed about more than anything with this series was just like, wow! History! That's really smart," he tells me. "Like, there's no need to explain anything to people. You don't have to be like, oh, there's a laser gun or this is a magic missile. It's like, it's a wheelbarrow. I know what that does!”
To Isgreen, it’s this level of accessibility that’s carried Age Of Empires all the way to today’s 25th anniversary. The instantly legible historical warfare - “pikemen, ranged units and cavalry” - paired with randomised maps that promised, effectively, an infinite amount of replayability; “It just had a lot of features that I think players really loved and kind of defined itself along those features in a way that, yeah, it's just outlasted everything else.”
]]>Hearing that Age Of Empires 4 is getting a second season of support is a bit like finding out an old friend from school who struggled for a while is finally doing well for themselves. Good on you, decent-ish sequel to several real-time strategy classics, for adding more multiplayer features, campaign unlocks and quality of life improvements. Check out what’s coming in season two of AOE4 in the trailer below.
]]>It's been a few weeks since I came down on the side of basically liking Age Of Empires 4. Lukewarm praise, perhaps, but it seems to be doing well, and that makes me glad. We've needed an RTS revival for ages, right? And this one is good, if a bit safe.
For the last few weeks I've been puzzling over the lingering feeling that it could have been more ambitious. Why do I think it could have pushed the trireme out further? Is it possible to make a modern RTS that captures the best of the classics without simply rehashing them? Has it even been done already and gone unrecognised?
]]>It's tempting to bang on about the history of Age Of Empires, but let's be real here, you already know it well enough. Even if you haven't played them, the Age Of Empires games were a pillar of RTS design, and probably the most popular candidate for a comeback since publishers largely abandoned the genre in the 2000s.
Let's not argue about which of its elements is the defining one. They're base building, four-resource-gathering contests between factions based on historical world powers, and progress throughout a match happens in explicitly tiered eras that loosely represent historical ages. Age Of Empires 4 has all of that, across four 9-mission single player campaigns, 17 skirmish maps (which can be slightly modified with seed numbers, and we're told more map options are coming), and 8 playable, well-differentiated and slightly unequal civilisations. And I kinda like it.
]]>After running an Age Of Empires 4 closed beta test for lucky ticketholders, the makers now want absolutely everyone to pile in and click men as hard as you can to see if the game explodes. The historical RTS is holding an open "technical stress test" this weekend, from Friday to Monday, to give the multiplayer backend a sound kicking and see if it stays stands. In short, hey, you can play AO4's multiplayer for free this weekend.
]]>With the October 28th release of Age Of Empires IV looming, last week’s Gamescom event saw a clutch of new reveals for the medieval strategy extravaganza, including a new trailer, a couple of live interviews, and - my personal favourite - an unexpected short documentary about trebuchets. In just three minutes, it told us a surprisingly large amount about history’s finest rock-chuckers, including the fact that they were sometimes armed with such strange ammunition as diseased livestock, dead bodies, and bee hives.
Naturally, then, when I spoke with AoE franchise creative director Adam Isgreen and game director Quinn Duffy following the show, there was one question I needed to ask more than any other. Indeed, so urgent was I to know, that I entirely forgot to say hello or introduce myself, instead opening the interview by blurting, “so, we’ll be able to shoot bees, then?”
I certainly know how to make an entrance.
]]>Gamescom 2021 is underway, and this evening brought the Xbox showcase stream. You can watch the stream archive in full, but if all you care about is new trailers, then we've gathered them together here.
]]>If you don't want to play a Halloween-y game at Halloween, now you can play a new Age Of Empires game instead. Age Of Empires 4 is set to release on October 28th, and during Microsoft and Bethesda's E3 stream we saw some new footage of some mighty battles. Joan of Arc is there, as are many horses, sieges and a handful of elephants.
]]>Despite being the fifth main game in its series, the only way of looking at Age Of Empires 4 is as a sequel to Age Of Empires 2. The first and third Age titles were both fine games, of course, as was their stoner cousin Age Of Mythology. But it was AoE2 that would be enshrined as one of the all-time RTS greats, and it’s the inevitable benchmark against which AoE4 will be measured, when it launches later this year. Just the twenty-year fug of strategy dad nostalgia surrounding the series would have been a significant enough headwind for AoE4 developers Relic Entertainment to release into. But thanks to a belting remaster of AoE2 in 2019, the old bruiser is somehow once again the RTS of the day, complete with brand new expansions, lashings of fresh esports, and the largest player base it has ever had.
Launching a new Age game now has the air of a prince giving a nervous funeral speech, where he promises to exceed the glories of his father’s reign, even as the king’s body casually bench-presses a horse from the coffin next to him. How do you supplant a game whose star still seems to be rising? Change too much, and you’ll be beasted for fixing what wasn’t broken. Change too little, on the other hand, and you’ll be castigated for not fixing the broken bits. It’s a hell of a balancing act, for sure. And yet, after watching the footage from today’s Fan Preview event, and speaking with the folks at Relic, they look well in reach of pulling it off.
]]>Age Of Empires 4 was announced a few years ago, but we've only seen a little of the Relic-developed sequel to the classic RTS series. That's about to change with the Age Of Empires Fan Preview event, which is taking place about an hour from now at 5pm BST/9am PST/12pm EST. You can stream it before.
]]>Today's a big day for Age Of Empires. A revamped version of the second game launched this afternoon (and it's still jolly nice, our Nate said in his Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition review) then tonight we got a first look at the all-new Age Of Empires 4. It's set in the medieval era and ooh, I do quite like how that old cartoony look is being translated to modern 3D. Have a look for yourself.
]]>After returning to Age of Empires II for an 'HD' re-release and several years of new expansions, reviving the long-dormant real-time strategy series, Microsoft have finally announced a brand new instalment. Age of Empires IV [official site] is in the works at Relic Entertainment, the folks best known for the Company of Heroes, Homeworld, and Dawn of War games. What a treat! And what a surprise.
Microsoft also revealed a release date for Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, the revamp of the first game. AND they confirmed that Definitive Editions of 2 and 3 will follow. Strat-o-rama!
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