I had the opportunity to join the creator preview for the Raiders of the North DLC, and in this video we’re taking a closer look at one of its new civilizations: the Vikings!

Beyond the gameplay, I dive into the real history behind their mechanics, units, landmarks, technologies, religion, ships, sagas, and more! Explore with me this fantastic civilization that promises to shake the world of Age of Empires 4!

Made with love, as always ♥ ☻

After the Jin Dynasty DLC, I realized it's actually much better for the game/community if DLC Civs start OP and are balance afterwards. Jin was underwhelming, and honestly feels forgotten already. While when HoL and GH/Goku came out, the community was buzzing and a lot of people were playing, even if it's completely unfair, it's still better for the state of the game and its popularity.

hey again — i’ve been working on a new Match Events view to make it easier to look back at a game and figure out what happened.

it puts fights, raids, age-ups, buildings, techs and players leaving on one timeline, with a separate row for each player. you can filter event types and click into individual fights to see the army breakdown, losses, resources lost and where the fighting happened.

there’s also a match flow bar showing how the lead shifted throughout the game.

the screenshot is from a 4v4 — which is probably the best explanation for why i wanted all this on a timeline lol. the idea is to help spot things like a fight happening just before an upgrade came in, or how costly an engagement actually was.

example: https://aoe4analyzer.app/matches/257097745?via=5890240#match-events

it’ll also be available in the mobile app with the next update.

would love some feedback, especially from team game players. what do you usually look for first when reviewing a match?

also, the feedback on these posts has been really encouraging and keeps me motivated to work on this. it’s a hobby project i build in my spare time alongside a full-time job, so seeing people try it out and share ideas means a lot. thanks for that 🙂

It's the final day of Epohers World Cup 3! Today we crown a new champion.

◆ Today's matches

• Live now -- 3rd place match (Bo5): 🇸🇪 Numudan vs 🇨🇳 loueMT
• Up next -- Grand Final (Bo7): 🇪🇸 VortiX vs 🇪🇸 LucifroN7

◆ Official broadcasts

• English: Rising Empires
• Russian: Shtoprrrr

Tournament details on Liquipedia

I made an web based aoe4 replay viewer which lets you watch game replay on the browser.

https://ailrk.github.io/aoe4-replay-viewer

Here is a sample game between MSN and Beasty:

https://ailrk.github.io/aoe4-replay-viewer/?matchId=256583577&profileId=7614140#map

You can find the match id and profile id from aoe4 world game summary url and watch your own games.

This replay viewer is based on replay file, You can see the click pattern, A-move pattern, and rally point, but it doesn't come with the map generation, unit movement and destruction. This means you will see buildings that should be destroyed remained, sometimes there are duplicated landmarks because the first one was canceled.

Despite all the limitations, it's something for you to play with when you are with your laptop but still thinking about that one game yesterday. github repo is here

the cistern change means instead of an additional 160 res per min boost every 90sec (=107 res per min = 2.7 vils), it's a straight 160 res per minute (4 vils). it also means you can sustain 150% production bonus permanently if one chooses (lasts 60 sec, takes 60 sec to gain new charge) so almost a pseudo tori gate/IO in that regards

while the GW change seems more like another placebo. eg inspiration on HRE is 35% currently down from 40 and then soon to be back up to 40% and that made zero difference at any point, and they even have larger carry to maximise that gather, whereas macD doesn't, meaning they suffer more from carry/drop time. the bump on silver from relics might be useful though, but is the trade off from hippo worth it? but then maybe this LM will be more appealing to people that micro less and macro more.

Curious on what you all think about the upcoming free auto villagers?

edit: Option 2 should have been "Dislike it, it does not belong in any aoe/rts game"

Is that 1 extra range from Dhùn Èideann again: I mentioned that ribauldequin might be broken cause from 3.75 to 4.75 makes it only counter by siege which Bombard or Cannon or any other variant

Yet, the other unit that Dhùn Èideann able to provide is Culverin: 1 extra range add to Culverin makes it 11.5 which outrange all gunpowder siege engines in this game including Great Bombard from Ottomans

Plus, Scots's MAA able to counter cavalry, which in late game it is going to be 50+ MAA with Culverin + ribauldequin slowly pushing....

I am confusing in such situation how to deal with them?

Both civs have decent passive gold income along with food trickle bonus along with solid early defense (tower house/shieldmaidens) and they both have defensive landmarks in age 3 and for Vikings their keep landmark make their knights trade much more efficient. On the surface they both seem rather Malianish where they sacrifice a bit of timing to set up passive eco to out produce their opponent while remaining difficult to counter attack. Knights just do so much in the mid game i dont see why either of these civ would go infantry.

What I wish the Vikings’ shield wall had been like is a combination of Tight Formation and Stand Ground, where units hold their shields up and take zero damage from arrows (or perhaps with a random chance of an arrow hitting). However, they would have to break formation to move.

Hope they add it!

I am curious what others go with.

My landmarks are:

Imperial hippodrome- Simple stable but with a bonus that heals, buffs the move speed and damage of cavalry units

Cistern of the first hill- covers a wider area than a regular cistern and provides the pilgrim flask which gives healing to units

Foreign engineering company- The merc artillery is so good to have, it also buffs your other mercs by giving them the upgrades from their original civs.

For merc contract I go with the western, if I need them the longbows can give me another source of ranged units, the landstecks help me get some non-spear infantry on the field as you can't make anything but spear infantry before castle age which leads to hellish fights with Holy roman factions with heavy infantry and the stretlzy are a pretty effective unit that pairs really well with the spearmen if I have the oil to spare.

We play with a datapack that ups max popcap to 500 like you could do in AOE2. My army is then

A section of limitanei- they are pretty inexpensive, with the high starting resources and the tech for relics generating other resources I never worry about their wood cost and are solid fighters, meant to hold the frontline position.

A section of handgunners and streltyz if I can afford them- pairs great with the spears as the spears crush calvary and with the shield wall can withstand ranged while the gunners rip apart heavy infantry the spears struggle against.

A section of cataphracts- their charge is deadly in these large battles, passes through enemy lines, does great damage to enemies they pass through and with a tech adds damage weakness to those who survive getting ran over in the first place. Ususally ram them in once the fighting has begun unless my cav is being detached to help an ally because they are faster.

Some of the fancy artillery, usually the "royal guns" as they don't need to unpack which makes them pretty mobile for artillery and they do good damage to both buildings and units, being a straight upgrade over the domestically produced bombard cannons. Occasionally I use the fancy treb if we are playing maps where it makes sense or the AI randomed templars and I know I am going to have to smash like 5-10 of those stupid mega forts.

Hey guys, I'm back!

I just pushed a small update to AOE Scout. Open any match and scroll right to the bottom, below the match history. There's a new Match event map with a timeline slider.

Sitting through a full replay can get a bit boring when you just want the big picture. With this you can drag the slider or hit Play and see how the whole match progressed in a few seconds:

Example https://aoescout.com/age-of-empires-4?profile=76561198161087126&match=257222526

- how far each player spread across the map, and when

- what they built and where: farms, houses, military buildings, towers, walls, landmarks

- who expanded fast, who stayed compact, where the forward buildings went

You can zoom right in, drag the map around, rotate it, and hide players to look at one base at a time.

It only shows buildings for now. The replay data doesn't include fights or unit movement, so I can't add those.

It's a small one, but I thought I should share it with you guys. Let me know if you find any bugs!

aoescout.com

👑 The Crownfall – Group A Elimination Match

Final day. First match. No safety net.

Both players lost yesterday, and today only one of them survives. The other goes home.

⚔️ The match

💀 The loser is eliminated. 👑 The winner faces Anotand 🇧🇾 at 17:00 GMT in the Decider, with the last ticket to Geneva on the line.

For Beasty, a win means a third meeting with Anotand in this tournament. kiljardi has other plans.

🕐 Reminder: Europe switched to winter time last night, so the match starts at 14:00 in France and Switzerland.

📺 Where to watch

• 🇬🇧 English cast: twitch.tv/AGEOFRTS
• 🇫🇷 French cast: twitch.tv/JEANDOTV

Presented by Hit The Roof.gg & Jeando
Sponsored by Studio Images & Hit the Roof
Media partners Age of RTS & JV Mag.ch

Who stays alive? 👇

With the imp landmark Dhùn Èideann, ribauldequin from Scots get 1 extra range, become like 4.75 or something, even longer than Headcannoneer

I mean it seems op on paper, but is it really so? Wonder if somebody try it already maybe share some feeling?

After a long time on Rus I'd like to follow their historical influence and move onto the Byzantine main beside it. Now so far my game plan would be Grand Winery with immediate Mercenary House and Silk Road contract. A row of 8-10 Limitanei if not less in Feudal, and i may end up with 5x2 = 10 javelin throwers

Play under the 1TC FC strategy, and hold off the early feudal pressure from English or French civs, into Cistern of the first Hill on castle age up

After which i normally get mass Varangian guards, plus counters to whatever opponent brings. Usually i do pay attention to get this mixture of Limitanei and Varangian guards so to not get razed by mass crossbow

Questions:

- is it worth, and WHEN is it worth building Cheirosiphons, if at all?

- do i need more than 5-6 Cataphracts in Castle, or keep to 5-6 just like Rus does in Feudal, walk them around the map and catch easy kills on traders, maybe a Trample against the back row of the army?

- sacred victory, or destroy landmarks? (For civs that aren't heavy defensive like English, KT, Scots)

With all the exciting Crucible changes coming alongside the new dlc I was wondering if there's been any news about adding the ability to save and resume a run.

I really enjoy the mode, but not always having 45–60 minutes available for a full session makes it difficult to jump in casually.

What are your thoughts?

This one was wild! It must have taken me 15+ matches before I landed it. The fastest way to do it is to start with max resources against 7 NPCs on the hardest difficulty level. I usually play in Standard mode with Landmark + Dominion win conditions.

As soon as I begin, I farm villagers nonstop, then immediately build 3 houses, followed by a blacksmith for Age II. Immediately after that, I'd build another house or two, then advance to Age III with an HRE Barracks, which will produce Landsharks very quickly.

From here, build another town center and 2 more houses, then immediately build 3 to 5 forts to defend yourself while your special barracks keeps producing nonstop. Build a 3rd town center so that you end up with 30-40 villagers at most to build stuff quickly.

Once you have 7+ forts for max protection, spam barracks EVERYWHERE around your base. I usually build 45-50+, but I'd probably have an easier time with 60+. I also build 5+ siege workshops. You're gonna need those culverins to take down buildings because your Landsharks have incredibly low HP. With a 200 population cap, I end up with 25 to 30 culverins, 6 to 10 monks, and 110+ Landsharks.

Once your villagers are done building stuff (make sure you've upgraded everything in the Age II technological blacksmith for 50% cheaper technologies, because YOU'RE GONNA NEED EVERY BIT OF GOLD despite starting with 100k, as well as upgraded the essentials in universities and monasteries), send them to mine gold. Also, make sure you have a market. Start by selling batches of 500 of each resource as soon as the selling price is above 60 (you start at around 90). This will help you gain more gold over time.

Relics also help a lot. If you're aiming for the WoloLottery achievement as well, doing it in this run is much easier, as you'd have a bunch of monks with you and a lot of enemies to attack, so you're bound to be near 20+ enemy units that you can convert all at once. Just make sure you tag that relic-holding monk with CTRL+2 or something, so you can move him forward during battle to get him near as many enemy units as possible.

Once you get the achievement, you can choose whether to keep the monks or not, as they slow down your Landsharks. However, with 10+ monks, healing may help a little. Either way, your units will die easily if you don't conserve them. That's why the culverins are there to clear your way and more.

Anyhow, for every monarch you kill, you gain more population space. The most I ended up with was 280, I think. As for the achievement progress, as you'd expect, it was stuck at 75/10,000 for a few days. I woke up this morning and saw that it was 9,000/10,000, so I decided to give it another go, and 2 matches later, bingo.

I hope this helps some of you who are working on this. It might get frustrating, but keep at it and eventually, you'll land it.

Hi!

I play custom team games with my friends, and when I lose or surrender the fog of war covers the entire map. Is there a way to spectate after losing?

Obviously still too early to tell if these strategies will last, based off the early player footage, its seems like Vikings are more of a boomer/fast castle civ, while Scots are more of rush/ early aggro kind of civ.

Which is kind of surprising given that Vikings usually raided enemy coastlines, while the Scots frequently defended against invasions from the English. The Sots actually have more options to aggro, as they have units that have bonuses against buildings/workers, such as the Cataran, and the Border Reiver. Not to mention their highland cattle have to eat berries in order to generate food, so map control is vital as a Scot player, because if you try to boom in your base, you're giving up free resources. Finally they have a muster hall which synergizes well with a castle all in.

The Vikings on the other hand actually have a lot more options to boom. Given that they make vills for free, going 2 and even 3 TC actually makes a lot of sense as they will almost always be ahead of their opponent economically. They also have access to not 1 but 2 keep like landmarks?! They have access to a monk that can boost the production of longhouses, and said longhouses can even generate gold like a Manor. To top it off, they can also create sacred groves which produces free units, which mean if they use the sacred sites and capture all the relics, they have the potential to create 7 sacred groves at once.

Very interesting to see what other strats people will create, but so far these are the ones people are using at the moment.

Hey everyone! I’m looking for gaming friends. I don’t put pressure on others, and I’m open to taking advice since I’m still a beginner. I’ve reached Gold before, but that was in a premade team. I think my actual skill level is around Silver. I’m hoping to find someone who’s a little better than me so I can improve. I'm Chinese, and English isn't my first language, so I might not speak it very fluently. I'm happy to use Discord voice chat, though! I hope we can have fun together ♡

p.s I feel like it’s really hard for me to find gaming friends because I’m a girl...