The care put into each faction goes beyond the mechanics, too. The camera stays at a pretty safe distance by default, and the focus is on the character of your entire civilization much more than any individual character. Each peasant or cavalryman presents a stylized spin on history, with strong silhouettes and bright, easy-to-read colors. You have a base where you gather resources like wood and stone, train armies of around 200 units (though the campaign will sometimes let you exceed this), and send them out to conquer your enemies. Though coming from Relic, a developer best known for mixing up the RTS genre with classics like Homeworld and Company of Heroes, Age of Empires 4 is shaping up to be much more of a classic Age game than anything else.

From documentary-style historical campaigns to the series' first nomadic faction, it's clear a lot of care has gone into preserving the Age of Empires experience while modernizing the experience. Age of Empires 4 details have been hard to come by since it was first announced in 2019, but no more, as we finally got a proper look at what Relic and Microsoft have been working on all this time.

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