
To be fair, the French are a bit tougher to play than the English, focusing more on late-game dominance than early-game survival. The other one-star civilization in Age of Empires IV is the French. Alternatively, if you position your longbowmen behind attacking infantry or cavalry, you can pick off a lot of enemy units as they struggle to advance. A company of longbowmen behind a wall can make short work of invaders. Longbowmen don’t cost much to build, but feature excellent attack power and range. The English also have access to a unique unit: the longbowman. Finally, the English can build Men-at-Arms in the Dark Age, giving them access to a powerful melee unit much earlier than other civilizations. English military units fight better within range of town centers, outposts, towers and keeps, which means that early English settlements are relatively difficult to invade. Farms cost 50% less wood, and a nearby mill will boost gather rates by 15%. It’s classic AoE gameplay, from top to bottom.įurthermore, the English have significant early-game advantages, in both economics and warfare. To defend your town, you can build mighty stone walls and foreboding castles. You use those resources to field a balanced army of infantry, cavalry and archers. You create villagers, who build dedicated drop points to gather resources. While the English aren’t better or worse than any other civilization in the game, they are quite a bit more straightforward to play. If you play the campaign, the English are also the first civilization you’ll encounter. The English are one of two one-star civilizations in the game. One particularly helpful new feature is that the developers have assigned each civilization a difficulty level, ranging from one star (easiest) to three stars (hardest).

The game features difficulty options to suit every skill level, as well as an approachable and educational campaign that makes it easy to understand the broad strokes of world history.


If you want to play Age of Empires IV, though, rest assured that it’s an excellent starting point for the series.
