What is the difference between Age of Empires 4 and the Anniversary Edition?
The key differences are:
- 2 new civilizations, 8 new maps and new environments in the Anniversary Edition
- Balance changes to civilizations, units, buildings and tech
- Performance improvements and optimization upgrades
- New achievements and additional content for free
Released in October 2022, the Anniversary Edition celebrates the one year anniversary of Age of Empires 4‘s launch by delivering a heap of new civilizations, maps, achievements and sorely needed balancing tweaks.
New Civilizations – More Strategic Options
The Ottoman and Malian civilizations introduce exciting new strategic and matchup varieties into the game.
As GamesRadar‘s Jordan Gerblick notes, they feel completely distinct from the existing civs:
"The new Ottoman and Malian civs are radical departures from the existing roster, representing cultures not portrayed in previous Age games and bringing unique hooks that fundamentally change how you approach economy, production, and combat."
The Ottomans excel on water maps with their Great Bombard cannon ship and unique mosque building providing trickle resources. Their innovative sipahi cavalry and abus gun powder unit help them excel inFeudal age aggression.
The Malians have a versatile infantry/cavalry hybrid army, boosted by free gold mining upgrades. Their University tech tree also enables some wacky unit combinations – like two-handed mace wielding camels!
Allowing for more varied tactics and introducing new unit relationships into the rock-paper-scissor counter system, the fresh civs are a boon for players at every skill level.
New Maps – More Environments to Explore
The Anniversary Edition‘s 8 new maps provide more battlefield variety, from vast hill ranges to arid deserts. Along with adding visual freshness, they present new strategic and tactical considerations with their terrain features.
As an example, let‘s look at Waves, one of the most unique additions. This water-heavy map generates with huge patches of shallows and regions of deeper seas:
Land space is at a premium, with scattered islands and thin beachheads. This forces adaptations from standard build orders and playstyles:
- Dock placement requires extra thought to maximize fish gathering
- Walling off resources is harder with segmented shores
- Transport ships are crucial for connecting dispersed land masses
- Naval map control and landing ground armies is critical
The new biome variants apply idle visual reskins to existing maps like Altai and Mongolian Heights. They provide visual variety without significantly impacting gameplay.
Civilization Balance Changes
To shake up the competitive meta and improve overall game balance, the Anniversary update tweaks stats for both new and existing civilizations.
For instance, the powerful English Longbowman unit sees its cost increased from 50 food/45 gold to 60 food/55 gold along with small base armor and accuracy drops. This tampers down the English Castle Age all-in "Longbow rush" that was dominating intermediate ranked play.
Balance designer Aris "ZombieGrub" Ruahbidah explains:
"In the upcoming October update, we‘ve taken time to smooth out some wrinkles […] by nudging overperforming areas into check and elevating civilizations in need of a boost."
Some other notable changes:
- Rus early game boosts with Horse Archer damage increase
- Delhi research speed and building artillery cost reduction
- Mongol early Ovoo requirement removed
- Chinese official unit vision boost to make supervision more consistent
The following table summarizes the cost and build time tweaks for common early game buildings across civs:
| Building | Civilization | Previous | Updated | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| House | French | 50w, 35s | 50w, 25s | -29% build time |
| Mill | English | 175w, 55s | 150w, 45s | -14% cost -18% build time |
| Lumber Camp | Rus | 125w, 35s | 100w, 25s | -20% cost -29% build time |
| Mining Camp | Delhi | 100w, 35s | 75w, 30s | -25% cost -14% build time |
These changes redistribute early game tempo advantages to expand strategic variety. For instance, the buffs make England faster to wood/food with their mill bonuses while Russia accelerates to early lumber economy quicker.
Technical Improvements
Performance and stability upgrades in the October patch smooth out online play experiences for low and high spec machines alike.
Memory optimizations, rendering and asset improvements combine to reduce game client CPU/GPU footprint. Initial user reports suggest framerate boosts of 5-10% depending on hardware:
"I went from 30 in big fights to steady 60 now […] It runs so beautifully smooth like you guys polished a diamond" – Reddit user mcmoor
The patch also slims overall game install size by 6GB (10%) by removing unused local packages and assets. This quickens update downloads too.
Anti-cheat detection stepping up also combats disruptive hackers in ranked play for fairer competitive experiences:
"We have zero tolerance for cheating […] Upgrades to detection methods will keep combating players trying to ruin others‘ enjoyment" – Community manager Juggernaughty
Is It Worth Getting?
For gamers yet to play Age of Empires 4, the Anniversary Edition is absolutely the definitive version to purchase. It contains all content from the base game with tons of extras essentially for free.
Ars Technica‘s Luke Plunkett offers unequivocal advice:
"New players should get the Anniversary Edition, no doubt. It‘s the complete Age IV package rolled into one."
The two new civilizations alone introduce more gameplay variety and strategic depth to justify the upgrade. Everything on top like maps and balance adjustments just seals the deal.
Even for existing Age 4 owners, the 2K employee developer recommends installing the Anniversary upgrade:
"For those who already own the game, all this new content will come as a free game update, so it’s absolutely worth jumping back in and checking it all out!"
After all, the game is integrating over 4GB of completely new assets plus comprehensive tech boosts and meta shakeup for no additional cost. The package renovates Age 4 with a freshness that tempts virtually all lapsed players to return.
So whether you‘re a new player jumping into Age‘s addictive historical real-time battles for the first time or a returning fan, the Anniversary Edition update make Age IV the definitive way to play.
