Age of Empires IV

Age of Empires IV (1998) is a strategy game where you command an ancient civilisation in real-time and must develop from hunter-gatherers to advanced forms of defence and war. This is similar territory to Civilization but focuses on resource management and direct warfare rather than politics and religion and is played in real-time.

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It initially focuses on events in Europe, Africa and Asia, from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. Subsequent games in the series took players to the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Europe's colonising of the Americas.

To play, you click on buildings, people and items in the world to direct your population. You must collect resources, build camps and buildings and develop armies to survive. Mining, fishing and farming play a vital role. The combination of real history, with knife-edge strategic gameplay, has seen the series sell over a million copies. The main releases are as follows:

• Age of Empires (1997)
• Age of Empires II (1999)
• Age of Empires III (2005)
• Age of Empires: The Age of Kings (2006)
• Age of Empires Online (2011)
• Age of Empires II: HD Edition (2013)
• Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (2018)
• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (2019)
• Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition (2020)

The recent rerelease of the HD version of the game has brought the series back to the fore. While the Age of Empires Online offers a free-to-play experience utilising Games for Windows Live.

For families, the earlier games are a great introduction to strategy games. You can take them at your own pace to some extent as well as play together online. Their age also means that they are simpler and easier to understand than more modern strategy games.

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Our examiner, Oli Hawkins, first checked Age of Empires IV 4 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 7 weeks ago.