The asymmetry between civilizations is what tantalizes me most. You can't turtle up in Total War, but there was nothing better than turtling behind a wall in Age of Empires and chewing your way through the tech tree. The increasing challenge of juggling a growing city and army that you only get in real time. Sending scouts into enemy camps to torment their peasants. Total War does have giant battles, but otherwise I don't think it has much of what makes Age of Empires so fun: creating a city building-by-building, watching it come to life, and encircling it with an immense wall. Maybe the fidelity will be enough to make AOE4 captivating-there's a special feeling that RTS games can give you when they look this beautiful, as if you're a god marveling at all of creation from above (and occasionally reaching down to make the tiny people do your bidding). I don't think it has to be, but I wonder how different its battles will feel from old real-time strategy games, which have fallen out of fashion in the last decade. Total War's combat definitely leans towards simulation, and Age of Empires 4 probably isn't trying to be that. In Age of Empires 4, a unit of pikemen looks like three men instead of 100, and cavalry seem to gallop up to an infantry line and then sit there dueling instead of smashing through it in a realistic show of physics. The scale of Total War is on another level. Total War's battles let you bring in thousands of troops and play at something resembling real strategy-just getting the high ground and being able to charge your spearmen downhill instead of up can make a huge difference. Starting with eight is a big endeavor, and then we're going to keep expanding Adam IsgreenДЄfter spending much of the last decade playing games in the Total War series, though, Age of Empires still looks like a throwback to me.

Units can now man the walls around a city to fight off attacks, making sieges more complex and suitably dramatic. He pointed to some major additions in Age 4, like units being able to hide in forests to pull off ambushes. 'So much time has passed, and other strategy games have evolved and iterated how RTS works,' said Isgreen. Each has its own aesthetic, down to the architecture and clothes on workers in the fields. During the roundtable I also got quick looks at the Chinese and Delhi Sultanate, the other two confirmed civilizations. But, broadly, civilizations are more distinct from one another, or, as game designers love to say, 'asymmetrical.' The Mongols, for example, can pack up all their buildings and move them, something the English aren't about to do with a stone castle.

There are still generic units shared between factions, because AOE4's developers decided to retain the triangle of cavalry, ranged units, and pikemen core to series' combat. As you go through ages one, two, three, four, these buildings grow and become more elaborate and more decorative, reflecting the technological refinements of each civ.'

It reflects the narrative: In age one you have almost primitive-looking buildings and structures using very basic materials. 'The modeling actually changes, the textures change. 'Houses are different from each age,' art director Zach Schlappi said.

Age of empires 3 factions