Age of Empires IV Season 1 is Out Now, Adding Modding Tools, QoL Features, and More

It was teased last month, but now Age of Empires IV has kicked off its first season of post-launch content. Season 1, entitled “Festival of Ages,” adds new modding tools, ranked seasons, and a variety of handy-sounding quality-of-life upgrades including a Global Build Queue, new hotkeys, and more. Here’s a full rundown of what Vancouver-based developer Relic Entertainment has whipped up for Age of Empires IV…

• Introducing the Age of Empires IV Content Editor (Beta)! With this powerful tool, creators are invited to embrace and create their own ideas within the game and share them with the wider community! We talk more about the Content Editor below, including providing a quick overview of the in-house-created mods launching with Season One.
• Our first ever Ranked Season starts next week, April 13th! Prepare your best strategies and work your way through the ranks over the next several weeks.
• Based on your feedback, we’ve implemented the Global Build Queue! The Global Build Queue is visible in both gameplay and observer modes. Using the Global Build Queue you’ll get an overview of all your upgrades and units in queue at all times in the HUD.
• It is now possible to navigate on the map after being eliminated or when the game is over in Skirmish and Multiplayer games. You can go back and forth between the map and the post-game screen using the “Continue” and “Back” buttons.
• Introducing the Patrol Move in-game! Patrol allows units to move along a path and attack any enemies they see.
• You can now use the “Random” civilization selection option when setting up for a match.
• We’re unveiling a brand-new Art of War challenge with Advanced Combat. Refine your strategy and challenge yourself to earn Gold!
• A queue dodging cooldown system has been added that applies a 5, 15, 30 and 60-minute lock out to Quick Match and Ranked queues. The cooldown escalates for each queue dodge following the first.
• We know you’ve been looking for improved hotkeys, and while we still have some work underway and planned for the future, Season One includes a number of exciting changes! For a deeper in-depth look, check out the Keyboard Controls and Quality of Life section below.
  • We’ve added the ability to rebind hotkeys to Mouse 3, 4, and 5
  • Quickly toggle on or off Control Group exclusivity, or use any number of new hotkeys to add or remove a unit from a Control Group
  • You will be able to bind other commands to the “ALT” and “Shift” keys
  • We are aware that hotkeys bound to Alt, Shift or Ctrl can lose functionality after restarting the game. Our teams are working on a fix for this
  • New Global Hotkeys enable you to cycle or select all buildings of a specific type, cancel items in production queues, save camera locations, and much more
  • Additional categories have been added to the hotkey menu to improve navigation

As you would expect, Age of Empires IV also includes a variety of balance tweaks and minor fixes. You can check out the update’s full, unabridged patch notes, right here.

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Age of Empires IV is available on PC. Season 1 can be downloaded right now.