“There still will be generic units,” says Isgreen. Though great effort has been put into making civilizations more unique, generic units also remain. Your units can scale walls and defend from them too. It appears the team has heard you loud and clear and siege combat is indeed included. One of the most often requested additions fans have wanted to see in Age of Empires 4 are better siege options. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios) Units and combat They have a very unique mechanic about moving around stone deposits, and how they use stone and leverage stone in order to wage war.” “The thing that we really wanted to push is the civilization diversity,” says Isgreen, “and you saw some of that in the video, with the Mongols being able to pack up all their buildings and move their entire civ somewhere else on the map. You get a small taster of the type of asymmetry in the civs from the short snippets of the Mongols that you see in the preview. A lot of work has been done to make each Age 4’s civs’ more unique in playstyle and feel.Īs Duffy says, “the different mechanics the civs have – whether it's unique units or their age-up mechanics, the special bonuses they get for city building, the 'influence system', as we call it, where you can get bonuses driven from your landmark choice – open up a whole bunch of new play and gameplay opportunities in the game.” This more “asymmetrical” design has its plusses (different races are like different games) and minuses (balance). Traditionally, civs in Age of Empires have played much like each other, in contrast to some other real time strategy games (RTS), whose races can play quite differently from one another. There will be eight civs at launch, with the Mongols, Delhi, Chinese, and English, being revealed so far. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios) Civilizations