We worked with documentarians to go to all kinds of locations like Hastings and Dover, where these events happened. 'We bridge the gap between missions with these wonderful historical films. 'You get the whole story of the Norman conquest, from the time this ambitious duke made his way across the channel and said 'this is mine,' all the way to the point where you're signing the Magna Carta and laying the foundations of what England is today,' said narrative lead Philippe Boulle. In the Norman campaign, for instance, you start as William the Conqueror, but eventually you'll witness the conflict between his kids, and then their kids, and so on. This time, however, we'll be getting four campaigns that give us a longer view of a civilization's history. Previously, Age of Empires has focused on historical figures, like Joan of Arc, or given us more of a story-driven campaign, as in AoE3. For us, starting with eight is a big endeavor, and then we're going to keep expanding.'Īge of Empires 3 (Image credit: Microsoft) Age of Empires 4 will contain 4 historical campaigns 'The detail we're putting into the civilizations and the focus on making them more unique-you can imagine there's a reason StarCraft had three factions the entire time, because doing asymmetrical balance gets massively complicated. ' is where we're starting,' Relic told us. It's not clear if they'll be appearing in free updates or premium expansions, though. I would've liked to see a lot more of AOE4, but the short glimpses I got were still enough to pick up on how many changes can fall under the umbrella of modern.' Age of Empires 4 will have 8 civilizations, but there's room to expandĮight civs is a decent start, but Relic plans to keep expanding them.

'Three big things fans will want to know about right away: the plan is to launch with eight civilizations (largely from Europe and Asia, but not exclusively), there will be four campaigns tracing the histories of some of those civilizations, and naval combat is in. Accompanying the fan preview, we got a preview of our own, which included a few minutes of the game in motion and more details.

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