A new season of Age of Empires 4 kicks off this week, and you know what that means: New tournaments, challenges, and rewards, as well as refreshed map pools for 1v1 and team ranked modes. However, this update is adding a few key new features, too: Season 7 introduces PC-console cross-play.
RTS games tend to skew pretty heavily toward their PC audiences, but Age of Empires 4 has been available on Xbox since October, and now those console players can join the PC big leagues.
That’s not all the Season 7 update is adding, though. There’s also a new toggleable win condition called Dominion that will radically change the way games are played. With Dominion enabled, every player starts with a Monarch, and the goal is to protect that character at all costs. If your Monarch is killed, you’re out – but killing an enemy Monarch instantly grants +50 to your population cap.
Monarchs aren’t completely helpless. They have two abilities: Sprint, which lets them run away a little faster; and Treason, which reveals the positions of all enemy Monarchs and pings them on the minimap.
The update also includes several very nice quality of life improvements, like the ability to change a wall that’s under construction into a gate simply by interacting with the wall blueprint before it’s completed. Another nice touch: units leaving garrisoned buildings will now always exit the side closest to the building’s rally point.
The full patch notes can be found on the official site. Also be sure to check out our list of the best games like Age of Empires, as well as our handy-dandy list of Age of Empires 4 keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys – console players hate this!
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