Age of Empires IV – Season Twelve Update 15.1.6970

Today’s a huge day for Age of Empires IV! Not only are we starting a new Ranked Season, chock-full of exciting battles and seasonal events, but we’re also officially welcoming brand new players to the Age IV community with the start of our Early Access period on PlayStation 5. This update enables crossplay across all platforms, including those joining in for Early Access, and also brings with it AI improvements, a rework to the House of Lancaster’s Manors, plus additional updates made to our seasonal events approach, balance changes, and more.

In the meantime, make sure you have your calendars marked for November 4, when players will first be able to test their mettle in The Crucible and lead four new formidable armies in Dynasties of the East.

This is just a small taste of what is coming in the latest update. For a more complete list, please visit our site and check out our blog. Happy Gaming!

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Thanks again to our amazing community members, all of whom have helped to make Age of Empires what it is today!

—The Age of Empires Team

Please Note: As part of updating to this latest build, any saved games and observable matches made on previous builds will be unable to be loaded or replayed.

◆Update 15.1.6970◆

Season Twelve

Ranked Season and Events Update

As we mentioned way back at the start of Season Eleven, we’re aware that our seasonal approach means you’ve had limited access to exciting game modes, maps and biomes, and events. With that in mind, starting with Season Twelve, we’ll be adjusting our approach to seasons. Moving forward you’ll see:

• Seasonal content – such as game modes, maps and biomes – unlocked and made permanently available. We started this in Season Eleven with by making Map Monsters and Enchanted Grove permanently available, and we’re excited to share that with Season Twelve, you’ll be able to play as much of the Map Monsters, Full Moon and Season’s Feast game modes as you’d like in custom matches. Game modes will now come with a pre-selected biome for best experience. However, this can still be tweaked in the map options.

• Rotating through events! In the past, events and the rewards that came with them were time-exclusive. Moving forward, we’ll be rotating through these fun and familiar events to ensure you’re able to collect the items you may have missed out on.

During Season Twelve, we’ll be bringing back a few classics meant to celebrate the season (both spooky and delightful) with Hallow’s Hearth, Season’s Feast and Something in the Water.

Hallow’s Hearth – Event 1

The wolves are howling, and a chill wind can be heard whispering through the trees. Get ready for a spooktacular second edition of Hallow’s Hearth with terrifying treats and monstrously fun challenges!

Login between October 30th at 10:00AM PT (17:00 UTC) and December 4th to stake your claim.

In addition, we have made several improvements to the Full Moon mode:

• Added a new night atmosphere to the Full Moon game mode, to be transitioned to during the Moon Surge event. The atmosphere should transition back to the biome’s initial one after the event is over.

• Werewolf unit name and description updated to be more accurate.

• New werewolf spawning VFX have been added.

It’s time to face a powerful enemy, the wolves roam the land, they