What Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition is
This is a real-time strategy game set across historical eras, from the Dark Ages up to the Renaissance. You build cities, gather and manage resources, raise armies, and fight on land and at sea. Ten civilizations are available to play, ranging from the English and the Chinese to the Delhi Sultanate, and the Anniversary Edition adds the Malians of West Africa, who focus on mining and investing in gold, and the Ottoman civilization, whose military includes the Great Bombards, large gunpowder siege weapons. The package includes four campaigns with 35 missions spanning 500 years of history, plus new maps, masteries, challenges, taunts, cheats, in-game updates and languages.
Playing together with your group
Multiplayer runs online, with both competitive and cooperative modes. You can play against each other in PvP, team up against the AI in PvE, or simply watch a match as a spectator, with up to 7 friends in the same lobby. Ranked seasons are there for groups that want a longer-running competition, while skirmish and co-op sessions work for a casual evening. The Mod Editor in beta lets anyone in your group sculpt their own skirmish and multiplayer maps, write mission scenarios, build data-driven tuning packs, and try out new modes, so your group can keep coming back to setups you made yourselves.
Before you start
The game is built to be approachable if some of your group has never touched an RTS: a tutorial covers the essentials of real-time strategy, and a Campaign Story Mode is designed for first-time players with easy setup, while still giving veterans new mechanics and combat techniques to work with. It is worth deciding early how your group wants to split up — some campaigns to run through together, PvP ladder nights, or custom maps made in the Mod Editor. Matches run in real time and expect you to balance economy, base building and military decisions at the same time, so expect a learning curve once you leave the tutorial behind.