Great game but ruined by balance and players

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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As the title says, this is a great game, maybe the best RTS today (though that doesn’t say much, as the genre isn’t very popular). However, there are clear downsides that, for some reason, the developers are ignoring.

Key Issues:

  • MMR Gap/Matchmaking filters don’t exist: You can be Gold playing against Conquerors. Your team’s average MMR could be 800 versus an average of 1000 for the enemy team.
  • Too easy to create multiple accounts: Most active players actually have multiple Steam accounts due to Family Share. Smurf means cheating either by real hacking (map hack) or just smurfing
  • Meta Balance: We went from a mass archers meta (where they were the only relevant unit and main DPS) to a cavalry opening that scales into mass cavalry. If you don’t make that type of meta unit, you’re playing the game wrong, and you’re going to lose.
  • Balance updates need to be more frequent: If you see a new civ has a huge win rate, tweak it immediately. Don’t wait, because more and more people get tired. It also works in the other direction: if you think making a new civ “broken” for a whole month and then tweaking it will make you gain more players, you’re actually losing more players than you’re winning from that patch.
  • Lack of attention to Quality of Life and new players: They need to take note of bugs, implement Quality of Life (QoL) changes, and figure out how to make the game easier and more enjoyable for new, newbie, and mediocre players.

Specific Examples:

  • French Knight in Feudal: A French knight in Feudal two-shots a worker, while the worker has a better economy? A unit with high HP, armor, and movement speed doing that much damage in Feudal, with a landmark working as a stable? WTF?!
  • Ottoman Monk: The Ottoman monk’s shift action doesn’t work. The monk doesn’t pick up the relic and put it in the monastery; it just doesn’t work.
  • Poor User Interface (UI): UI size, information, tips, gathering speed per resource, and real information for unit upgrades are all lacking. 99% of players, even the highest ranked, don’t know how much HP, damage, and stats you gain per upgrade (Dark, Feudal, Castle, and Imperial Age, for spears, for example).

There’s a huge list of stuff like that.

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MMR Gap/Matchmaking filters don’t exist: You can be Gold playing against Conquerors. Your team’s average MMR could be 800 versus an average of 1000 for the enemy team.

This is not true. Gold vs Conq almost never happens, and even when it does, it’s not meaningful because displayed rank isn’t a good measurement of actual skill. Elo is usually within 100

Too easy to create multiple accounts: Most active players actually have multiple Steam accounts due to Family Share. Smurf means cheating either by real hacking (map hack) or just smurfing

Delusional. Only a small portion of players do this.

Meta Balance: We went from a mass archers meta (where they were the only relevant unit and main DPS) to a cavalry opening that scales into mass cavalry. If you don’t make that type of meta unit, you’re playing the game wrong, and you’re going to lose.

Neither true. Multiple unit types have always been viable in this game.

Balance updates need to be more frequent: If you see a new civ has a huge win rate, tweak it immediately. Don’t wait, because more and more people get tired. It also works in the other direction: if you think making a new civ “broken” for a whole month and then tweaking it will make you gain more players, you’re actually losing more players than you’re winning from that patch.

The devs actually did really good with this. When Lancaster was released OP, it was nerfed massively the next day.

French Knight in Feudal: A French knight in Feudal two-shots a worker, while the worker has a better economy? A unit with high HP, armor, and movement speed doing that much damage in Feudal, with a landmark working as a stable? WTF?!

Build spears/outposts, it’s not that hard to defend against. If it were really so OP, the best players would be picking french.

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Thank you for taking the time to compile your thoughts and address the specific issues you’ve been having with the game. I share a lot of what you’ve described, particularly with your thoughts on steam family sharing and the consequential mismatch in rating between players.

For years people have brought up how frustrating and discouraging it is to be matched with opponents who completely dominate them. I agree with you that it is the playerbase that is abusing a flexible system, that allows players to freely make throwaway accounts to quickly reset their rating.

It would be beneficial to the game if they disabled steam family sharing from accessing multiplayer services. If that’s not possible, disabling it entirely.

There are many issues that players have brought up that involve the abuse of this feature. It is obvious when viewing the top 5% of players in ranked team games that many are abusing the matchmaking system by pairing themselves with teammates on brand new accounts, usually by lowering that accounts rating intentionally.

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Totally and its not even top players, its just diamond players who want play with their silver friends, in a few clicks they have new account ready to play in a silver elo

Or even worse chinese dudes hacking with 50 matches

I took a month break im silver now, silver also in aoe4world and im facing average 900-1100 players elo, and im not having fun, i can see it very clear. I mostly play team ranked

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leave my post please

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The numbers in your screenshot are the rank points, which is different from ELO. For your 1v1 game vs ScoutAndDoubt:

Your ELO is 1108

Screenshot 2025-07-22 at 12.21.24 PM
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Opponents ELO is 1093

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You both even have similar number of games played and similar win/loss.

Here’s a faq on the difference between them. ELO is what’s used for matchmaking, not rank points, even though AOE4World shows rank points more prominently.

AOE4 doesn’t have a huge number of players, and long queue times will drive away players even more. MMR is not broken, but for 4v4 games with 8 players the only option is either have a slight ELO mismatch or keep waiting more and more for the perfect matchup.

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This is my updated elo and not historical elo from 6 months ago. Never should i face high plat, diamond or conquer players, never any gamemod any situation

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Wasting raw 15min getting destroyed every match because system cant calculate my real elo or even worse doesnt have any gap between players its worse than waiting 2min queing

When i was playing everyday, every hour my average was 900-1000 until i faced a huge wall from 1200+ players, smurfs and hackers. I not want any wall i already struggle by playing RTS, artifical wall by a bad system and bad anticheat

You are defending a system where bronze and silvers doesnt have space to play multiplayer, and right now im silver. Literally doesnt exist players in my elo that says a lot

Leave my post

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I totally understand this problem with this.It can be stopped but for french they gain too much for lower risk.I think feudal knights damage bonus after charge should be removed.

Ottoman monks work perfectly but it dont work at age 2 thats why you didnt manage to pick it up.

One more feudal problem is longbows,again it can be countered but they get so much reward for the risk they take.

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Yes mediocre gameplay vs mediocre gameplay knights are too strong for barely any risk

Im main ottomans, monks are bugged

Yes but since new english civ exists, english its not popular anymore but yes works in the same way

You have a feudal landmark working as stable or archery, you save wood farm/craft time and you make special units in feudal while have strong defense or economy

Ottomans monk are bugged