It has been requested and re-requested multiple times before and after your thread. You’re right, probably won’t see the light at this point, unless a dev internally someday wants to grab a map-wide screenshot themselves and decides to spearhead an effort internally. There isn’t enough external push or support for this, just as there hasn’t been (somehow) for the incessant, lengthy battle horn sounds happening every two seconds during matches, and so we live with that.
I found a Capture Age workaround, if curious. Not very convenient at all – and launching Capture Age is buggy for me (especially for non-recorded games) – so I never do it… but at least it’s possible:
Another thread about this:
I also submitted it as a bug report once, since it was in HD and removed in DE… but it got moved to the Discussion area instead.
A solution has existed with Capture Age for half-a-decade. If they really wanted to spend time figuring out and throwing together a ‘whole map screenshot’ capability in AoE2:DE base game by now, perhaps by leveraging Capture Age tech, they would have done so by now. Just not enough demand for it publicly, and apparently internally, too
Some AoE4 things will probably also not see the light of day despite years of trying… like zoom level, UI design, and pop max count. If someone internally ever wants those things at a high enough hierarchical level, then maybe we’ll get some options implemented. Until then, the public has spoken many times over the years to no avail.
The heavy focus is launching new civs and campaigns. No time to do things like “whole map screenshot” that don’t make money. Then again, if Marketing team wants full-map screenshots for their marketing purposes (to make money), they could make it happen, too, as described by Cysion and how the original game’s version came about. They just haven’t needed that for DE yet, it seems