Stronghold 4 shows how beatutiful AOE5 could look like in Unreal Engine

jimmy19846071 · July 4, 2026, 10:13am

I played the new Stronghold 4 demo made by FireFly Studios in Unreal Engine 5.

This game is a mix of a “castle builder + RTS game like Age of Empires”.

Firefly Studios said they choosed Unreal engine because their previous property engine weren’t able to make their vision for the future of the Stronghold serie and they have some of the same problems that World’s Edge faced with Essence Engine: mods, zoom in and out, fps problems, readability and more.

Stronghold 4 will have battles and sieges with thousand of units with amazing details, physic, blood and gore, beautiful enviroments.

I would like to show you some in-game screenshots and videos made on ultra settings and 4k resolution (minimum specs are very acceptable too)

Enviroments and buildings (click on image to see it on 4k quality)

host immagini per community online

Animals, buildings and animations

Maps are big with different terrain levels

Models and Units: realistic, with realistic materials (iron is iron and not plastic, wood is wood etc.)

I’ve some problems to upload the 4k images so i’ll share them on low resolution (click on them to see on high quality resolution)

Video of battle: pretty realistic and finally Blood

Personally i really would excited for future AOE titles in Unreal Engine. Now imagine this graphic on a new set in the ancient times or Napoleonic Era: simply stunning.

Another little updates:

Forgotten Empires is actively hiring for Unreal Engine 5 so i think they will be the main or one of the developers behind the next titles.

GorbMort · July 4, 2026, 9:37pm

The fidelity is great, but I think they need a better grass reference. Long grass that reaches this height doesn’t look like this at all. It’s like they made regular grass Triffid-sized for some reason.

I get it, it’s a minor thing, but it’s all over the screenshots

jimmy19846071 · July 4, 2026, 10:00pm

This is an alpha version. Something will be improved or changed, i suppose.

But graphic Is stunning and this game has a pretty good readability.

It seems pretty clear why World’s Edge and Forgotten switched to Unreal. There are so many graphic features and effects and It’s well supported and knowledge

Look at animation of balista and longbowmen. Absolutely realistic.

Hope to the see the same realism in the next AOE.

zeppelino24 · July 4, 2026, 10:57pm

It looks truly beautiful; I wish they had done the same for AoE IV. I believe the people who buy and play AoE are a fully adult audience that wants that maturity reflected in the franchise’s titles—something AoE IV fails to do entirely, as it looks like a game made for a younger audience. Cartoon-style graphics aren’t what the general AoE fanbase is looking for; we want a mature game with serious, realistic graphics. That is what we want. Yet, it seems the developers forgot that the majority of their audience consists of adults, not children who stay quiet and settle for whatever they’re given.

OperaticShip743 · July 5, 2026, 2:46am

It’s important to remember that AOE-4 isn’t like this because of technological limitations, but because of design choices.

These people have creative freedom and understand their audience. And there isn’t a pro player giving stupid advice about building proportions or “unnecessary animations.”

jimmy19846071 · July 5, 2026, 5:24am

Not only design choices but also for technological limitations.

Our friend @AndyPXIII perfectly said that Essence Engine wasn’t the right engine for AOE. It’s a good Engine for a small scale RTS like Company of Heroes and Dawn of War. It has been deeply modified and adapted to AOE and some design choices have been influenced also by technological limitations. For example in Unreal Engine 5, as you can see by my videos, you don’t have textures quality issues: with zoom in units are stunning, with zoom out there’s a good readability and performance are good also with medium specs

All of us should be happy to see next AOE in Unreal Engine. We’ll finally have new generation RTS.

jimmy19846071 · July 5, 2026, 5:40am

I would say too much stylized.

The fun thing:, Relic made HQ models but we are not able to access them (probably due technological issues)

AOE4 has been developed with PvP focus so developers thought that a High quality textures would have been a problem for readability and also for performance.

There are a lot of people who asked for a graphic DLC but It will not happen anymore.

World’s Edge and Forgotten are moving to development of new titles.

We’ll probably see some new Dlcs for AOE4 but i would be very surprised to see drastic graphic changed.

jimmy19846071 · July 5, 2026, 12:39pm

Why i think next AOE will be developed by Forgotten Empires

Look at this job listing

Technical Designer (Remote) - Talent Pipeline - Forgotten Empires Technical Designer (Remote) - Talent Pipeline - Forgotten Empires

“As a Technical Designer with us, you will use your awesome Unreal Engine 5 knowledge to help us to bring our games to fruition. In return, you will be part of a creative and supportive team environment with the ability to have a direct impact on the development of top-tier games.”

Some of the cool stuff you’ll be doing:

“Designing strong gameplay, narrative, and mechanical elements to create a full game experience. Designing captivating experiences that push the boundaries and deliver innovative gameplay. Leading the implementation of important gameplay components from beginning to end, utilizing skills in general Blueprint scripting, Sequencer, and other UE systems. Collaborating closely with design leaders to develop and refine engaging gameplay experiences”.

Bonus Points!

"Player/Design experience with strategy games is a plus"

MatM1996 · July 5, 2026, 3:49pm

And here I was joking back in 2021 that AoE 4 was actually Stronghold 4… this looks even better…

GorbMort · July 5, 2026, 8:23pm

AoE IV was also made five years ago or more. Something to bear in mind when speculating about engines.

Adribird90 · July 6, 2026, 12:54pm

AoE4 is relatively new, and even CoH3—which uses the same engine—looks much better.

You could say it’s because it has fewer units, but the result is what it is.

GorbMort · July 6, 2026, 1:00pm

My point is simply that five years is a fair amount of time, and that I’d be surprised if a brand-new / upcoming cutting-edge Unreal project looked worse than something that came out half a decade ago, and was in development even further back than that.

Making assumptions about the inherent abilities of engines to me is always nonsensical, because engines can always be improved. Dawn of War Definitive Edition is a fantastic example of that. The main qualifier is generally what resource can be invested in the timeframe the developers have before the delivery date.

Adribird90 · July 6, 2026, 1:49pm

Since you consider five years to be a “fair” time for an RTS, what visible improvements have you seen in the engine over those five years, aside from post-launch fixes?

GorbMort · July 6, 2026, 2:24pm

Most engine development is done pre-release. You yourself said that CoH 3 looks better, and it’s on the same kind of engine as AoE IV.

I don’t really get what we’re arguing, here? I’m supposed to point at improvements, but I can’t point at post-launch improvements? And you raised CoH 3 as looking better?

A bit confused, sorry.

HoopThrower · July 6, 2026, 2:26pm

Wait, do people here think the graphics from AoE4 stem out of engine limitations and not from art direction?

GorbMort · July 6, 2026, 2:30pm

Oh, there’s definitely art direction to account for as well, 100%.

But there also seems to be some technical arguments about what engines are and aren’t capable of. Normally I’d be saying that what an engine is capable of is relevant for prioritising what to work on, but we’re discussing (or I thought we were discussing) the general ability of what an engine can do, period, and post-launch support prioritisation doesn’t really matter there.

jimmy19846071 · July 6, 2026, 4:17pm

Yes, of course. Essence Engine was limited for Age of empires. Too much units to manage. Model units and textures have less details not only due the readability but also for graphic limations.

Unreal Engine 5.5 and latest and upcoming version have not this problem.

HoopThrower · July 6, 2026, 5:36pm

Have you played RTS games in Unreal 5?

Say, Tempest Rising for example?

Cuz sure, it might not have a problem but BOY is your computer gonna chug.

jimmy19846071 · July 6, 2026, 5:43pm

Yes, of course. Tempest rising, Manor Lords, and Stronghold 4 and all of the run very very well. No performance problem.

You should consider that World’s Edge Is developing a modified versione of Unreal Engine 5

GorbMort · July 6, 2026, 7:52pm

None whatsoever, except all of the problems mentioned by people in this reddit thread who actually develop things with that engine version.

I more than anyone want better and more stable engine tech, regardless of the engine. More accessible tools is how you make game-making more accessible. But Unreal has frequently had issues (differently to Unity, which has had other issues). You’re better off looking at something like Godot, or if you really want to commit to Unreal, hire existing Unreal specialists, and modify to suit your needs. Which means, at that point, it’s not really Unreal anymore. It’s Unreal as a starting position + whatever customisations you need to make for your specific use case.

And Unreal specialists (like all engine and engine-adjacent programmers, particularly with C++ experience) are not cheap.