I have Windows 10’s Ransomware protection “Controlled Folder Access” enabled, and the current profile’s Documents folder is one of the protected folders. The AOE4 game settings are stored under My Games in this folder, and the Windows 10 feature’s block on that folder is preventing AOE4 from saving games or settings changes.
I understand the user would have to whitelist the game to allow it to save games/settings, but the problem is AOE4 never notifies you there was an error saving the game, deleting a saved game, or changing settings. It simply acts like it was successful and then only later do you find out that the game never saved, or the settings you changed later go back to default settings when you reload game. AOE4 really needs to alert users that it was unable to save the game/settings, and tell them why it failed, if possible, so they can whitelist the folder or take other steps to solve the issue.