The new roguelike mode is interesting, and it does meet and provide what single-player users have been missing, but the population cap still causes terrible development bottlenecks for the player while giving the AI—who can expand from multiple fronts right from the beginning—the biggest advantage.
As for whether it’s balanced… I can’t say for sure. At the very least, the gameplay structure feels very straightforward and crude. Personally, I don’t feel any proper player growth curve or progressive pacing. The entire mode moves too fast—almost like it keeps pushing the player forward. Combined with the frequency of raider harassment and the random event layout depending on the map, the pace of player development feels completely disproportionate to the pressure being applied.
I don’t know how the studio designed it, but currently the mode heavily relies on faction advantages, and sometimes it even forces you to reroll the opening. If you want an easier time, then just pick the current meta favorite — the Mongols: stack the Pastures + Outposts, then use Mangudai and heavy cavalry and you can handle most pressure. And ideally, you should reroll into an opening that gives you 1000–2000 stone, so you can immediately start mass-producing Mangudai at the Khan tent while the pastures generate gold. Meanwhile, some factions are just pure suffering.
In the end, this mode feels like nothing more than an extra gameplay option — the game does not adapt the content or experience based on the faction you pick. Because of map and resource layout, some factions are naturally crippled, while others snowball effortlessly.
That’s my opinion of the new mode: very rough, very direct. And of course, the next update will surely attempt to fix balance issues, and those fixes will likely create new problems — but honestly, Age of Empires IV has always been like this. I’ve gotten used to it, even if that kind of numbness is not necessarily a good thing.
But now I really want to know:
What do you think of the new DLC and the new mode?
