The devs have stated multiple times that they will be analyzing the data from user gameplay. What kind of data are they gathering, and what are they using it for?
Some of them are very transparent, such as the stats: Age of Empires IV Leaderboards - Age of Empires
Others were mentioned in interviews, such as the machine learning AI (merciless AI)
Only a dev can answer this question. As players we would be speculating.
If I had to guess though, they’ll definitely be looking at the win/loss ratio for each civ as well as how often they are played.
Any data they gather should obviously be used to improve the game in some way.
You break everything into ELO brackets. 1400+, 1200-1400, 1000-1200 etc. In each bracket you look at the win rate of each civ, how much each civ is picked, any particularly lopsided matchups and also game length. And then you can also filter by map type, so maybe Mongols do really well in 1400+ bracket on open maps, but suck at water and closed maps.
You could also compare average score in the brackets, so on average in 1000-1200 bracket what’s the average food income of an English player compared to a French player. Or what’s the average castle time of a Delhi player compared to a Mongol player.
You can make lots of theories like this and then also every replay is saved on their servers, so they could zip through any replays to see exactly what happened in the game if they thought they needed too.
It’s also possible they are tracking apm across the different civs, and what hotkeys people use and how much.
All the combat data is going straight to Pentagon
Anyone with high APM is being put on terror watch list. This whole game is a CIA honeypot.