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Empire Wars has come to Age of Empires IV!

Age of Empires IV Season Five introduces Empire Wars, a new, quick-to-action game mode! Players start their game with an already-burgeoning empire, ready to dive into combat or advance to the next Age.

Available in custom and skirmish matches, in this new game mode the player begins with a variety of buildings alongside a distribution of working villagers, which creates a foothold on the map for players to expand from. Villagers will already be busy working farms, chopping trees, and mining gold and stone. 

Empire Wars has the same win conditions as Standard game mode and is available on all maps. No starting town is the same. Will your empire prevail? 

Choosing the Mode

To begin, select Empire Wars among the game modes in any Custom or Skirmish game setup. 

Start Conditions

In Empire Wars, the player’s economy is balanced around expanding your empire quickly. Each player starts with a distinct town, made up of pre-built buildings that maximize their chosen civilization’s strengths, as well as villagers and some special units already assigned to different tasks. Choose how you would like to use these resources to quickly gain an advantage. 

Please see the detailed breakdown of starting allocations for each civilization below!

The Empire Wars Start

Each civilization in Empire Wars begins a match with the following Units, Buildings and Resources available, then receives additional unique bonuses to aid their playstyle as noted below.

Overall Starting Buildings and Units:

  • 23 Villagers already collecting resources
  • 4 Villagers in the queue of the Town Center
  • 2 Scouts
  • Mill
  • Lumber Camp
  • Mining Camp

Overall Civilization Starting Resources:

  • 100 Food
  • 200 Wood
  • 150 Gold
  • 0 Stone


We hope you enjoy the new fast-paced action Empire Wars is designed to provide, instantly getting you into the action!

You can read more about the Age of Empires IV – Season Five update here:

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