# Age of Empires IV

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Age of Empires IV and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend this polished real-time strategy game for smoothing out Age of Empires II's quirks, but critics note online lag and unhappy updates.

## What people warn about

- Lag sometimes in online play (1 comments): "Definitely lag sometimes online." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46008568))
- Updates handling is disappointing (1 comments): "The updates thing is a shame." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824898))
- Significant downsides, unspecified (1 comments): "It's very cool and saves a lot of space, but it does have some significant downsides" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824604))
- Fundamentally different from AoE2 (1 comments): "I wouldn't call it an evolution. The game might be good in its own right but its different in some very fundamental ways" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005289))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Beyond All Reason](https://hackerapproved.com/p/beyond-all-reason.md): 76 recommend
- [Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness](https://hackerapproved.com/p/warcraft-ii-tides-of-darkness.md): 51 recommend
- [Total Annihilation](https://hackerapproved.com/p/total-annihilation.md): 48 recommend
- [StarCraft](https://hackerapproved.com/p/starcraft.md): 36 recommend
- [StarCraft II](https://hackerapproved.com/p/starcraft-ii.md): 32 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Age+of+Empires+IV+PC+game+Microsoft&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Official site](https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Age of Empires IV", https://hackerapproved.com/p/age-of-empires-iv/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).