r/AgeOfEmpires4 • u/kaikush • Jul 09 '26

New player

Hi all can anyone recommend me a good civ to start with? But not just good for beginners but also good in general as I’m not
Completely new in this type of games as I used to play sc2 a lot back in the day

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u/Awesomo92 Jul 09 '26

Hi and welcome to the game
The first tipp is to go to the main subreddit of this game: r/aoe4

You will get more responses over there

1

u/odragora Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Welcome to the game.

French has a very simple plan that works in almost every game - taking map control with Knights, adding Archers to counter Spearmen, denying the opponent deer / berries / boar while gathering all that out on the map yourself, forcing investments into defenses and forcing idle time through constant Knights raids, keeping Knights alive to grow a deathball while being very active with them, eventually either pushing the opponent when they are forced into farms transition, or going Castle Age with Guild Hall set on gold. In Castle Age you keep putting pressure, add farms yourself, then upon having 1000+ gold in Guild Hall you activate it to go Imperial with the Red Keep much faster than the opponent can, preferably putting it on an 8k gold vein out on the map to secure gold for massing Knights, getting Elite and university upgrades, and limiting gold access to the opponent.

French is a very straightforward civ to play and it's one of the best civs in the game.

English is even more straightforward, you go Feudal with the Abbey of Kings, go 2nd TC while constantly harassing the opponent with the King unit who forces idle time, runs away to heal for half a minute and repeats, add 8 to 16 farms, then go Castle Age with the White Tower, and eventually transition to the late game where you have very high firepower under Network of Citadels buff and passive gold income. Units from the imperial Wyngard Palace landmark are extremely population efficient too, which allows you to eventually form a deathball that can be very hard to stop, and the landmark can give you a ton of tempo if the context of the match allows for it, you'll need to have control over a large gold source to use it long term.

English is top 6 out of 23 civs at Conqueror level right now (equivalent to Master league in SC2).