Tips for Optimizing Age of Empires IV

Before you begin playing your Age of Empires IV game, consider the following tips to ensure the best experience while playing:

🛠 Make sure the computer meets the minimum requirements

A full list of the minimum and recommended requirements can be found here.

🛠 Lower in-game Graphics Settings

Please note that some game settings can only be adjusted outside of a match and may require restarting the application to take effect.

• Go to Settings from the Main Menu (Gear Icon in the bottom-right)
• Go to the Graphics tab from the left-side menu
• Try lowering the following settings to see if they improve your game performance:
  • Image Quality
  • Lighting Quality
  • Texture Detail
  • Geometry Detail
• Save changes
• Close the game and restart it after applying these adjustments

If a setting is too high, then there will be a pop up. Check the I am getting disconnected from multiplayer games article for more details.

Note: Manually changing the graphics card (GPU) used by Age IV is currently not an option. 

🛠 Play on a Smaller Map with a Lower Population

The larger the map and higher the population, the more it will tax your computer and the computers of other players in your match. If you’re having performance problems, try creating a smaller map or maxing your population at 200 per team.

🛠 Close Any Background Applications

This will help mitigate any disruptions while you’re playing Age of Empires. You can see what applications are currently running by pressing ALT + SHIFT + Esc to open the Task Manager window.

🛠 Monitor your Network Usage

Make sure your internet is equipped to handle a multiplayer online experience. Your PC will be communicating with several others throughout the world, so ensure that you have your networking setup to maximize your access to the internet.

1. Limit the number of devices accessing the same network ports as Age of Empires.
2. Close other programs accessing the internet, including any web browsers, other game clients, etc.

To get the best experience playing Age of Empires, make sure you open or forward these ports on your firewall or network hardware:

• TCP Port 8888 and UDP Port 9999, as well as Port 3478 (UDP & TCP) and Port 5222 (UDP & TCP).

These steps will help you minimize your network lag and improve your multiplayer experience. There is also the option to “Host as Dedicated Server” in the in-game multiplayer options that will help minimize issues if you encounter them.

🛠 If your Documents folder syncs to OneDrive, Temporarily Disable Syncing

The game stores some files to Documents > My Games > Age of Empires IV, so if your OneDrive is syncing items from your Documents folders it could disrupt gameplay.

• In the taskbar, left click on the OneDrive icon (blue cloud)
• Click on Help & Settings
• In the pop-up, choose Pause Syncing
• Select the best timeframe that suits your needs
• Launch the game and see if performance improves

If you need to resume OneDrive functions before the selected timeframe is up, you can follow these same steps, and select Resume Syncing instead of Pause Syncing.