Relic Entertainment has released an update for Age Of Empires 4 that improves matchmaking speeds and rebalances units.
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When matchmaking in Age Of Empires 4, the system will widen its search much faster. It searches for other players based on ELO, a rating that determines how skilled a player is. In the patch notes, the developer explains the change.
“We’ve been keeping a close eye on how long it takes to find a game in Quick Match and the quality of match-ups across the ELO spectrum. One of our findings has been that our matchmaking system can be a bit too picky, such that we often take a few minutes before deciding to match you with another similarly skilled player. This change increases the rate that we widen the pool of similarly skilled players (determined by ELO) so that you will match with that player or another with an acceptable ELO delta sooner.”
Scouts have received a nerf in the update. The units are used to gather information in Age Of Empires 4 and bring back animal carcasses to feed a player’s city. According to the developer, these units were too challenging to counter during the Feudal Age and have been nerfed to make them more killable. When carrying carcasses, scouts will move 35 per cent slower, which means they can now be chased down and killed.
Horseman ranged armour has also been improved, as the patch notes explain.
“[Age Of Empires 4] focuses on hard unit counters to encourage mixed army compositions. We found that it was too difficult to tech switch into horsemen against archers as ranged focus fire picks off horsemen before they close the gap and deal damage.”
A few army-specific changes have also been made and are detailed in the patch notes.
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