Age of Empires IV is now out, so we should talk about it.

Very, very early impressions. Graphically I really like what they've done. It's going for this sort of watercolor color schema, which works just phenomenally well for me. The fact that computers are now powerful enough to render lots of foliage allows landscapes to actually look like landscapes, with areas of tall grass, flowers, and so on; they also clearly did a huge amount of work in making the landscape variated. This is pretty much the first RTS I've seen where I can look at a map and imagine actually walking through it, which is pretty excellent.

Mechanically it feels quite Age 2, but let's be honest, what else should it feel like? However, it does make some pretty important structural changes. Aging up now requires building a special building, which as far as I can tell is Empire unique, and you get a choice of two at each Age. These offer various benefits, e.g. acting as a mega-barracks or speeding up villager gather rates in a radius. I quite like this, since it allows some tuning of your empire as you play, but because the upgrade is a physical building it plays into the positional strategy of the game. There also seems to be fewer passive economic upgrades, which I also like because +5 to woodchopping speed has never, ever, excited me.

And like all Age of Empires games, I'm awful at it. Which is good, because strategy games that kick me in the teeth are much more engaging than the ones I just win outright. It also keeps that feel of being like 20% citybuilder, which I really like. All combat RTSs are fun and all, but there's something deeply satisfying about building up a base, particularly when it looks this good. And it seems to not have adopted hero units or other such things, thankfully. So far at least I'm really exited by this.

What are everybody else's experiences?