Xbox Beginners Guide - Age of Empires IV

Age of Empires IV on Xbox is not a shrunk-down PC port. Relic rebuilt the interface around radial menus, so almost every hotkey a PC player would press lives on a wheel you open with a trigger. That makes the game very playable on a controller, but the first few matches can feel like learning two games at once: the RTS itself and the button layout. This guide covers both. First the full default Xbox controller layout, grouped by what you are trying to do, and then the economy and match habits that make the biggest difference in your first games.

Before Your First Match

• Play the tutorial. The console edition has a step-by-step tutorial that walks through building a settlement, gathering food and wood, raising an army and laying siege. It introduces the button combos in the order you need them, and you can replay it any time.
• Pick the English for your first civilization. They are the most forgiving civ while you learn the controls: sturdy defenses, simple farming and longbowmen that work without much micro.
• Know that keyboard and mouse is an option. The Xbox version supports keyboard and mouse. Switch the input preset under Options → Controls and the radial wheels are replaced by PC-style command bars. Everything below assumes a controller.
• Start with the AI on Easy. Skirmish against the AI is the place to build muscle memory. Ranked matchmaking can wait until the radial menus feel automatic.

The Xbox Controller Layout at a Glance

These are the default bindings from the official Age of Empires IV controller layout. The two most important ideas: A does whatever makes sense for what is under the cursor, and RT opens the radial menu for whatever you have selected. LT works like Shift on a keyboard, changing what the other buttons do while you hold it.

Every binding can be remapped in the game's Controls options. If you change something, the in-game control screens update to match.

Selecting Units and Buildings

Selection is where controller play feels most different from mouse play. Instead of dragging boxes around your whole army, lean on the shortcuts that grab a lot at once:

Double-tap A is the one to practice. Double-tapping a spearman grabs every spearman on screen, which is usually faster than boxing an army and then trimming it. The D-pad also has quick-select shortcuts. The one you'll use most jumps to the nearest idle villager, and reviewers singled it out as working almost shockingly well. With LT held, the D-pad becomes Military Quick Find for jumping straight to your army.

Giving Orders: A, X, Y and the Radial Menu

• A is the contextual command. Point at a tree with villagers selected and they chop it. Point at an enemy with soldiers selected and they attack. Point at empty ground and they walk there.
• X is attack-move. Your units walk toward the point but fight anything they meet on the way. The next section explains when to use it instead of A.
• Y is the quick command. It runs the most useful action for your selection without opening a menu. On a military building, for example, it trains the unit assigned to Y. Holding LT while pressing Y queues five of that unit at once.
• Hold RT for the radial menu. With villagers selected you get building wheels. With soldiers you get patrol, formations and other orders. With a building you get its units and technologies. Use the left stick to highlight an option, A to confirm, and the D-pad to change pages when a wheel has more than one.
• Hold LT to queue orders. LT + A adds a command to the end of the queue instead of replacing the current one. It's handy for chaining several buildings onto one villager.
• LB + RB together cancels. Pressing both bumpers stops the selected units. Holding both deletes the selected unit or building, so be careful with it.

Move vs. Attack-Move: A or X?

With soldiers selected, both A and X send them somewhere. The difference is what they do on the way, and mixing them up is one of the most common ways new console players lose fights.

• Default to X when your army is heading toward the enemy. If you press A instead, the army walks into the enemy's range and takes hits without firing back until it arrives. With attack-move, every unit starts fighting as soon as something is in range.
• Use A to get out. A retreat with X stalls, because your units turn around to fight whatever is chasing them. A plain move gets them out cleanly.
• Watch what attack-move picks. Attack-moving units fight whatever they meet, and that can include buildings and walls. If your army stops to hit a wall while the enemy army is next to it, point A at the units you actually want dead.
• Both work from the minimap. Open the minimap with RB, put the reticle where you want to go, then press X to attack-move there or A for a contextual order. That's the quickest way to send an army across the map without scrolling.
• Chain orders with LT. Hold LT while giving orders to queue waypoints, for example a move to a safe flank followed by an attack-move into the enemy base.

Training and Researching

With a building selected, hold RT to open its production wheel. A trains or researches the highlighted option. Holding LT while you confirm queues a stack of five. Y removes the highlighted unit from the build queue, and X upgrades a unit when an upgrade is available. B closes the wheel. Keep your Town Center's queue topped up with villagers this way.

The Site Menu (RT With Nothing Selected)

Press B to clear your selection, then hold RT. You now get a wheel based on whatever is under the cursor: nearby buildings and units to jump to, or build options for that spot. This is the fastest way to queue troops from a barracks while your camera is on a fight. You never have to scroll back to your base. If the radial menus feel clunky, tapping B before you open a new one usually makes the transition smoother.

Villager Priorities: Let the Economy Run Itself

The Villager Priority System is the biggest console-specific advantage. Instead of manually sending each villager to food, wood, gold or stone, you open the priorities menu and set how important each task is. In that menu the left stick browses, A raises a priority, Y lowers it, the D-pad switches pages, and X toggles automation on or off. With automation on, villagers move to the highest-priority work by themselves, including idle ones.

Treat it as a safety net, not a replacement for thinking. Before you age up, raise whichever resource the next age needs. When you switch to an army, raise food and gold. If a building you placed never finishes, check whether a priority change pulled its builder away.

Control Groups on a Controller

Control groups save you from hunting for the same units over and over. On Xbox they live on a radial menu too:

• Open the menu: hold LT and press RT.
• Pick a slot: highlight it with the left stick.
• A creates a group from your current selection, or selects an existing group. Hold A to select the group and move the camera to it.
• X adds your current selection to the group. Y resets it.
• LT + RB cycles through your groups without opening the wheel.

A simple starting setup is one slot for your main army, one for your Town Center(s) and one for all your production buildings of the same type. When several barracks are selected together, queued units are shared across them, so one press trains from all of them.

Camera and Minimap

Playing from a couch puts you farther from the screen than at a desk, and the zoom-out has a limit. Good camera habits matter more on console than on PC.

Camera waypoints are underrated. Drop one on your base and one on your army's rally point, then flick between them with LT + right stick instead of panning across the map.

RB opens the minimap. While it is open, the left stick moves a reticle around the map. Y snaps the main camera there, A gives your selection a contextual order at that spot, and X attack-moves there. That lets you send an army across the map without scrolling. The D-pad places pings for your teammates (attack, look here, defend here) and removes minimap waypoints.

How a Match Works

• Four resources. Food (sheep, deer, berries, then farms), wood, gold and stone. Each new building and age-up costs a mix of them.
• Four ages. Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial. To advance you build one of (usually) two landmarks unique to your civilization, and each landmark gives a different bonus. Picking the right one matters more than how fast you get there.
• Three ways to win. Destroy all of the enemy's landmarks, finish a Wonder and defend it until the timer runs out, or hold every Sacred Site on the map with monks until that timer runs out. Most beginner games end with landmarks falling.
• Houses cap your population. Units need population space, and houses (or your civ's equivalent) raise the cap. If the Town Center stops training, check your population first.
• Burning buildings are out of the fight. A building catches fire below 25% health and stops working until it is repaired. You don't always have to finish it off before moving on.

Five Habits for Your First Ten Games

1. Never let the Town Center go idle. Villagers are your economy. Queue them with RT on the Town Center, or with a control group.
2. Check for idle villagers whenever you have a spare second. One button finds them, or turn on villager automation and let priorities handle it.
3. Send scouts and sheep home early. Your starting scout finds sheep, and sheep follow scouts. Bringing them to the Town Center is free food.
4. Attack-move everything. X instead of A whenever an army crosses the map.
5. Use the View button. When the game warns you about an attack, View snaps you there. That's much faster than finding the fight on the minimap.

More Age of Empires IV Guides

Pair this with our Xbox controller guide video, or see the platform-agnostic 10 tips for every beginner for a quicker rundown. Once the basics click, Nomad Megarandom 101 is a fun next step.

Further reading: the Age of Empires IV unit database and our Age of Empires IV stats lookup.

Sources

Controller bindings come from the official Age of Empires IV Default Controller Layouts page. Console features are from Xbox Wire, Can I Play That?, Game Rant and Checkpoint Gaming.