Age of Empires IV's Min Spec Mode will let you run the game on old hardware

Age of Empires IV is all set to hit PCs worldwide on October 28. None of the games in the franchise has been particularly demanding, but the latest iteration does offer some visual upgrades, which will, in turn, demand beefier hardware. The developers at World's Edge and Relic Entertainment have taken this into account and announced what they call a 'Min Spec Mode' for users running older systems.

Min Spec Mode essentially uses a mix of in-game settings to make Age of Empires IV easier to run.Visual fidelity will be the first parameter to take a hit, followed by screen resolution. Additionally, battles are restricted to a maximum of four players. The last part could be frustrating as it greatly limits the number of people you can play the game with, especially in multiplayer/local campaigns.

The official Age of Empires IV Steam page states that the game can run on any PC with an AMD Ryzen 6 2400G/Intel Core i5-6300U processor, a Radeon Vega 11/Intel HD 520 graphics card, 8GB of system memory and 50GB of hard drive space. Some lower-specced hardware should be able to run Age of Empires IV with a few tweaks here and there. All things considered, these requirements are fairly lax for a modern-day game.

However, World's Edge and Relic Entertainment have considered the massive popularity of older Age of Empire titles in regions such as Southeast Asia and South America. Age of Empires 2, in particular, still has an enormous fanbase despite being over twenty years old. The developers state that a good portion of the aforementioned fans are still using somewhat antiquated hardware. Hence, the Min Spec Mode should, on paper, allow these fans to enjoy Age of Empires IV.

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