Age of Empires IV has been available for almost three weeks, and we now have a little more information about the popular RTS game's future intentions. We were shown an image with their intentions for in-game content from fall 2021 to spring 2022, starting with the first patch for the game that had just been published, in a blog post by creators World's Edge and Relic Entertainment. In the winter of 2021, Age of Empires IV will focus on balance and bug repairs, as well as quality-of-life improvements. Displaying player scores in-game and making the in-game mini-map more readable are two examples.

Get a glimpse at some of upcoming fixes, improvements, and more with the @AgeofEmpires IV Roadmap for Winter 2021 and Spring 2022. Read here: https://t.co/N2VIyII663 pic.twitter.com/5FUZm6vc3h

— Xbox Wire (@XboxWire) November 17, 2021

In the spring of 2022, Age of Empires IV is planning to include both user-generated content through modding and fully-fledged Ranked Seasons. The latter will last 12 weeks and feature a head-to-head competition. Through ranked play, players will be able to acquire unique rewards.
Finally, World's Edge and Relic Entertainment look ahead a little farther, emphasizing some of the criticism they've gotten from players and how they plan to address it. Improvements to hotkeys, tweaking the AI difficulty, and the return of Waypoint Indicators, which were available in earlier editions but not in Age of Empires IV, are just a few of the things they're working on.