Setup Content Editor

The Content Editor is the main tool for creating mods in Age of Empires IV. You can either find them in your local installation file of your game or by installing the Age of Empires IV Content Editor (Beta) on steam.

Within the game files

As soon as you install AoE IV, you most likely also download the “EssenceEditor.exe” within the files. This is located in the root folder of your game. For example:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Empires IV

By installing the AoE IV Content Editor (Beta)

Steam

1. Make sure that you have all filters set in your “Steam-Library”.

2. Find the Age of Empires IV Content Editor (Beta) in your library and install it.

Windows Store

Setup the debug arguments

For debugging your mods and gather information from the running Game, you need to start Age of Empires IV with some Launch Options.

Steam

1. Right Click on your Age of Empires IV game in your steam-library.
2. Open the Properties/Settings
3. Under Launch Options paste in following text:

-dev -enableRpc

Local installation

1. If not done already, create a Desktop-Shortcut from your game. The Exe is usually called RelicCardinal.exe
2. On your Desktop-Shortcut, right click and open its properties.
3. On the Path to your RelicCardinal.exe, add following text behind the path:

-dev -enableRpc

It would look similar to this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Empires IV\RelicCardinal.exe" -dev -enableRpc