Age of Empires 4 crashes on your PC when you are starting or launching the game on Steam? Have you tried restarting your PC and the gaming app but couldn’t make it work? Don’t worry, we’ll show you why the game keeps crashing and how can you fix this issue by applying easy and quick troubleshooting steps.
Age of Empires 4 is the fourth and the latest installment of the Age of Empires series. The game promises a new RTS (Real-time strategies) and 8 civilizations that should be a great fit for newcomers and veterans alike. Age of Empires fourth edition is a spiritual successor of the second edition and spans medieval generations on a larger scale.
However, the newly released version is not immune to bugs. A lot of players are reporting that when they try to launch the game on their PCs through Steam, it simply crashes.
Why does my Age of Empires keep crashing?
- Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables are missing necessary files to launch the game
- Your graphic card drivers are outdated
- Age of Empires 4 is blocked in antivirus settings
- Computer or laptop is using onboard GPU instead of high performance dedicated GPU
- Background programs are eating up PC resources to launch the game successfully
How do I fix my Age of Empires 4 from crashing?
Choose correct graphic drivers
Check Antivirus settings
The antivirus program on your PC may be preventing the Age of Empires from launching if the game is not allowed in the antivirus settings. To fix this, whitelist the game in your antivirus program and then check if you can launch it without experiencing a crash.
Update Visual C++ Redistributables
There is a chance that the current Visual C++ is not installed correctly on your PC and might be missing MSVCP140.dll and vcruntime140_1.dll files which are necessary to launch the game properly.
If you are experiencing crashes with Age of Empires 4, performing a clean installation of the Microsoft Visual Studio C++ Redistributables can fix the issue.
Verify game files on Steam
Quite often, game files on Steam are missing texture and other content that can cause Age of Empires to crash. However, the fix for these missing game files is very easy. To do this:
- First, restart your PC and launch the Steam client app
- Navigate to Steam library and right-click on Age of Empires 4
- Now click on Properties and go to the Local Files tab
- Next, click on “Verify integrity of game files”
- Wait for a few minutes to let Steam complete the verification process
- Launch the Age of Empires 4 game and see if the issue persists
Launch the game directly through Steam
Quite a few users successfully launched the Age of Empires 4 directly instead of through the Steam client. You can do this in the following way.
- Navigate to the Steam Client library section
- Right-click on Age of Empires 4 and click on Properties
- Next, go to Local Files and select the “Browse local files” option
- Finally, double-click on AoE4.exe to launch the game directly
How do I change my integrated graphics card to a dedicated GPU?
Sometimes, a system has two graphic cards. One is an onboard graphic chipset and the other is a dedicated video card for gaming. When you are playing a high-resource demanding game, by default, the system uses the onboard GPU that results in a game crash. To fix this, you have to set your dedicated GPU as the default GPU.
If your laptop/computer has Nvidia graphic card, here is what you need to do.
- Launch Nvidia Control Panel program
- On the left pane, select Manage 3D Settings
- Under the Programs tab, navigate to the “Select a program to customize” option
- Next, click on Age of Empires 4 (If you don’t see the game here, click on Add to add the Age of Empires 4)
- Now change the “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program” option to the “High-performance NVIDIA processor” option
For laptops/computers running an AMD GPU:
- Launch the AMD Control Panel and go to the Graphics tab
- Next, click on PowerPlay
- Now change the “Battery” and “Plugged in” options to “Maximum Performance” and apply the changes
- Navigate back to the Graphics tab and click on 3D
- Slide the Performance option until it shows Optimal Performance and click Apply
AMD Users who see the Switchable Graphics tab instead of Graphics, select Age of Empires 4 in the list and set it for “High Performance”. Afterward, apply the changes. Hopefully, the game won’t crash from now on.
How to fix Age of Empires 4 crashes in Windows Xbox app?
If you are playing Age of Empires 4 on your PC using the Xbox app, you have the option to repair the game to fix the crashing issues on startup. The repair process replaces the missing and broken game files. To do this:
- Navigate to Windows Settings and click on Apps & features
- Scroll and locate Age of Empires 4 from the list
- Select Age of Empires 4 and then click on Advanced options
- Finally, click on Repair to start the repairing process
- Now launch the game and verify that you are not witnessing any crashing issue
Conclusion
Hopefully, you have found a fix for the “Age of Empires 4 crashes when starting the game” issue in this guide. Before starting the troubleshooting steps, start by closing any programs or third-party applications running in the background as this can cause game lag that can lead to crashing. Also, install the latest Windows updates as well.