| “ | Acts as a Keep. Features high-damage arbalest emplacements. Each garrisoned unit adds an additional arbalest. Activates an Arbalest emplacement on all Keeps and Town Centers. | ” |
| —Age of Empires IV description | ||
The Red Palace is a defensive landmark available to the French and Jeanne d'Arc in Age of Empires IV in the Castle Age. It acts as a Keep, featuring high-damage arbalest emplacements instead of standard Arrowslits. Each garrisoned unit adds an additional arbalest. It also unlocks arbalest emplacements on all Town Centers and Keeps. These emplacements are slightly weaker, dealing only 40 damage, with 9.5 tiles range and the same attack bonus and speed.
Special ability[]
- Keep Influence (Influence,
French only): The Red Palace generates an 10 x 10 tile influence area. All Archery Ranges and Stables within this influence area produce units 20% cheaper. Other buildings do not extend the influence area.
Strategy[]
The arbalest emplacement has massive damage potential. With each garrisoned unit adding one arbalest with 60 attack, it can handle almost all land units in range with few shots. Even Battering Rams have a hard time taking down the Red Palace.
It can be used defensively, stopping an enemy army push. If they want to take down the Red Palace, they are forced to make Trebuchets, which can buy time for the French player to mass more units to take back control. It can also be used to take map control. By placing a Red Palace and Keeps near a Sacred Site, the French player can force unfavorable engagements from the opponent and gain an advantage.
One strategy with the Red Palace is to start using Town Centers instead of Keeps as defensive structures. Town Centers cost 16.67% less than Keeps, which allows more resources for emplacements or higher numbers of defenses in more locations. Town Centers cost a lot less stone to build and do not require stone to be repaired, resulting in a much cheaper price if the Market is being used to buy stone. Town Centers can also produce forward Villagers or scouts, which can garrison within the Town Center which produced them, adding a lot of damage through garrison arrows.
Another major strategy is to wall in the Red Palace, especially with Palisade Walls. This counters Battering Rams, as while they have a large attack bonus versus walls, walls have a much higher hit point/unit resource cost than anything else they will be attacking. This strategy is unlikely to save the Red Palace from destruction from a focused enemy attack, but it means the Red Palace will deal a lot more damage before it goes down. Additionally, it means the attack against the Red Palace takes a lot longer, meaning the player's army can arrive. Players can build multiple layers of Palisade Wall relatively cheaply in the Imperial Age, especially if the Red Palace has some of its surroundings blocked by natural defenses like forests.
The Red Palace costs extremely little to repair for how strong it is. It costs less than 223 wood to repair fully without Court Architects (at the repair cost of 22.5 hit points/unit wood) and less than 289 wood to repair fully with Court Architects. However, there are diminishing returns if multiple Villagers repair it. This incentivizes players to repair it as quickly as possible, or even to repair it as it is being attacked to maximize its damage output before falling and the time taken to destroy it.
Available technologies[]
Generic emplacements[]
Technologies[]
- Boiling Oil
- Enlistment Incentives ( French only)
Further statistics[]
| Technologies | |
|---|---|
 Hit points
|
 Court Architects (+30%)
|
| Attack |  Steeled Arrow (+1) Balanced Projectiles (+1) Platecutter Point (+1) Boiling Oil
|
| Additional projectiles |  Springald Emplacement Cannon Emplacement
|
Changelog[]
- Originally, the Red Palace had 3 arbalest attacks while not garrisoned. With Season Two Update 17718, it has 2 arbalest attacks while not garrisoned.
- With update 6.0.878, the Red Palace unlocks arbalest emplacements on all Town Centers and Keeps.
- With patch 8.2.218, the range of arbalest emplacements added to Town Centers and Keeps was reduced from 10 to 9.5
- Originally, the Red Palace had an 8 x 8 influence area. With update 11.0.782, this was increased to 10 x 10 to match that of standard Keeps.
- Originally, the Red Palace had 5 fire armor. With patch 12.1.2454, it has 6 fire armor.
Campaign version[]
Because the original four campaigns have not been rebalanced since the release of the game, in The Hundred Years War, the Red Palace has different stats.
- Its arbalest weapon deals only 14 damage, but with +10 bonus damage against heavy units, and with 5 burst attacks instead of 2, firing every 1.19 seconds. It does not add any arbalest emplacements to other Keeps or Town Centers
- It has only an 8 x 8 influence area, has 20 garrison space, and has no fire armor
Trivia[]
- Its real life counterpart seems to be the Château d'Anjony, or alternatively the Palace of Poitiers.
Gallery[]
