| “ | Stringing bows with silk grants Archers +1.5 range and Mounted Archers +0.8 range. | ” |
| —Age of Empires IV description | ||
Silk Bowstrings is a technology in Age of Empires IV introduced in Season Nine. It can be researched at the University in the Imperial Age. It is available to all civilizations except the Zhu Xi's Legacy, which do not have any unit which can benefit from this technology.
Silk Bowstrings increases the range of Archers (and unique variants) and cavalry archers by +1.5 and +0.75 respectively. The Tower Elephant and Black Rider are not affected by this technology, since they do not have the cavalry archer unit type.
Civilization bonuses[]
Abbasid Dynasty: Research speeds are +15%/+20% faster while Golden Age tiers 2/3 are active. If Preservation of Knowledge has been researched, this technology costs -20%.- Ayyubids: Research speeds are 25% faster while Golden Age tier 2 is active
- Byzantines: Research speeds are 30% faster per water level at buildings within the influence of a Cistern with the Dialecticus ability active.
- Chinese: The technology researches 150% faster when the University is supervised by an Imperial Official.
- Delhi Sultanate: The technology is free, but takes 18x as long to research (1,080 seconds instead of 60 seconds).
- House of Lancaster: This technology is 15% cheaper if King's College has been constructed.
- Malians: Technologies take less time to research based on how much gold has been obtained through trade.
- Mongols: The technology is available in the Blacksmith.
Trivia[]
- While the Mongols cannot research an improved version of this technology in standard games, they can do so in the campaign scenarios (see section below).
Changelog[]
- Originally, Silk Bowstrings increased Archer and Mounted Archer range by 2 and 1 tiles respectively. With patch 12.0.2246, it increases their range by 1.5 and 0.75 tiles respectively
- Originally the Delhi Sultanate research time was 720 seconds (12x default). With patch 12.2.3327, it was increased to 1,080 seconds (18x).
Campaign version[]
Before being introduced in Season Nine, Silk Bowstrings was originally a technology exclusive to the original four campaigns, and in those campaigns, has not been changed to its current iteration. As such, the campaign version has the following differences:
- It can be researched at the Arsenal in the Castle Age and uses the Textiles icon:
- It costs 50 food, 450 gold
- It increases the attack range of only Archers by 2
- The Mongols can also research Improved Silk Bowstrings, which costs an extra 500 stone and increases the attack range by an additional 0.5 tiles (+2.5 tiles total).
Silk Bowstrings is not available in the The Sultans Ascend campaign.
