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Cheats and the AOE series, includingAge of Empires IV, have gone hand in hand. As the games gained in popularity the types of things you could do with a couple of the right codes became pretty weird and wonderful. From the simple and useful like turning off the Fog of War, to the downright bizarre like the ED-209 droids from Robocop, trike riding babies with shotguns, nuclear ballista bolt-firing soldiers, building crushing monster trucks, and many more weird and ridiculously overpowered units.
Cheats in Age of Empires became so popular and notorious that fans eagerly awaited each installment purely to see what sort of oddities and helpful hidden codes the developers had stuck in. Even though it took a few months, Age of Empires IV has now joined the ranks of its predecessors with a list of unlockable features that’s not too wild but contains some nice callbacks to classic cheats that make them fun to use and easy to type in repeatedly. For those looking for the new codes, here are all of the Age of Empire IVs cheats and how to use them.
Updated Jul 03, 2025 By Matthew McKeown:Age of Empires IV continues to get a lot of new content, patches for balancing, and some much-needed TLC to keep it ticking over and that’s great. It made quite the splash when it launched and despite the cheats taking a while to turn up, when they did it garnered a lot of praise from fans.
Though they do negate Achievements should you use them during the campaign or Skirmishes, it’s still satisfying to mess with the guts of the game to give yourself that winning edge or add a little chaos. There’s quite a lot of them to sift through, including old classics, so here’s an updated look at all the cheats in Age Of Empires IV and how to use them.
How To Activate Cheats
It’s pretty easy to startmessing with cheat codesin AOE IV. Thankfully, you don’t need to go digging around in the game’s file system ordownload external modsfrom third-party sites to get it running as it’s all available from the game whenever you want it.
Unlike other games in the past where they werehard baked into the game, the cheat codes for Age of Empires IV came with an updatenearly eight monthsafter it launched. So now they’re back andsimpler than ever to play around with. It was an odd choice to leave their inclusion so late, but with so many othermoving parts to fixin the game first, it’s understandable why ittook a little while for them to turn up.
Cheats arrived with theseason three update, and to use them you’ll need tolaunch a campaign or a skirmish match against the AI. Then go into theGame Mode windowand check the box marked “Cheats”.
Then as the game starts justhit “Enter” to open the chat, type in the code in lowercase as we’ve shown below,and that’s it. If it doesn’t work,check your casing and your spacing. The codes can beused at any time and as often as you like, so there’s no limit to the chaos that you can cause.
You will need toenter the codes for each new Skirmish session or Campaign Missionin order for them to work. They’re not persistent.
The Cheat Codes
The cheat codes you can play around with arepretty varied. There are some old andsuitably oddfavorites, like thelaser-spewing Photon Trooper, instant build, god mode, and the ability to dump amassive bunch of resourcesin your civilization’s bank account whenever you need them.
Plus, there are a few simple ones, likeremoving the map, and killing animals or highlighted units, thoughno code for instant wineven though there is one toimmediately lose the game. Some of these are alsoavailable in the campaign, whilst others areskirmish only. But we’ve marked down which cheat code works in what part of the game to streamline things somewhat.
All of these are case-sensitive, and todeactivate codeslike invincibility, justenter the code again. Also, if you’re spawning in a unit, check yourprimary Town Centreas they’ll alwaysappear directly next to it.
inna jiffy
Instant build/research
full meal deal
Give 100k food
i have an app idea
Give 100k gold resources
take it for granite
Give 100k stone resources
knock on wood
Give 100k wood resources
smorgasboard
Give 100k of each resource
age me up scotty
king size beds
Activate max pop cap
i give up
Instant lose
make it quick
Instant kill selected buildings and units
anti-poke
God mode for units and buildings
it is known
Map reveal
minimally minimal
out with the new
Replace modern attack alarm with AOE2 alarm
you monster
Instantly kill all animals
big bad wolf
Turn sheep into wolves
at the core
Spawns one of each core unit
one of us
Convert highlighted unit
this is fine
Set highlighted buildings on fire
zeleport
Teleport selected units to the cursor’s current location
photon man
Spawns one of the iconic Photon Troopers
The above codes can beused in both Skirmish and Campaign missions.
another round
Slow-mo mode in the campaign
another cup
Turbo mode in the campaign
The above codes are usedsolely in the Campaignand using cheatsdoes impact progressiontowards achievements, challenges, and mastery targets.
