How to rotate Building and the Camera in Age Of Empire 4?

Simply knowing how to pan camera sadly won’t help. If you’re trying to find those pesky units, hiding behind your production buildings, then you need to know how to rotate. Here’s a quick guide on how to rotate in Age of Empires 4.

How to Rotate the Camera

There are two ways to rotate the camera around your buildings and units in Age of Empires. One method allows you to rotate the camera as much as you would like, and the other rotates the camera in exact 45 degree increments.

Method 1: Free Camera Rotation with the Mouse

1. Hold down the “Alt” key, or if you’re using an Apple keyboard the “Options” key (some Apple keyboards use a symbol like this ⌥ rather than the word “Options”, but in either case it will be the key located two to the left of the space bar). On a non-English keyboard both the “Alt” key and “Options” key will be located in the same place as they are on an English keyboard.
2. While continuing to hold down either the “Alt” or “Options” key, move your mouse to the left or right to rotate the camera clockwise or anti-clockwise. The camera will not pan while rotating.

Tip: If this method is slightly disorientating, you can always press the “H” key to recenter the camera onto your Town Center.

Method 2: Rotating the Camera in 45° Increments

Press the left square bracket key to rotate your camera 45 degrees counter-clockwise, and the right square bracket to rotate your camera 45 degrees in the other direction. It’s that easy, and trust us, well worth remembering for those pesky idle villagers and idle military units!

How do you Change the Controls for Rotating the Camera?

If you want to change the controls for rotating the camera in Age of Empires 4 you can, and it’s probably worth doing if another key feels more natural to you. Here’s how:

1. From the Age of Empires 4 main menu select the settings menu (the cog in the bottom right).

1. From the menu displayed above, choose “Controls” from the options on the right.
2. In the “Controls” menu, select “View and remap controls”.
3. From this screen you can change the key needed to rotate the camera.

How to Rotate Buildings in Age of Empires 4 

In quite an unfortunate step back from Age of Empires 3, you cannot rotate buildings in Age of Empires 4. A building rotation mod may become available, when modding is introduced, but at present there’s simply no way to do so. For those of us who adore the base-building element of Age of Empires, this was quite an unfortunate blow to discover in the new game. Unless your on legitimately impassable territory, you should be allowed to have ultimate building control...in our humble opinion. Also, it’s just really neat to have all your production buildings lined up in the same direction.

For more AoE IV articles, check our guide on the best AoE IV civilisations.