How Zenko analyzes Age of Empires IV

Zenko reads your ranked matches from your public aoe4world profile, read-only:

• Your profile, to link it. You search your Steam name or Steam ID, or paste your aoe4world profile link, then pick the profile whose rank, rating and last match you recognise.
• Your ranked 1v1 and team ranked matches: the result, your rating change, your civilization, when the match started, how long it lasted, and the server.
• Your ranked standing: rank, rating, wins and losses, and your lifetime match count on each ladder.

Quick matches and custom games are never fetched. Zenko never changes anything on your game account, and you never report a score or send a screenshot.

Each Age of Empires IV challenge is a target for a window of your next few ranked matches, like winning two of your next five. The window opens when the challenge starts. Only ranked matches of the ladder your challenge names (ranked 1v1 or team ranked) that you start in the next 12 hours can count, up to the number it names. A match still running when time is up counts, as long as you started it in time.

A challenge is judged once its window fills or its time runs out. The one exception is a challenge that asks you to win every game, which ends at the loss that puts it out of reach. On an Off-Meta challenge, if time runs out before you lose a match, any entry is returned. Play no ranked matches in the 12 hours and the challenge is cancelled, and any entry is returned. Play them and miss the target, and it ends as a loss.

What else a challenge checks:

• Match length. The average length of the matches in your window must stay above the minimum your challenge shows, so a string of instant resigns cannot fill it. As an average, real sessions do not feel it.
• Account history. Challenges need at least 20 lifetime matches on the ladder they use.
• Other matches. Quick matches, custom games and the other ranked ladder never use up your window, and matches on any other account never count.

aoe4world lists a match once it has been played, so nothing is read from inside a game. While a challenge is running, Zenko checks your matches every five minutes. A match that aoe4world is still writing is held until it can be read, never judged half-finished. Your running challenge in the Activity panel has a "Check for match" button, usable every minute.

With no challenge running, your match history refreshes on a schedule that follows how recently you played: about every hour if you played in the last day, every six hours if you played in the last week, and once a day otherwise, or once a day however much you play if you have not played a challenge on Zenko in 30 days.

These scheduled reads cover linked accounts only, so unlinking stops them. We read at a steady, modest rate and never send commands to your account.

Targets are built from your own recent ranked matches. Each one starts from what you usually reach and asks for a little more, and a harder level asks for more again. A hot streak raises your next targets, a cold streak relaxes them.

This is personal tuning, not an alternate ranking system. Zenko does not publish a public leaderboard and does not re-rank the Age of Empires IV ladder. The performance standing on your profile compares your play across Zenko with other Zenko players. It is not a skill rating or a ranking of all Age of Empires IV players.

What we store: your aoe4world profile link, the matches we read, your ranked standing, and aggregated analysis metrics. All of it comes from your public aoe4world profile.

What we do not store: passwords, which you never share with Zenko, or anything beyond what your public aoe4world profile shows.

Unlinking: a linked account is locked to your profile. To change or remove it, contact Zenko at support@zenko.gg. When an account is unlinked, we delete the analysis and rank data built from it and mark the link released. The match records we read are kept against that aoe4world profile, so linking it again does not re-read them, and they are cleared if a different Zenko player links it.

For detailed privacy and data retention policies, see /privacy and /legal.