Auto control group option?

I know the word “auto” scares people but it’s not as intrusive as you might think.

Say you have your crossbows set to control group 1 and light cav set to control group 2. Say most of your light cav die and you create new light cav. Currently, those units will not be set to any control group. If you are trying to focus on moving your light cav around so they don’t die you may not easily be able to find your new light cav. What if there was an option that puts the units or buildings you make into the same control group that already exists. This way you new light cav will automatically be set to control group 2. You can then more easily move your new light cav and old light cav into the same spot. If you set your dock to group 5 then all new docks will be in group 5.

Some people may want multiple control groups for the same unit so they can surround and micro better but those people have the skill needed to do so and will not really need this.

If you don’t have a control group for champions and you make champions then they won’t go into any control group. Only newly created buildings or units with an already assigned group. I’m not asking for the computer to assign new control groups for you. This is a minor QOL feature that would help lower rated players since many of us can forget/can’t find our units sometimes when there is a lot going on.

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You want to a building automatically task every unit it creates into a control group? How would you hotkey that? :thinking:

But anyway, you can always double click a unit with LMB and reassign its type to a control group!

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Only the new units/buildings that already have a control group. I guess it could be a button to toggle on it off. Not sure the hot key for it.

Yeah but double clicking the units doesn’t select every unit you have just the ones in view. Say you have production buildings all over the place with new units being produced and you don’t have the time (or want to to set a gather point) for all those military buildings. Those units might not be easily found. If you could just click the control group number it would select all the new units you have of that type and then you could just right click to gather all units to one spot without even having to look away from your current view.

If you press a ctrl group, your view gets centered in the middle of all those units. So you never want to append units to your ctrl group that are out of sight, it would break its functionallity.

With buildings you don’t want every production building across the map producing, only the ones that will have a clear path. So lategame its important to only ctrl group the production buildings that are safe and adjust waypoints so units gather just behind the front line.

Personally in that case I only ctrl group the ranged group, since they are positioned more behind and stay alive longer while the meat shield (eg; light cav) gets its waypoint just in front and those units do not continuously get ctrl grouped. Other ctrl groups I save for small groups of raiding parties.

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If you press the control group AND space bar then it centers on the units but if you just press the control group then it highlights the units without centering. This means you can have instant control of those units unlike setting way points where they just run to the gather point and stop. And you maybe have forgotten to reassign the gather point so it’s in another direction of where your current battle is. Happens since it’s a hectic game. Yeah and this could be a feature you could toggle on or off (maybe even have a hot key that could toggle it as well). Just a QOL suggestion that you could use but don’t ever have to. Should be defaulted to off.

Oh, the view doesn’t exactly get centered “in the middle of all those units” (unless there’s been an update of which I’m unaware). Actually it just gets centered on one of those units (typically it will be the final unit added to the control group). So if you have a group of Scouts on one side of the map, train one more Scout in your base, and add it to the control group, then your view will center on the Scout that’s still in your base.

I’ve got the answer. We could add some hotkeys: select all cavalry, select all infantry, etc. Or we could make them more specific, all knight line, all sword line, etc. Of course with hitting the button twice also centering the selection.

This would be life changing.

In HD land it does center exactly in the middle, which is not ideal. Sounds like they changed it in DE, It would be more ideal if it would center on the oldest unit since it is more likely to be in the right place.

@letmepickthis Sorry I meant double press ctrl group. Can you further explain when you would use this? Early/mid/lategame? During raids or more during trash battles? When there is 1 front or multiple fronts?

I agree, the oldest unit should be center view on double press of control group - as oldest unit will be in the battle (not just come out of military production). Do you see a way to make this possible? Thanks

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There’s your problem. Either have hotkeys set for “select all stables”/archery ranges/castles or just control group these buildings themselves. Setting one gather point for all of them becomes as easy as keeping all of them gueued up evenly.

Yeah, sure, units automatically joining their buddies at the front would be even easier, and most of the problems with it I can think of (units automatically running through castle fire to get to a raiding party, keeping a weak scout separate from the main group to do some actual scouting) can be prevented by being able to toggle this auto hotkey on and off during a game. But I don’t think the current situation is quite that horrible.

Still, I meant to make this post to disagree with the idea, but I can’t seem to find good reasons. It’s not a system that makes tactical decisions I should be making (which auto scout arguably is, past the initial scouting of your own base), it’s “just” a system that allows me to to forget less atuff and work around a lower APM. It would be more efficient for the pros too, but not in a really obnoxious way…

I’m not against this. Then again, I’m not against auto queue either, so I’m a little weird that way.

GREAT IDEA, and answer on this?