As everyone knows, double-pressing a “Select Group #X” hotkey centers the screen on group X.
Obviously, the system is capable of recognising double-keypresses. Why aren’t they implemented in the hotkey settings then?
It would be great if double-keypresses could be assigned as general hotkeys for commands, making it possible to access more commands with fewer keys effectively.
For example:
space - select all TCs (in order to produce vils while managing military)
double space - jump to next TC (comfortable method to jump to your eco)
Well, at hotkeys remove every hotkey combination assigned to go to building (like Blacksmith: CTRL+S). Then assign their hotkey combination to select all buildings (like Blacksmith: CTRL+SHIFT+S to CTRL+S)
Press CTRL+S to select all blacksmiths and for going them you have to press space unfortunately. You can watch battlefield and manage your villager and military production without changing where you are looking at.
Note: Pro players doesn’t use this as I watch, maybe they didn’t look new hotkeys. For example when I watch The Viper, he assigns all of archery ranges to group 4. For new archery ranges he needs to assign group again.
This has 2 reasons: The first one is that once you get used to it - as Viper surely has after so many years - its really rough to get used to new stuff.
The other reason is that selecting all production buildings is often not what you want. Think late imp: You have 8 stables in your main base to produce your main army from, 3 stables in the north to start raids from and a sneaky one behind the enemy base. You dont WANT to select them all, rather, you would bind them to 3 different groups.
The main reason is this. I played HD a lot getting used to DE took a few weeks. I still use some of HD hotkeys (boar luring hotkeys, g,t,z).
There are not a lot sneaky buildings, even they are you usually sneak them in feudal-dark age so you won’t have a lot in your base because of the lack of wood hurts a lot. Basically you can still group your buildings if your buildings are different locations. If you don’t change send location (the flag, I don’t remember the name of it), you can train both sneaky units and not sneaky units. It’s completely optional.
I had 37 stables as Mongols to Spam Hussars, I just had focused microing my Mangudais and Siege Onagers. CTRL+H was closer than original hotkey I put select all stables to that to make easy Hussar spam.
Yeah, maybe using the word “sneaky” wasn’t the best choice on my part - but can we agree that in lategame, you often have production buildings all over the map, hitting the opponent from different angles with different units at different times? For those situations, select all simply does not cut it.
If it was only the “getting used” part, pros (you know, people who earn money by optimizing their gameplay…) would invest the time to learn the better option. The reason they do not do this is that the “select all” option is not strictly better, only in some (many) situations.