I need more buttons/grouped buttons to micro manage my army... 10 is not enough! SERIOUSLY

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

The title says it all really…

If i have a big army… 10 groups is simply not enough…

I’m using a 12 button mouse but in the group option there is only 10 buttons

IF, in my army i have 36 knights, 20 spear men, 36 hand cannoners, 30 archers, 35 cross bows, 30 men at arms, 6 cannons, 5 mangonels, 9 springals, 4 culverians

So far i have

Group 2: 36 knights

Group 1: 20 spears

Group 3: 30 men at arms

Group 4: 36 hand cannoneers

Group 5: 30 Archers

Group 6: 30 cross bows

Group 7: 5 Mangonels

group 8: 9 Springals

Group 9: 4 culverins

Group 10: All army together group 10.

I’m still missing a group button for my 6 cannons…

Now i’m not talking about adding 1 more button for my grouped cannons.

I’m talking about adding atleast another 15 groups.

I simply need more buttons for more groups.

So… how many more buttons do i need? well i’ll explain what i want here…

3 buttons to split my knights into 3 groups of 12 and 1 button to group all knights together.

i want to split my hand cannoners into like 5 groups (1 shotting an enemy knights with no shots wasted). Same goes for archers and cross bows.

I need like

5 buttons for 5 groups of 6 hand cannoners and 1 button for all cannoners together.

3 buttons for 3 groups of 10 cross bows and a button for all crossbows together

2 buttons for 2 groups of 10 spears and 1 for all spear men together

2 buttons for 2 groups of 15 men at arms and 1 button for all men at arms together

1 button for all melee units together

3 buttons for 3 groups of 10 archers and 1 button for all archers together

2 buttons for light caverly flanking enconomy harass and 1 for all light cav together

(No need for an exstra mangonel button. 5 in a group is fine)

3 buttons for 3 groups of 3 springalds and 1 button for all springalds together.

And finally, I want every cannon with it’s own button so i can micro manage and win a siege weapon shoot out war…

10 buttons for each culverin and cannon, 1 button for all cannons together.

5 buttons for groups of 2 cannons

1 button for all sieg together

1 button for all army together.

So, to be happy, i need a grand total of…

44 gouped buttons…

i currently have 10… I NEED MORE PLZ TY.

SO how can you do this? How can you add more buttons?

So for example: I could hold Control+Number which would give me 10 extra buttons, I did this in world of warcraft.

I also held shift in world of warcraft, but i recognise shift is for queueing unit orders.

Maybe you could hold tab+number button.

caps+number

alt+number.

I Think this change would seriously add a much, much, much higher skill cap to Age of empires…

Higher skill cap means it’s more fun and more people will play.

Look at league of legends; that skill cap is really high and people still play it religiously.

This age of empires will last a long time… It will take it’s place next to League of legends, next to Starcraft, next to Warcraft, next to Skyrim, next to GTA 5.

People will be playing this game religiously for a long long time. Maybe even 15 years.

SO in the game play… There will be a spike of Glee when someone wins a 100vs100 army battle by micro managing the ■■■■ out of all their units. It will get people hooked.

Like i said, higher skill cap, higher fun, more addictive.

I’m just imagining the mad ■■■■■■■ speed of light keyboard+mouse bashing skills. Haha. Sounds fun.

So… That’s my post request.

(You’re obviously thinking in order to micro manage an army with 44 different buttons you need to be smoking crack or something, LOL.)

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2

Control is used to assign new control groups, making it a worse candidate than shift. Overall I don’t feel like I need more control groups for my army, but having a modifier for more control groups would actually be really nice for buildings as well so I think it would be a neat idea.

There’s a wide array of more pressing issues. But this would be a very nice QoL feature in the future. I can imagine having my units on the normal 10, and then buildings on modifier + number.

3

How often do you have to control more than 7 things at once?

I normally have TCs, army production 1, army production 2, army production 3 / docks, units 1, units 2, units 3.

In vanilla AoE 1997, I’d like 20 control groups, but this game doesn’t seem to need as many. Though, I’m probably just playing wrong or something.

4

this looks quite messy and complicated… you should select all the army making a big rectangle and tell them to go to one point. Then, as they go, you divide them up using your mouse to select them, its wayyyy much easier than all this complicated numbering (and as they wont be adding any extra keys)

5

Yes, this is an issue but it is an increased issue for players not native to the AoE realm. Many players have units rallied to a location and will simply drag a box to select units from there or use keys as shift or control to take (specific) units from there. Others may use the select all army combination. In both cases it can be usefull to select, or unselect, units from the UI at the bottom. However, this has its inefficiencies.

These inefficiencies are more detrimental to new players and players coming from other games as this feels very unintuitive to say the least. Except for those accustomed to AoE games already. The current way of dealing with it simply needs additional clicks and it only allows you to adequately micro units in the region your screen is focussed. The current mechanic is worsened that if you add clusters of units in proximity to the same group they will align in a formation and all have reduced speed. Well, all except one: the slowest one.

For the latter I made a case in a separate thread: allow us to toggle unit formations on/off. The thread can be found here: [Formation] Add movement formation toggle

In part this would solve the issue as grouping units together will not be detrimental to their base speed anymore. A much welcomed feature as currently slow religious units (but also boats?) are clustered in when you hit select all army. One could argue it be nice to have a select all infantry, cavalry, siege or sea type of functionality. However: that would not fully resolve the issue as bombards serve a different purpose and positioning than mangonels and landsknecht have a very different base speed than spearman. And one should have a balance between having options and having a digestible amount of options.

I have no perfect solution but I do feel your issue. I quite often opt to simply refrain from making to many types of units simply because they become impossible to micro when selecting all army, locating them on the map, or adding / removing them from specific groups.

6

We need more group and alow delay oder for each group.

Maybe allow players to set a timer, that activate when a game time is reached.

Will be nice to see all army group execute an attack at the same time.

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7

I’ve had the same thought, Love to see commands to attack on command without reselecting and removing the stand ground command, or an intentional speed modifier that allows units to march forward in unison, in the formation you set. Would make the tactical part of the game much more fun and immersive and make it so apm wasn’t the dominating win factor

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8

To use as many control groups as you propose would be inefficient. You need to get used to remembering where units were and using the mouse some more. 10 is enough. You only have 200 pop.

Here is the world number 1 player discussing with Grubby about not control grouping everything obsessively and the advantages of it. Linked to the right time.

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9

well I guarantee if I was skill capped (extremely high cap btw) with 45 group buttons and i was extremely rapidly with my organisation and execution, i’d be the number 1 player :wink: … flex

10

ctrl+number is so automatic for me i completely forgot it was used to group units xD

11

Would be nice if I could set barracks to assign units to a certain control group.

Atm I’m just pressing shft+ctrl+C then selecting the units I want and grouping them. Not sure if there is a better method of doing it.

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