DISCLAIMER: I am aware that these prototypes are working in multiplayer matches and would provide an unfair advantage to the player using them (a.k.a cheating). I therefor will not share the code. This is a proof of concept and I would like to hear your opinion.
Demo:
Select / Deselect injured units:
Bound to mouse 4 / mouse 5. Extremely useful in every phase of the game. During boar hunting, farm placement, and especially between the last battles in the endgame. In the current state I can configure it to only select units below a certain threshold. Say below 80%.
This feature should only be available once a group of units has been out of combat for 3-5 seconds, otherwise it would be a cheap way to micro while in combat. Out of combat this would greatly improve army management. (Garrison / send to group of monks all the injured units, while being efficient with the healthy part of the army)
Deselect n of selection:
Bound to Capslock + number.
Usage: You have a group of villagers and would like to build a lumber camp with 4? Command all to build a lumber camp and press Capslock + 4. This will deselect 4 villagers. You can then command the rest to do something else. This is very useful when managing large groups of villagers.
Deselect 1 from selection:
Bound to Capslock.
Usage: Spreading units, scouting different corners with multiple units, assigning monks to different relics or conversion targets.
Hitting Capslock once (without a number) will deselect the first unit from the current selection.
I like the idea of Select / Deselect injured units but i hate your other propositions because of monks. I don’t want to play age of wololo… A.I are already frustating with them, imagine if player could micro 10+ monks with ease…
Delete topic and the creator of that code please destroy your code, you can break the game if that gets into the wrong hands, in fact you could give ideas to others to try it themselves.
I want to see a dev’s opinion on the subject, I’m already pretty amazed that you managed to figure out stuff like that (probably by using a cheat engine).
It definitely shows that there is a lot of room for improvement for hotkeys/QOL.
This stuff would be really neat if it was implemented.
It would allow for more comfortable monk micro for sure. The thing that prevents it from being over the top (imo) is that all monks must rest if the current target is converted. It would still require multiple small (size 3-5) control groups of monks to and skill to pull it off. And the opponent, could more easily use the very same feature against monks: You have a group of 10 Light Cavalry attack a monk → Deselect 2 → Attack monk → Deselect 2 → … I believe it equals out the advantages and enables even more interesting engagements.
If the AoE community was that fragile, the game wouldn’t have made it until now. I personally believe that many of the old features would cause the same uproar inside the community if they were introduced today, like auto-scouting for example (No, this thread should not be about auto-scouting). Imagine you could just press a button and your formation split into two groups… Imagine you could just select your TC and make your villagers garrison into it without even looking at that part of the map. Imagine you could just send them back to work afterwards by pressing one button. The devs of aoe2 implemented ground breaking QoL features from the very beginning. It was the spirit of the game.
AoE is about decision making and execution of strategies. I believe that the ability of a player to ctrl-click at the bottom of the screen to deselect a unit is not the key skill here. It’s about precisely commanding your units and on-the-fly decisions. I believe that everybody who experienced the joy of these features, wouldn’t want to miss them. Would be very curious about some pro’s opinion.
Me too. They are able to implement it way, way more smoothly.
Thank you for the compliment. I’m not using a cheat-engine for this one. The engine was only used to manipulate the main-loop to increase the overall speed of the game for the sake of a nicer recording.
I really like it, I had often thought about injured units selection as a feature before. Its great to know it can actually be done. The others seem a little bit too specific and situational and easy to live without but sure if they were implemented I wouldn’t complain…
I admit than in my SP match I would kill to have your first change 11 (Whenever I try to abuse Herbal medicine I waste half the garrison slot on healthy dudes…) However since healing isn’t that important in multiplayer, dunno if it’s worth it.
Looks like a basic Auto Hotkey Script. There was never a way to deal or detect these. The Voobly anticheat could be tricked into allowing scripts to run. Players were just encouraged not to use them.
Like OP said, most of these should probably be implemented as QoL changes so everyone could use them, the only problem is what do we do with monks.
The game cannot do much, if you simulate hardware input via a direct dll call. You can randomize the inputs as well, so that they are not send in a fixed interval. If the game looks if ahk.exe is available, simply export it as skype.exe. During the last 5 years I haven’t played a single game that successfully blocked ahk or a python script simulating input. And I think attempting to block a macro software is the wrong approach, since lots of handicapped people use it. A friend of mine has a foot-paddle he uses with ahk for example. But yeah, I want to avoid publishing the code for the reason, that the wounded unit selection can be used by anybody before an official implementation.
I wrote the deselect script because I thought it would make monks completely overpowered. What I found during the games we played is, that it feels stronger against them. Because within a second you have assigned 2-3 garbage units to attack each individual monk and the monk player still has to micro the monks individually. Keep in mind, that the deselection is pretty random. The first unit will be deselected. In a group of 10 Light Cavalry attacking this is not such a big deal, since they are mobile units. In the case of a monk, this is quite relevant. I believe this has to be tested by some pros to see if it pushes monks into the danger zone.
The capslock deselect 1 unit option would make monk micro too efficient, you’d win 40 monks vs 40 lightcav fights with that kind of hotkey system.
We’ve seen pro level players already do crazy shit with the current system, some able to fight 20 xbows with 10 monks and so on forth. Monks are ridiculously strong units, if your APM and mouse accuracy is high enough.
The trick to not convert something with all monks during deselect micro is to press stop key after 1-2 seconds between the conversion commands. This way all 40 monks do indeed retain the ability to convert one unit each. What is worse with monk mechanics, if you start conversions from front of enemy army, you’ll convert one unit and if the units from enemy army are on any stance but stand ground, this will cause the units behind them start attacking the converted units, thus blocking the ability to run at monks and actually kill them.
So if this option was made possible, monks would need a heavy cost upgrade or something else to balance themselves out due to their extreme power.
What comes to selecting/deselecting injured units, that is more or less irrelevant thing.
It is not a bug, you have 40 monks selected, you click them to convert something, you deselect one with ctrl + click on the monk icon from bottom bar, you press F (hotkey for stop) and the monks stop converting.
It’s plain and simple function in the game that is very useful with archers and some other units also, when you want to stop them from taking/continuing an action.
I would like to add that not every conversion takes the same amount of time nor is guaranteed a success. But the chance gets higher using multiple monks. Until after research of theocracy (if available) only one monk needs time to recover from conversion.
Than you do not even need to press F, if you just assign the 39 to the next target? I misunderstood your post then. I thought pressing stop during the animation would prevent the cooldown from being used.
Monk micro is easier, yet I am not convinced it is as broken as people imagine it to be. Like I said: I wrote this script because I thought monks would be super overpowered. I’m not The Viper by any means, but they do not seem to be broken. I played a few matches as Aztecs, where the monks aren’t as squishy and tried some monk heavy strategies. It doesn’t feel op.
It’s something I would really like to see a pro use in a few matches.
Pro using monks against scouts, this is only possible because he can hotkey them from 1-9 buttons. With the deselect hotkey, you could perform same action with limitless amount of monks.
What comes to the F button for stop, for some reason the monks do get drained, if you don’t stop them from converting in between, even if you keep changing targets. Seemingly the conversion carries over in terms of progress from the moment the monks start converting, even if the target changes.
(There is actually a trick to get instant conversions by starting a conversion on a building and then swapping to an unit.)
Monks would be literally the strongest unit in the game, if this deselect hotkey was in the game. Currently as I said the limiting thing in the monk micro is deselecting monks, with more than 10 monks you can’t use the hotkeys in that manner, you’ve to manually deselect with mouse to deselect 1 monk at a time making it quite tedious, yet it’s still very powerful in hands of high APM player.
They are able to implement it way, way more smoothly.