Multiple unit selection suggestion

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

So in the recent pup, there were some changes done to the UI. For one, they’ve extended the selection box in addition to adding some graphics to it. Here is an imagine of old and new.

image
image1522×234 36.3 KB

image
image1528×235 79.1 KB

This gave me an idea. One thing a lot of players have asked for as is featured in most if not all RTSes, is the ability to select individual unit frames from your selection of units. AoE4 simplifies by bulking them into groups.

So I figured I’d take a quick crack at creating that within AoE4’s UI format with the newfound space.

Currently, selecting a bunch of different units puts them into these “groups”, defaulting to “all” and requiring tab switching into the specified units. I have moved these groups to a space above this box, leaving it empty. The idea is that, tabbing into a specified group will reveal each unit within that grouping, revealing their status.

image
image1459×354 48.5 KB

Here for instance, the grouping “all” is selected by default, and so, no specified units are shown. And so, if we tab into the villagers, we get this;

image
image1457×273 38.8 KB

Alternatively we could go wild and select a whole 37 villagers, scaling the units when you select more.

image
image1456×279 56.5 KB

Anyway, this was done rather quickly and so it looks quite jank. But, I hope the idea is being conveyed properly. What do you think? Is there a better way to accomplish this, and do you think it is time for AoE4 to get this feature?

Oh and a sidenote, the selection graphic was meant to look like this. Looks better than the white border!
(I also scaled the individual icons to be bigger and fill out the entire box it is encompassed by. And if you’re wondering why the health bars are yellow, it was meant to be the same selected colour of the player)
image

7 Likes
2

I would love that feature for sure. If I now also could also deselect units out of the group with a hotkey like shift click, my dreams would come true. And if u could also somehow fit a Hp bar or some kind of indicator how damaged a unit is, it would help a lot as well.

2 Likes
3

as in aoe2, I’ll be indifferent on that

4

Thanks for this.

Been asking this since the beginning of release. Showing individual units should be default (with health bar).
The amount of unnecessary clicking that has to be done because this isn’t a thing is crazy and every other RTS has this for a good reason.

Give you a few examples: When you want to make a landmark with specifically 4 vills from a group of vills that gathering from sheep, you should be able to drag box that group and shift+click vills out of the group easily.
When you are wanting to take out a vill that is getting attacked by a boar, you should be able to click the vill that is losing HP from the group box easily rather than having to click a vill from 8 that is clumped up.
When you are wanting to send 3 scholars to different Sacred Sites, should be able to easily shift+click out of group box to send them to different locations.

2 Likes
5

I can only shout in vain, dev, we really need this !!!

1 Like
6

Very interesting stuff, too bad in releasing the previous update the developers had started to change the UI, because unfortunately they didn’t change almost anything only 2 or 3 really small things, I was really disappointed