I have a suggestion for a new hotkey to shuffle between selected unit/building types.
Currently, if you select a mixed group of units/buildings, the newly added type is shown in the order/build menu. If the selection is assigned into a group, and recalled, it will show the last type’s menu, so it is not consistent.
My suggestion is that, to have a hotkey (“TAB” for example) to shuffle between these types. It would be a nice, if the UI could reflect the active type with a slight border color change.
This is also in SC2. You can press tab for example when highlighting selected buildings and produce from the barrack, factory and starport in one cycle, which is great.
Arguably this further reduces the skill ceiling since the introduction of full population unit queues. Although it can be a good quality of life change with APM focused elsewhere.
I would particularly like this for unit selection as I would rather certain units appear in the same order every time you select (i.e. say villagers, monks etc, I believe it currently works by time of unit creation from newest to oldest) but also that you can select more than 60 units at a time. Again you might say this affects the skill ceiling, however I think that better unit control and selection will lead to higher quality games in my opinion, where that skill would be used elsewhere.
more hotkeys are always welcome in any RTS. It’s good that every patch AoE introduces new hotkeys… on the other hadn They are Billions say that Hotkeys for buildings are not necessary.
IMO this should be universal. Even, when villagers and soldiers are selected together it would be handy.
Is is just only me, who using number groups to assign to buildings? Now it is possible to shift+click on the selection list to select all the same type, but hey, it is much slower. I know AoE has hotkeys for selecting all for a building type, but some of us prefer to split army composition in this way.
Hmm, I am not certain, how much would this hotkey help. For example when I have stables, barracks, archery ranges, siege workshops and castles in same hotkey group, then it would probably be easier for me to shift-click siege workshops in order to train units from them instead of cycling through building types to them. I think…
You want selected units to always be ordered in same logical way (for example in formation sorting order) and being possible to select more than 60 units? I have suggested both ideas with implementation details here
You are not the only one who think aoe2 isn t efficient has much than others rts like sc2 and wc3 who both have “similar” hotkeys but totaly different style of games, so I don t see how it couldn t benefit aoe2 without killing the way it s playing.
This is quiet simple, recently the game add technologies upgrades hotkeys (blacksmith, market, university…) most people may don t use it (to complexe, no room for new hotkeys…) but once you get use to press a hotkeys instead of draging down your mouse then click the process is faster, more efficient and can focus on units micro (what is more fun).
Just like for control group we could still all play the game by selecting and deselecting units manualy with the mouse but I guess no one want to play this way or maybe still Nicov.
I like the idea of having a similar among of work done by both hands during a game : one by pressing hotkeys and the others one by cliking and aiming. I am quiet sure most people use more their hand s mouse rather than their keyboard s hand.
About ctrl groups with a lot of differents units or building type I remenber that in wc3 you have could go either way through a ctrl group ( pressing the tab key make you go left to the right and shift + tab going right to the left). Besides most tops rts players don t play with more than 3 differents types of units/buildings insides a ctrl group. Have a look on sc2 matches.
*used for hunters vills and sheeps in the starts
** not quiet needs ctrl group anymore since the select all bs, market and uni came out
This is just an example, I get used to produce units only from ctrl group that I have to remake quiet often and have a lot of differents one due to the lack of cycling and camera location hotkeys who participate to the poor mecanics of the game. But again and not to make you think that I am in a disgrace with the game. Aoe2 is a really good rts with so much more varietey and randomless who makes it more surprising than sc2 and wc3 where ressource are olways on the same spots.
Have a good day,
If my english isn t clear lease let me know.
Further to what has been said in the posts above, let us look at a working example.
I can select all military buildings with CRTL+SHIFT+SPACE or set this to a key of your choice. Maybe some people would like this to be on the mouse for ease of access. Once selected, this “tab function” (again this could be any hotkey) would allow you to cycle from the different buildings and produce units. If the buildings (and unit selection as above) appear in the same order everytime you get:
Select all + barracks shift queue etc + tab + stable shift queue units etc
This does of course have implications if you want seperate way points or not to use all buildings due to wanting to produce units on the frontline only but that would have to be dealt with manually, although the tab function should still work if you select your own group of buildings/units. Anyway, currently the above works like this:
Select all barracks shift queue units + select all stables shift queue units etc
The “tab function” essentially replaces having to press a separate key for each set of structures in order to complete a production cycle. I used to have (and now in aoe 2 could) put all barracks on 7, all stables on 8, all archery ranges on 9 etc but the proximity of the keys is not an efficient setup. Right now I am CTRL+SHIFT+B for all barracks and queue and CTRL+SHIFT+H for all stables and queue.
The production cycle is simiplified with the tab function in my opinion (albeit slightly) and the biggest improvement is that your hands can focus on a certain set of keys for each production cycle, whereas there is more chance of misclicking or having to look at the keyboard with the current set of hotkeys.
So, I don’t think that this is possible to the game.
When a control group is composed by different building types, it simply uses the HUD pannel of whatever the further-down-and-to-the-right-on-the-villager-construction-menu building type added to the group. For example: If I have 3 barracks, 2 archery ranges, 5 stables and 1 siege workshop in a control group, every time I select this control group the HUD will show the siege workshop pannel (regardless of the order that any building has been added to the group) because it has the right-most building icon of them all at the villager military building construction tab, and since all these buildings are on the same row only the right-most factor is taken in account. Now, add a castle into this control group and then the HUD will always show the castle pannel when selected (again, regardless of the order added), because the castle has the down-most building icon of them all at the villager military building construction tab. For some weird reason this rule doesn’t apply when the control group features only barracks and archery ranges. In this case the barracks is what will always have the pannel shown, despite being at left to archery ranges — but that’s the only exception.
Note that this is also true for regular buildings, but only works for buildings under the same construction tab. A control group with a mix of regular buildings and military buildings will not show any pannel when selected.
Thing is, cycling through different buildings on the same control group can’t be done more than once, as the game can only jump to another selection either by cycling to another control group or to a individual building. At both situations the original control group is dismissed, and since two different selections can’t be overlapped (control group + individual building/two distinct control groups), the result is a maximum of only one jump when supposely cycling through buildings.
That being, the best I can suggest is getting used to always having buildings of the same type on a control group.
And what you mean by that? If you mean a hotkey that brings the camera to the selected unit/building this is done by clicking on the respective unit/building portrait or pressing spacebar, by default.
I have been a bit fast on that point. What I understand by camera location hotkeys is a place on the map that you select and where you can jump to (just like ctrl + group work) ex: you set your location by pressing alt + F1 and when you press F1 you go to that location. It can be the ground where you fight, the rally point of your reenforcement, a ressource area…
