Many times I just want to select a bunch of idle villagers, but there are many working villagers around them, which makes it hard to isolate just the idle villagers.
I would really like it if you could hold the SHIFT key when double-clicking a villager to select all the idle villagers in the vicinity at once.
Or CTRL, or ALT, for that matter… it doesn’t matter which modifier key gets implemented, just as long as one of them is
Even if the idle villager has food, wood, gold, or stone in their hands; as long as they are just standing there motionless, they are idle and so they would get selected by the SHIFT + double-click action.
For example, maybe I set the Gather Point for the Town Center next to a bunch of military units, and then later on want to grab those idles and make them work. The problem is that there are a bunch of working villagers in the vicinity, so double-clicking won’t work very well, as it will select EVERY villager in the area. And drag-selecting a box around the idles would be futile and/or cumbersome for various reasons, since it will also select military and working villagers, etc.
UPDATE: I’ve updated my post to capture my initial thought which was my initial thread title. Don’t worry, it’s just a refinement. Nothing is lost, but much is gained. Basically, you shouldn’t need to SHIFT+Double-click on an “idle” villager to select all idles in vicinity. The very act of holding SHIFT is the thing that would make the game recognize that you want to select ‘only’ idles in the vicinity… and so you should, therefore, just be able to SHIFT+Double-click on ANY villager (working or non-) and it will select idles in the area. There is absolutely no reason why you should have to do this on an ‘idle’ villy to achieve the result. That was my original intent and desired suggestion!
Yeah, the SHIFT, ALT, and/or CTRL modifiers could be used for quite a few things. It’s helpful in programs like Photoshop, and adds a lot of versatility. In a game like AoE, it would be a value-added thing, so people new to the franchise won’t know or care it’s there until they become longer-term players who wish for more advanced techniques and possibilities.
Holding SHIFT while drag-selecting a box over units could even provide some interesting options. Maybe SHIFT drag-selecting would select only idle villagers within the box’s perimeter. CTRL drag-selecting would select only military units. ALT drag-selecting only selects projectile-firing units (or maybe instead non-projectile units to help keep them away from cannoners and mangonels that can damage them)… etc.
I was confused at first, too… but then I re-read and realized FootedElk said “all” production buildings in an area. So I took that to mean: if you SHIFT + double-click a Stable, it will also select Archery Ranges and Barracks, too, for example; and not just Stables.
I think that could be beneficial? Particularly if they all happen to use, say, the “A” hotkey for a unit that is similarly priced in each building or something.
What does it do? Either way, I said SHIFT+double-click, not SHIFT-click. And even if SHIFT+double-click is somehow used up, then there is still CTRL and ALT that can be used instead.
I was thinking before that what you describe could be one of the other modifiers (CTRL or ALT). But a villager task-agnostic version as I describe with SHIFT is much more desirable and needed, imo.
For your suggestion to work, the villager would need to be actively working the resource, or if they are standing idle, then with a pile of the resource already in their arms.
It could be useful, though, to ALT+Double-click a lumberjack to select all lumberjacks in the vicinity that are in multiple areas, as an example. Personally, I don’t think I would use that very much, but you never know
The problem with that is when you need to quickly run all your villagers away and they’re a mixture of lumberjacks and miners, etc, near a gold mine near a forest, for example.
OR when you want to double click to select all villagers of different sorts and have them build a drop-off point or TC.
It’s much better to ADD mechanics by adding a modifier button like ALT along with the double click … rather than change some of the basic mechanics that people have been used to for so many years.
With the exception to stuff like shift clicking … because that has just been drastically improved rather than changed. And EVEN THEN there’s an option to turn it off and have the old behavior.
I’m sorry I write so much. I think my meaning must get lost in all the text, because I read the last two replies and I think, “What are they talking about?”
Bottom line, I am not proposing to change any existing game mechanic that we use.
Double-click all you want, that would not change. I, like you, do not want to change or remove any expected behaviors we all know and love.
What I am proposing is to make a brand new capability, using an input combination not presently used. I propose when you hold the SHIFT button down on the keyboard and then double-click a villager while holding SHIFT down, the game selects all idle villagers in the vicinity.
As far as I know and through all my testing this is functionality that absolutely does not exist yet, and it would not impact our beloved simplistic double-clicking functionality. And there is no pre-existing capability for this input combo that would be lost.
This is an ADDED capability. It replaces nothing. You’re not losing anything.
Sorry, I don’t know where I went wrong. Please read my reply above. My proposal is to ADD a mechanic without it changing or stripping away any functionality you currently use. If you hold SHIFT down currently while double-clicking a villager and it does anything different or worthwhile that simply double-clicking a villager without SHIFT does, then I’m all ears. What do you do that for?
I will re-read everything I wrote prior to now sometime and see if I mis-spoke anywhere.
Sorry about that! That is probably why you thought that. My fault, but I’ve corrected it