I want to talk about an essential feature that is missing from Age of Mythology Retold: the ability to expand the minimap into a larger strategic map.
In Age of Mythology: Extended Edition, when pressing TAB, the minimap expanded to occupy a large part of the screen, allowing a much clearer view of the territory. This helped immensely with strategic planning, whether to better visualize resources, organize attacks or structure defenses.
However, in Retold, this functionality simply does not exist. Even though the TAB key is not assigned to any other action in the game, we can no longer expand the minimap to a larger, more detailed version. This greatly limits the experience, as we are completely dependent on the small minimap, which does not always provide information clearly enough.
The possibility of viewing the map in an expanded size is essential for the development of the game, especially for those who like more precise strategies and territorial organization. It would be great if the development team brought this feature back, perhaps even with customization options for players to tweak to their liking.
Does anyone else miss this functionality? Let’s raise this issue so the devs can consider adding it in future updates!
The best idea is to use the Tab key to find the town center, and Ctrl+Tab to select all town centers. That way, it’s easy to return to your base when your camera is far away, and using the shortcut to select all town centers makes it easier to protect villagers from Fimbulwinter, which is used in every game by default.
Regarding the strategic map, since you brought up this important topic, it would be interesting if there were brushes available to paint on the map for team games. That way, you could draw arrows indicating where you plan to attack or where you will build an advanced base, etc. This would greatly help with communication, especially in the early stages of the game
I understand your suggestion about using the TAB key to find the town center and select all town centers, but this can already be done easily with custom hotkeys.
If you select all town centers and press Shift + 1, you create a control group. After that, you just need to press “1,” and all town centers will be ready to receive commands quickly. The same method can be applied to barracks, temples, or any other buildings. This way, the TAB key could be used for something truly essential that many AoM: Extended Edition players miss: the expanded strategic map.
In the Extended Edition, pressing TAB would expand the minimap to the center of the screen, making navigation and strategic planning much easier. Without this functionality in Retold, we are limited to the small minimap, which doesn’t always provide the necessary clarity for efficient decision-making.
As for the idea of drawing on the map, it sounds interesting, but I’m not sure how well it would work in practice. In real-time strategy games, communication needs to be fast and clear. Depending on the implementation, manually drawing on the map could end up being more complicated than simply using existing markers and pings.
That’s why I believe the priority should be bringing back the strategic map, which was already a functional and highly useful feature in the Extended Edition