I’ve been hugely enjoying playing AOE4 on Xbox with a controller. Over the last year or so I’ve been compiling notes for quality of life improvements that might allow us to be even more competitive against mouse and keyboard players:
For Delhi specifically: I think the right D pad i.e. Support should prioritize the scholars that aren’t garrisoned in buildings as typically they’re the ones out gathering relics and need to be escorted back to safety. Currently it seems to select scholars at random and there could be 5-10 garrisoned in a mosque that have to be cycled through first before getting to the ones out in the field.
I’ve posted this on reddit but I’ll cross post it here: LT + A,B,X or Y isn’t mapped to anything. Controller players are already at a significant disadvantage because there aren’t as many buttons as a keyboard, but this combination of buttons LT + anything is very quick to press. I’ll piggyback on this thread posted earlier last year ( Addressing Xbox-Specific Issues – Improvements Needed for Controller Players ) and say that to address point 3 in their wishlist we could have “Select all Melee on screen” mapped to LT + A and “Select all Ranged on screen” mapped to LT+B (or something like that). Keyboard players already have this option to select specific types of military units on screen, and we’ve got a button combination thats just waiting to be programmed. Other options I’ve thought of for LT + X or Y is to assign them to control groups 1 and 2 respectively. That way we have a really fast way to assign to a control group without having to go to a radial menu, which takes time.
Update: I should clarify that according to https://support.ageofempires.com/hc/en-us/articles/42699436918420-Age-of-Empires-IV-Default-Controller-Layouts#h_01K8S7WG41W5VA2QAG1Z0D2S49 those combinations are “technically” mapped to various unit selection commands i.e. add /remove units but this is only if you already have units selected. If no units are selected these combinations do nothing.
On the subject of time, speed is obviously key the more competitive you get in ranked ladder. The minimap on console opens far too slowly. Again we’re at a disadvantage compared to mouse and keyboard players who can just move the mouse over the minimap. I think there should be an option in the UI menu to disable the minimap animation so it goes from small to large in 0 seconds.
Last one is more of a question. When D pad up is pressed (i.e. villager selection) and there are no idle villagers is there any built in logic in the code to select a villager? It seems to be random at the moment. Maybe villager nearest to the selection would make sense?