How do I get faster unit production?

[RDBruski]

I'm looking for a way that I do NOT have to click EACH military building and crank on the queue button for each one. I think the original AOE2 was like this to. Is there a way I'm not aware of that you can group like military buildings and click the queue button and they ALL produce units?

The clicking is killing me!

[oRiOn]

I presume that what you want is have a way to quickly select all similar buildings and have it automatically distribute units evenly across the buildings as you queue them. This functionality does not exist in AoE2HD.

1. There is no way to select all similar buildings on the map (or units for that matter), though this would be a very nice feature (I believe the shortcut was 'e' in CnC-Generals). The best you can do is double clicking something and thus selecting all identical units visible on your screen. What you CAN do is group buildings into a number (ctrl-#).

2. Even if you could easily select all similar buildings (I personnally reject grouping them, as I use all 9 of my groups for units every game), there is still no automatic queue distribution (this feature was added in the user-created Forgotten Empires expansion via UserPatch, and hopefully it will get ported via the Workshop eventually, but whether or not that will ever be possible is currently not known due to the lack of access to the .exe file).

***BEST ANSWER***

What AoE2 does do (both original game and AoE2HD) is allow you to rebind basically every hotkey function in the game. What I've done is the following:

1. Rebind the "Go to <Insert Building Name Here>" commands to single keys instead of the default "ctrl-_". I personnaly use "A" for archery range, "S" for stable, "D" for barracks and "F" for siege workshop.

2. Rebind the unit queue hotkey to a more convenient location (I use W,E,R,T for the max 4 units in each of the afore-mentioned buildings).

With these changes I can now say, queue knights accross multiple stables by hitting swswswswswswswsw..... "s" selects the next stable and "w" queues a knight. It's not perfect, but it's definitely faster than a similar approach with the default hotkeys (since you can easily do it with 1 hand in the home position and without using the ctrl key), and a HECK of a lot faster than using the mouse.

NOTE: You will have to change some of your other hotkeys as well to make room for moving the "Go to <building>" functions (e.g. I moved 'stop' from 's' to 'x').

[RDBruski]

Great suggestion. I played the original AOE2 right from the first few days it was released back in 1997/8 whatever. I remember the senseless clicking back then to, lol. I'm pretty sure AOE3 solved this.

[RDBruski]

LOL and check this out! http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/-1/828936719006249688/?appid=221380

[-Dare Devil/x/]

-Click building. Shift(holddown) + unit + unit + unit = max queue. Faster if you use a hotkey. So you could have: c+shift(holddown)+e+e+e = max queue.

[RDBruski]

So each click of the unit type while holding shift adds 5 to the queue?

[oRiOn]

Originally posted by -Dare Devil/x/:

-Click building. Shift(holddown) + unit + unit + unit = max queue. Faster if you use a hotkey. So you could have: c+shift(holddown)+e+e+e = max queue.

This is correct, though slightly different than what you asked about. If you hold the shift key while queuing a unit, it will queue 5 instead of 1. Thus, in my example, you can hit "s" then "shift+w" 4 times to queue 5 knights in each of 4 stables (20 knights total) instead of "swwwww" x4 or "sw" x20.

As for the UserPatch porting... there was a lot of discussion of that prior to the release of AoE2HD, with the multiple queuing specifcally inquired about. The general consensus seemed to be that they wouldn't be able to easily port the UserPatch due to the .exe file being locked. However, Ryz0n did hint that there may be some things available through other files in the HD version that weren't in the original release, so that may reopen some possibilities once the serious modders start digging into it.

For now, however, I don't think the hardcore modders are going to pay any notable attention to AoE2HD. They haven't received the support they were hoping to get from the developers, and certainly aren't going to want to spend time on it when the matchmaking system doesn't provide for skill-based matching (either automatically via quickmatch or by making ratings visible in lobbies), and when the game isn't running as smoothly as the old game with UserPatch and Forgotten Empires (see the frame rate and lag issues peppered all over these forums). There are a whole list of bugs from the original game that they uncovered and fixed in the UserPatch. The devs could have easily picked those up and fixed them also, but didn't bother with it. For example, Fervor (monks move faster), literally does nothing. The code was broken in the original game. Any perceived improvement you see is a placebo effect.

That said, I would LOVE to have the ability to autodistribute units across buildings, and the ability to grab all units/buildings/whatever across the screen/map of the same type as the selected unit. Those functions provide players with a lot more ability to coordinate things. And they're certainly not going to suddenly make people start playing like pros... there's a lot more that goes into it than that (like awareness and short term memory). It does allow you to do a little bit more with the same APM, but the pros get that benefit also, so they'll just end up being even more capable than they are now. They're just quality of life improvements that let you spend a little more time doing what you want to be doing, and a little less time battling the UI.

[-Dare Devil/x/]

-What? We are talking about the same thing. =P

[oRiOn]

Well he was asking about distribution across multiple buildings, and the shift multiplier just applies to whichever building you have selected. Regardless, I would have just confirmed it in response to his post, but when I started typing that wall of text he hadn't posted his follow-up question yet.

At the end of the day, though, if you're trying to learn to play faster, the first thing you ABSOLUTELY MUST do, is learn to use hotkeys. Everything else is secondary to that. I like the setup I mentioned in my first response as it's notably faster than the default hotkeys for me, but even the defaults are MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than using a mouse. You should NEVER use a mouse for ANYTHING in the building/unit command windows.

[oRiOn]

Honestly, if there were any single game interface change I'd want, it's the ability to remove 1 unit from a selected group with a single hotkey. Right now you have to hold ctrl and click the icon for the unit you want to remove from the group in the frame at the bottom. If you've got 8 villagers selected to start building farms, that becomes: b, f, click to place farm, ctrl click to remove unit, repeat x7. Of course you can just hold shift to place a bunch of farms, but if you've got more than 3 or so vills they won't spread themselves out correctly and you'll end up with a bunch standing around.

[Ham]

If you have a keyboard that supports macros you can also set it up to do all that with one keypress (que units across multiple buildings evenly)

[Piu]

ctrl+L: N+N+N
or
ctrl+L: shift+N

Ctrl L calls stabiles, CTRL A calls Archery camp CTRL B calls barracks, CTRL K calls Workshop, ctrl V calls castle and CtRL Y calls church
S for champion, E for pikeman, G for eagle warrior, R for skirmisher, A for archer C for cav archer, N for knight, C for camel, T for scout, R for ram, T for unique unit from castle, T for moks

[Mr_F0NG]

This is now possible in the current patch. For example you can double like 5 barracks and two shift clicks will create 10 units even among the rax. 2 units per building. I've run into problems when you don't have enough resources to fully cover your clicks. Then it sometimes sends all or the majority of the units to one building.

[hero_123]

that's what the hotkeys are for. basially building a farm is r, and most units produced inside the military buildings are hotkeys "s" and "a". there is really no other way to do it. u can customize your own hotkeys under the options.

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

I don't know about hotkeys, but I just shift/ctrl click each of the buildings of a similar type and then hold down SHIFT and click a few times. If you have Forgotten Empires, it will spread out unit production across the selected buildings.

I think you can assign Ctrl group numbers 1-0 to buildings, actually.

[CountofTuscany]

If I group my archery ranges to number 3, then hit 3 and start repeatedly hitting "a", which is my hotkey for cav archers, then it automatically distributes them across all archery ranges in 3 with no issue. Is this not normal?