Controls & Hotkeys: Improve Micromanagement in Northgard

This guide offers valuable insights that are not so straightforward to realize with an extensive walkthrough over Northgard's controls and hotkeys. Learn these to master micromanagement!

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About this guide

Northgard is the game that made me love the real-time strategy genre. Its unique play style and mechanics makes playing RTS really fun in a decent and controlled pace.

While the game may be "simple" (i.e. not that many different things and specifics to learn), it's quite hard to master. From what I learned - and what I see in discussions - micromanaging your units may be the key point to your victory. Micromanaging efficiently will save you time and resources, as well as allow you to time your strategies precisely.

In this guide I'll share what I learned so far, hope you can learn a thing or two! If you have good tips that are not included in this guide please do share!

Give 'em Helheim!

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If you enjoy this guide please rate, favorite and share it! :)

Artwork credits

The beautiful artwork seen through the guide is from Rig's Saga, created by Jeremy Vitry and Etienne Hebinger. See the complete work here[www.artstation.com].

First and foremost: hotkeys!

I know, it sounds silly and basic - and it is. If you already master the game hotkeys feel free to skip to the next section.

Originally posted by a true friend:

Using the mouse works if you're not in a hurry. However using hotkeys grants you the victory.

If you haven't learned and mastered the game's hotkeys yet, then take some time to do it before anything else. It's really easy to see and customize them to your liking from the game interface.

Of course there are a lot of keys there, and one can't simply remember all that at once. Start by focusing on the more important ones. These you'll be using most of the time, and quickly they'll become "natural" to you. Once they do, remember to revisit the hotkeys and explore what else is available.

All the hotkeys are important! Make sure to get acquainted to all of them to improve your gameplay even further.

Take note of them for now. If they seem unclear, don't worry! The following sections of the guide will cover them with gameplay usage examples.

These are the ones I deem the most important to start with when it comes to micromanaging:

Key	Action	Key	Action
G	Select all villagers	CTRL + 1-9	Assign a hotkey to the selected group
E	Select the whole warband (all military units)	1-9	Select group by hotkey
H	Select all scouts	CTRL	Assign order to a single unit within a selection
X	Cancel order	TAB	Cycle through similar units of selection group

Selection groups

Similar to other RTS games, it is possible to assign a number hotkey (1-9) to a selection of units. While this may be obvious for some, it’s not mentioned anywhere in the game interface - and this is a real life changer.

Select the units you want to group and then press CTRL + 1 (2,3,...,9) with the number you want to assign them:

This is the sequence used above:

1. Press E to select warband
   
2. Select warchief; then CTRL + 1
   
3. Press E again to select warband
   
4. CTRL + Click on axe throwers to select all of them; then CTRL + 2
   
5. Press E again to select warband
   
6. CTRL + Click on shield bearers to select all of them; then CTRL + 3

And that’s it! After that I could change my units selection by pressing 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

Afterwards I created two new groups (for demonstration purposes only):

1. Selected units wanted in the first group; then CTRL + 4
   
2. Selected units wanted in the second group; then CTRL + 5

Now I have two somewhat balanced groups that can fight on their own separate small battles at the same time!

Here's an example of how useful this can be: sometimes when moving the warband gets a bit messed up, with all units mixed. If the warband enters an enemy tile like this, it's possible one of your axes will walk in first, becoming the immediate target of your enemies - and it won't last seconds. By organizing your warband positioning, you can make sure your warchief or shields enters the tile first, making them tank the damage while your axes are happily killing everything else from a safe distance:

I was even able to pull the warchief back when he was low on health by selecting him by pressing 1 and leaving the rest of the warband fighting for another while.

Usage tips

• Always assign your warchief to number 1. This way you can easily control the warchief independently from other units.
  
• Remember to re-assign groups whenever your units change. For instance, if you have a hotkey for all axe throwers and you recruit new ones, then select all of them again and re-assign the hotkey. If that's not done, the new units will not be included in the group.
  
• Horse and Bear: assign each warchief (or Shield Maiden + Armored Bear) to a number (e.g. 1 and 2). Then assign both to another number (e.g. 3). This will allow you to easily micro them, assigning each of them a different order. At the same time you also have a selection for both in case of an unexpected invasion, for instance.
  If you don't like using this many hotkeys, having them only separate on 1 and 2 only also works; you'll only need to give orders twice whenever you want both of them to do the same.

Single unit order (when a group is selected)

This is another powerful one. It’s even displayed in the shortcuts section in the options menu, but its meaning and usage is not made clear.

We are talking about CTRL, the great modifier key! While other keys have an immediate action (i.e. press key, something happens), CTRL is a modifier key. This means that nothing happens immediately when it's pressed, however... when you hold it pressed and combine it with another action (e.g. a click), it changes the behavior of that action.

In this case specifically, whenever a whole group of units is selected, pressing Right Click would order all units to perform the assigned task. If CTRL is held down, doing CTRL + Right Click, then only one unit of that group will be assigned an order at a time, one by one by each CTRL + Right Click that is given.

Make a selection with several units. Using the selection groups from the previous section, let's say you want to send some axe throwers to one tile, and each shield bearer to different tiles. Press 2 to select all axe throwers, then CTRL + Right Click on the target tile. Same goes for the shield bearers.

Just hold CTRL and Right Click as many times as units you want to be assigned orders. The same principle can be used to order villagers, send them off to different tasks; split sheep groups into different tiles and so on.

Single unit order - The "assigning mechanics"

Originally posted by a true friend:

It’s very important to understand how giving single unit orders works before getting started!

Each order you give will be assigned to one single unit, one by one. Idling units (i.e. villagers collecting food or military units that are not engaged in a fight) will get the orders first.

However, if your number of orders exceed the number of idling units, “busy” units will start taking up the new orders, leaving behind whatever is was that they were doing.

In the video above there are 4 villagers: 3 of them are idle and one of them is building a construction. When CTRL + Right Click is hit three times with orders, the idle ones get assigned while the other busy one continues building. However, by clicking 4 times, the busy one abandons the building and picks up the new assignment. The construction is left incomplete.

Then I hit X to cancel the orders. Since all of them become idle again, one villager immediately goes back to the unfinished construction. In the second time they're given orders, notice how idle units pick up the new assignments in order of distance to the destination. The closest ones to your target order will be assigned first.

Other types of unit selection

These are other types of making a more specific selection or finding a specific unit you're looking for.

Select all units of a type in one specific tile

Double-clicking any unit in a tile will automatically select all units of that type that are in the same tile. This is a simple, yet neat and unspoken feature that can prove useful many times.

I find this specially useful for workers with "finite" jobs, i.e. miners or smiths. Once their job is over (mineral veins depleted or forging queue complete), if I had more than one performing that task, I simply click one of them twice instead of trying to draw a selection box that selects them and only them. It's much faster.

Cycling between units

When one unit of a certain type is selected, pressing the TAB key will cycle between all units of the same type. This can be really useful, specially for some specific selections that are “harder” to manage. For instance say you have 6 woodcutters but you want to re-purpose 3 of them to something else. Clicking the woodcutters in the bottom right clan overview will select one of them. Pressing TAB will cycle between all woodcutters, one by one, allowing to select specific units to be reassigned.

The same is true for buildings: for instance one can quickly buy resource from different markets by selecting the closest one in the view, buying, then pressing TAB to cycle between markets. Same goes for changing trading routes at trading posts and all other buildings.

Cancelling orders

If you give units orders by mistake (e.g. send them to the wrong building or don’t press CTRL so all units get an order instead of only one), you can fix it by quickly pressing X: the Cancel Order hotkey.

This will assure that all units go back doing whatever they were previously assigned, and you’re free to start assigning orders again without losing the current selection.

IMPORTANT: make sure to press X quickly - before the units leave their current tile. Otherwise there’s a chance you’ll have idling units if, for instance, you move a woodcutter to a tile in which there's no lumber mill with available worker slots. This will cost you time as it will be cumbersome to get them back to what they were doing. You'll also have to make the initial units selection again.

General tips

These are not so about micromanaging specifically, but they can help you get information, make decisions and move faster.

Clan unit overview

Do not overlook the clan overview box in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Not only it can be used to select units of a type with a single click, it also displays important strategic information there.

If you’re running low on food for example, you can quickly decide which units would be better to re-purpose: maybe you have too many woodcutters or merchants that could be reassigned to food production.

This can also be used to decide which units to upgrade next in the forge without the need of finding the forge in the map, clicking it and opening the forge menu. The units with a star are the ones that were already upgraded.

Sheep also show up in this box, so instead of searching for and “finger picking” them in the map, clicking them on this box will automatically select one.

Tile information

The hotkey I (letter i) toggles Tile Information on and off. While this may have a negative effect on immersion, it's immensely powerful strategy-wise. It shows the current allocation of units in each building of each tile, as well as percentage done of ongoing constructions.



Having all these information visible without any need of clicking through buildings is priceless!

Move your units ahead of time

Are you about to colonize a tile in which you will need villagers? Well then have the number of villagers you will need start moving towards a neighboring tile. Once the tile is colonized they’ll have to move very little and will start working right away.

Try to always have your mind one step ahead of what’s happening in the game and start moving your units when you know you "will need" instead of waiting for "now I need, so I'll move".

Minimap

Important strategic information can be found there, don’t forget to check it! Tiles under attack blink in red; resources are displayed over the tiles and important tiles are marked: an exclamation marks “points of interest” tiles (wyvern, thor, geyser) and a star marks the “map victory” tile.

The minimap can also be used to quickly scroll over to a location. This have many good uses and is specially important for the Raven clan when selecting the destination tile of a mercenary raid (more so when sending multiple raids at the same time!).

Pause (single player only)

Specially when playing the first few matches, the amount of information can be overwhelming. When the game is paused the screen gets blurred. If you look closely, however, you will notice that the interface and menus are not.

All the menus actually work when the game is paused! Of course you can’t perform actions (i.e. select a lore perk or order a building) - but you can take your time to read descriptions on them and calmly make your choices.

This is really good when one needs to check something in the lore or military paths, or to better read information about this clan they are playing for the first time. The victory conditions can also be seen, and this is specially important in conquests where there are different special rules and bonuses on each match.

That’s it!

I hope this guide was useful to you! Please rate and share it if you liked it :)

What was the favorite, life-changing tip for you? Share in the comments below!

Feedback is always welcome, let me know if there are any other tips you would like to see in the guide :)

GLHF!

[Brutal]

And it also has F key to flip the buildings

[Angelo]

Great guide. Thank you very much. I have been playing this game for many years but did not know the intricacies of the CTRL + right click such as that based on where you put the destination, the closest idle villager goes there and only after the idle ones have been finished, the one who was building something. Great, thank you. And I did not use TAB for cycling. That's also very useful. It's great that you also described the examples of why to do this.

[RayXorn]

wow this was soooo informative tysm

[AlphaCupcake]

tyty really nice

[SlyBoy]

Looking forward to putting some of this knowledge into practice! Thank you!

[Rogulair]

You can also use tab to select between buildings, very useful when buying from markets.

[M_chula]

nicee

[50 shades of Rylai]

Tnx!

[mickel14]

This was super helpful, thank you!

[jergilweb]

I'm looking for a way to see all of a specific building type that I have, such as hunting lodges. I like the screen that show how many of each person I have but it would really be helpful if I had that for buildings, particularly when I expand on large maps. It's likely there and I just don't know it.