Advanced Users: How to rebind locked hotkeys

Since we do not know when the devs are going to patch this, there is a way to gain access to specific hotkeys that are currently locked.

Tutorial

1. Create a new control profile in AOE4. If anything goes wrong, you can delete this profile again.
   
2. Make your desired changes and save.
   
3. Note down hotkeys that are locked or involve multiple keys like “control+shift”.
   
4. Close the game.
   
5. Navigate to “documents\My Games\Age of Empires IV\keyBindingProfiles”.
   
6. Open the .rkp file using the Windows Editor or Notepad++.
   
7. Find the hotkeys you want to edit, change them to your likings.
   
8. Save
   
9. Start Age Of Empires IV and make sure your control profile is selected.

If you want to edit the hotkeys again, repeat step 4 - 9.

Things to note

• When combining keys, leave no space.
  
  
  
• RepeatCount seems to indicate the amount of times you have to press something, but you can’t imitate control group behaviour (1x select, 2x jump to) since control groups have two interactions: one for selection, one for focus. I therefore suggest to leave them like they are.
  
  
  
• Mouse Buttons I know of are MouseLeft, MouseRight and MouseMiddle. Currently MouseMiddle is used to pan the camera.
  
  
  
• When using hotkeys like Control+Shift+V the option to rebind the shortcut in-game will be greyed out like the rest since the game does not support these. You can still change them through the editor though.
  
  
  
• While the grid layout is labeled as “modern dynamic” layout in the file, there is an option for “classicKeys”. Setting it to true doesn’t change anything so maybe they were already working on classic hotkeys.
  
  

Things that do work

• You can free the ALT key which is currently locked for turning the camera. To leave empty, just delete the key phrase without deleting the quotation marks.
  Before:
  
  After:
  
  In my case I changed said key to MouseMiddle.
  
  
• You can rebind keys like Select all Villagers, Send all back to Work and Select all Military.
  
  
• You can use “Control+Shift+[insert letter]” for other shortcuts.
  
  
• You can rebind mouse panning to any key and even the left or right mouse button. Setting it to the latter will make the game unplayable though, so consider pairing it with another key like Alt:
  
  
  
• You can set multiple shortcuts to the same key, but keep in mind that it may result in weird control behavior (especially when going for WASD camera controls without changing the grid layout).
  
  
• Setting the camera controls to WASD works but in my experience you have to unbind the secondary keybinds.
  Before:
  
  After:
  
  
  
• You can combine keys for the grid layout hotkeys.
  

Things that don't work

• Activating the dev camera named “capture tool”, does not matter which keys you bind it to
  
  
  
• Using the Mouse Side Buttons (I can’t find the correct key function to make AOE4 recognize them, in the worst case the devs have to update the engine to support these buttons since relic games like COH2 don’t support them as well afaik).
  
  
• The Middle Mouse Button seems to be unwilling to accept keys like "jump to next idle eco unit" and I do not understand why. I could set panning to any key and even set camera rotation to Alt+MouseMiddle, but the idle worker key doesn't do anything in that position. :/

[FiringBlindly]

I know I'm a few years late to the party, but could someone help me trouble shoot this? I followed the directions to the letter, but when I start AOE4 none of my changes are reflected.


I am starting small, so I am just trying to swap "train_villager" from Q to E, in the Town Center array. I have also swapped train_official / train_prelate / train_saint from E to Q, so there are no conflictions in the Town Center UI for any civ.

Any suggestions?

[Circassian Exile]

So still no way to have extra mouse buttons?
I use 4th button to "go to TC" and 5 for "go to last event". Since like AOM 2002. :-/

[What Doth Life?!]

Relic have a holy-war against functional RTS hotkeys.

[Lord DGP]

Added, glad to help

[RaphaniacZX]

Yeah, guessed that was the case, wanted to be sure since I have always played that way. If possible add it to the things that don't work, but thank you very much for testing it as well, I appreciate, also great post have definitely improved my hotkey setup ✨

[Lord DGP]

After testing it I could not get it to work either...
I could set panning to any key and even set camera rotation to Alt+MouseMiddle, but the idle worker key doesn't do anything in that position. :/

[RaphaniacZX]

I tried what you said and this is what I got, has not worked:

command = "pick_next_idle_worker",
keycombos =
{

{
combo = "MouseMiddle",
repeatCount = -1,
},

{
combo = "",
repeatCount = -1,
},

command = "pan",
keycombos =
{

{
combo = "",
repeatCount = -1,
},
},
},

Am I doing something wrong? Does it work if you try it?

[Lord DGP]

Have you set it like this?

---

Pan:
{
command = "pan",
keycombos =
{
{
combo = "",
repeatCount = -1,
},
},
},

---

Next idle eco unit:
{
command = "pick_next_idle_worker",
keycombos =
{
{
combo = "MouseMiddle",
repeatCount = -1,
},
{
combo = "",
repeatCount = -1,
},

[RaphaniacZX]

I've been trying to use Mouse Middle to pan it to idle economy units with no luck, even though I unbinded the pan is there something you recommend for me?

[MisterSpock]

search for the config file, and change panning speed to negative.