[SUGGESTION] SHIFT+Double-Click A Villager To Select All Idle ...

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Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion ReTuRnOfpRaCtIs January 24, 2020, 12:50pm 21 I was replying to Windowsxdchris.1 Like Darkness01101 January 24, 2020, 3:08pm 22 Oh, sorry. I see now that Yorok0 was likely doing the same1 Like Ch4nKyy January 24, 2020, 6:58pm 23 I second this suggestion as an option. Other games have CTRL or SHIFT click as an alternative to double clicking as well!1 Like SvenSvensonn January 25, 2020, 5:22pm 24 People will probably hate me for this. This is the first thing I think about; when you manage to disrupt your enemys eco, you want that to have a significant impact. I see the manual relocation of your vills as a punishment for them. It would be somewhat lame if they could just SHIFT+DoubleClick to relocate a whole idle woodline.I’m not doubting that it is a great QOL feature. But maybe easier isn’t always better for the game.1 Like PCS70 January 25, 2020, 6:43pm 25 First of all you should always keep the idle villager count at zero. Secondly idle villagers from depleted resources already group together close by the resources storage. And third, the shift key is actually reserved and used for adding units or villagers to an already selected group and for queuing commands using right click button. Ctrl + Drag is used to select all military units in current view. Double click villager is used to select all villagers in current view. So only Alt + Drag or Alt + Click would be available for what you want. Regarding all above I don’t see a lot of use for this QoL improvement. At least not competitively.1 Like Darkness01101 January 25, 2020, 9:08pm 26

First of all you should always keep the idle villager count at zero.

I think we all know this and this enhancement is one more tool a player could use to help achieve that. The period (.) key is fine for doing one-by-one searches for individual idle villagers across the map, and SHIFT+. to select every one on the map… but this would be a much-needed in-between capability.

Secondly idle villagers from depleted resources already group together close by the resources storage.

We all know this, as well. Yet, there’s still plenty of times players can have idle villagers sitting among working villagers, military units, or sheep/cows/turkeys. Your view is pretty narrow/limited, in my opinion. As another example, sometimes you might have the gather point of your Town Center spewing out villagers in the middle of farms that are being worked on by working villagers. For a while, it’s fine as you micro stuff… but the game has a way of distracting you with more important things to tend to sometimes, so that gets neglected. When you go back to your TC, you see a bunch of idles sitting within a bunch of farmlands being worked. Or when you make 15 build a Mill while assigning 7 to make farms. Have fun selecting only the idles after the mill is built.Or, later in the game, there’s many of times where you’re so focused on battles, you can have a group of idle lumberjacks here, a small group there, some idle gold miners here, some idle stone miners there… scattered about all on one screen… intermixed with working farmers, some working lumberjacks, some working miners, and between idle military units and sheep/cows/etc… and you want to move ALL of those idle villagers at once to one place across the map, say, to work on a forest together or build a castle. I, personally, don’t like to have to micro-select/cherry-pick little pockets of idle villagers here and there, one small group at a time, or one-by-one, being careful not to select working villagers or idle military units I want to leave alone.There are MANY more reasons why you might have a bunch of idles lingering about and want to pick all the ones just in the vicinity at once. Hopefully, we don’t need to explain every one of them.

And third, the shift key is actually reserved and used for adding units or villagers to an already selected group and for queuing commands using right click button.

I never said the shift key wasn’t used for anything else in the game. And, no, it’s not ‘reserved’ exclusively for anything. You have to hit SHIFT+1, or SHIFT+2, etc. to add units to an existing control group. Last time I checked, the keyboard’s number keys (0-9) are pretty far away from the mouse’s left-mouse button… and on a completely different computer peripheral, at that. There’s nothing wrong with (and no existing hotkey combo that would/should break) by holding shift key down while clicking your mouse a couple times on a villager.With your logic, the CTRL key must be reserved for creating control groups? Why, then, can the CTRL key also be used with alpha keys to jump to buildings (e.g., CTRL+B for Barracks). I don’t see any difference between doing that and using the SHIFT key + clicking the left-mouse button twice on a villager.Take a look at the huge list of hotkey commands available, and even think of ones not listed. Are you trying to say one more is going to all the sudden break the game or make the game better for only one person?

Ctrl + Drag is used to select all military units in current view.

Similarly, SHIFT+Drag could/should select idle villagers… but it doesn’t. I had tried that in my experiments before making this thread and felt it should be a way, as well. I was going to suggest this above or in a new suggestion thread, but the conversation hasn’t steered to this until now. So this is my official request for SHIFT+drag (or CTRL+, or ALT+, if those are better) now

So only Alt + Drag or Alt + Click would be available for what you want. Regarding all above I don’t see a lot of use for this QoL improvement. At least not competitively.

Not true. As I mentioned above, the Shift key is not some off-limits key. I will use this QoL improvement probably every game I play; so, for me, it will be of incredible use. And since competitive players want efficiencies, I don’t see how this is counter to efficiency. I wanted to do this when I was in an online ‘competitive’ match, but I couldn’t. And I’ve only played one or two games online with AoE2:DE post-launch; imagine if I had played 10, 50, 100 or more, how many times it could have come in handy.Regardless, if competitive players don’t want to use it, good for them. I’m more worried about my single-player games. But if I wanted to play more online “competitive” games, I would probably want this improvement even more and wonder why such a simple yet powerful thing is not already in the game. And would also wonder why anyone aside from devs would be averse to it (due to the need for them to now read this long thread and take time to implement the change), when there’s a whole slew of hotkeys and commands that try to bring efficiencies all over this game. If the game didn’t evolve over time, we’d still have to manually re-seed every farm.At this point, the ball’s in the dev’s court. If they don’t see the benefit, then oh well. At least I mentioned it and I’ll hope it’ll be in AoE4. PCS70 January 25, 2020, 9:29pm 27 I didn’t say that I’m against it nor that alt double click on idle villager could not be used. I’m talking about the way controls work at the moment. Regarding usability if you make the mistake by not pressing the shift key while double clicking that villager or have a group selected you get unwanted behavior and start cursing at the screen. As there currently exists ctrl-drag to select all military units and double click unit (or villager) to select all of that unit in current view (idle or not), it would be more logical to use the alt key because if you have selected a group using shift-drag will not select all idle villagers but add all in your view to current group selection up to the current group selection limit of 60 regardless if you want to save that group using ctrl or not. Dedicated hotkey or alt + click on idle villagers button to select all idle villagers in view would be the best option, if added. Darkness01101 January 25, 2020, 11:48pm 28

Regarding usability if you make the mistake by not pressing the shift key while double clicking that villager or have a group selected you get unwanted behavior and start cursing at the screen

As with any hotkey or command in this or any other game, they’re learned behaviors. In this case, why would anyone not hold Shift while double-clicking a villager if they want to select only the idles? That would be like accidentally not holding CTRL when hitting B to select Barracks. And why would they click-and-drag their mouse rather than double-click?Admittedly, though, I may be misunderstanding you regarding control groups.And also, I may be wrong regarding what I think you say regarding if you have a group selected, since I havent used it that much.UPDATE! I now see what you’re saying about control groups; I just tested. You’re right, using SHIFT key for my proposal won’t work, since if you have a control group selected and then hit Shift and click unit(s) or drag a box around them, it will add those unit into that control group. Thanks for letting me know!

Sorry I didn’t understand what you were saying before. So, ALT or CTRL should instead work for my proposal, unless there is something that makes them unusable, too. ALT key modifier would be my preference now.1 Like LighterFoot84 May 12, 2020, 11:54am 29 Just like there is a hotkey for selecting all military on screen, it would be nice to have one for selecting all files on a screen. This is so needed in imperial age as your eco gets raided in so may different areas and putting them back to work is so click intensive.I also reccomend changing the title to include the word hotkey. Darkness01101 May 12, 2020, 3:01pm 30

Just like there is a hotkey for selecting all military on screen, it would be nice to have one for selecting all files on a screen

All files? Did you mean all ‘idles’?What is the hotkey for all military on screen?Since the topic and post are so old, the forum doesn’t let me edit them. In this case, I would want to edit the topic to say [ALT] instead of [SHIFT] key, simce it waa determined SHIFT double-clicking adds units to a control group.And changing the topic to say hotkey somehow might be strange. I’d rather put thatword in my OP. Besides, I think editing topic names is I think something the forum rules don’t particularly like, if I remember correctly ArshiaAghaei May 12, 2020, 3:10pm 31

Did you mean all ‘idles’?

If it is the case, the it’s Shift+, Darkness01101 May 12, 2020, 3:17pm 32

If it is the case, the it’s Shift+,

Well, they said all files (idles?) on a screen. So, they sound like they are asking for what I wanted in OP. [SHIFT] + [,] won’t work because that selects all idle villagers on entire map ArshiaAghaei May 12, 2020, 3:18pm 33

on a screen

Oh, OK that is a good point Kamandaran May 12, 2020, 9:56pm 34 Yes AOE2 could really do with some advanced unit selection features.2 Likes LighterFoot84 May 13, 2020, 6:41pm 35

files

Omg I meant idle vils. There is a hotkey to get all idle vils on the map but not one to get only the idles on the current screen. This is one my biggest pain points in messy imperial games. The military one is so helpful when I have to send a handful into my eco to fight off raids and have them join my main army later on. PacificWheel208 April 20, 2021, 4:44am 36