ESOCommunity

Hey all,

This is just post where i list useful hotkeys I which i use in skirmishes/campaign and where to find them. Hopefully this is a good starting point for players who don't yet regularly use hotkeys or have started setting up their own hotkey map. I am not going to post which buttons map to which hotkey as everyone's set up is different.

General Game Hotkeys
Move all units
Toggle Player Summary Dialog (shows screen to see opponents deck)
Enable friend of foe colours
Attack Move

Game World Hotkeys
Chat Scroll Backward
Chat Scroll Forward (useful for seeing list of treasures picked up by players)

Find Unit Hotkeys
Find explorer
Find Idle villager
Find home city
Find town centre
Find market
Find trading post
Find consulate
Find all of selected type
Find all infantry
Find all idle fishing boats
Find all barracks-type buildings
Find all docks
Find all Stable-type buildings

Building Construction Hotkeys
Barracks (All types)
Dock
House (all types including teepees)
Bank
Market
Trading Post
Stables (all types)
Consulate
Wall
Wonder

Town Centre Hotkeys
Eject garrison units
Villager
Set military gather point

Unit Production building
I only use hotkeys for barracks/stables, other units i don't use enough for hotkeys

Dock Hotkeys
Caravel (or equivalent)
Fishing boat

Abilities Hotkeys
I just use explorers ability e.g. Sharpshooter, convert guardian etc..

Command Hotkeys
Toggle Auto Repair?? could be really useful for forward building, agra/blockhouses/trading posts etc.
Eject Units

Unit Tactics Hotkeys
Volley Mode
Infantry Stagger
Infantry Melee
Cavalry Melee
Cover Mode
Bombard/Limber Modes

General Comments
I am certainly a fan of having a few hotkeys which find all of something like barracks/docks as it saves the need for setting a control group for military buildings. I use find individual idle villager and find all idle fishing boats specifically as idle vills may be more scattered over the map. If you have multiple villagers then shift clicking the idle villager icon will selected all vills in a nearby group like when a coin mine finishes. Find all selected is very useful for deleting wall pillars, finding units for control groups but just make sure you dont actually select all villagers and move them as that is so annoying when it happens. Using the stop hotkey will limit its negative effect if needed. I use hotkeys for building commonly used buildings, I really like how this includes the asian wonders aswell. Move all military units is useful If you are not using control groups and want to give commands to 'active' military units as well as reinforcements. I'd like to give a special shout out to find all infantry, not good at high level gameplay however has been really useful as an intro to control groups. As an example as Russia you can control your cav and your infantry ball seperately with 2 hotkeys/control groups and not have to worry about adding new strelets/musketeers into your all infantry group. I have this hotkey setup to replace control group 3 as an example.

Hope you have seen a new hotkey you may wish to implement for your gameplay,

Cheers
H

"Eject Units" under "Command Hotkeys" is very nice - includes eject from buildings other than towncenters such as outposts, blockhouses, boats, etc.

I see some players use a hotkey to eject from the TC but not from other buildings. I have both binded to the same key.

Nice write up! One thing though: don't find [building] hotkeys make your screen snap straight to the buildings? I think for production buildings you're going to use a lot - i.e. barracks, stable, TC - using control groups is better (and if you want to snap straight to them, just double tap). If the game drags on a lot it's also very useful that you can add and remove buildings from the group as their position on the map makes them redundant. Not likely that anyone's going to use more than 5 or 6 control groups for military units anyway.

Kawapasaka wrote:Nice write up! One thing though: don't find [building] hotkeys make your screen snap straight to the buildings? I think for production buildings you're going to use a lot - i.e. barracks, stable, TC - using control groups is better (and if you want to snap straight to them, just double tap). If the game drags on a lot it's also very useful that you can add and remove buildings from the group as their position on the map makes them redundant. Not likely that anyone's going to use more than 5 or 6 control groups for military units anyway.

You will like this then, find buildings do indeed snap to their position if you are considering an individual selection like Find TC or "Find Stable" if you have find selected screen snap option on. If you have 3 stables this will cycle through each stable 1 by 1. However the hotkey "find ALL stable" does not snap ANY stable. This is likely due to the likely non-locality of the buildings but will select these building in the background so you can view a fight or battle while training units. This is also true for if you have 1 stable or 1 barracks as well thanks to some really clever developer who knew this would be a sweet shortcut.

I remember talking to @WickedCossack about this at the LAN and him not really being aware of this hotkey/function

I_HaRRiiSoN_I wrote:

Kawapasaka wrote:Nice write up! One thing though: don't find [building] hotkeys make your screen snap straight to the buildings? I think for production buildings you're going to use a lot - i.e. barracks, stable, TC - using control groups is better (and if you want to snap straight to them, just double tap). If the game drags on a lot it's also very useful that you can add and remove buildings from the group as their position on the map makes them redundant. Not likely that anyone's going to use more than 5 or 6 control groups for military units anyway.

You will like this then, find buildings do indeed snap to their position if you are considering an individual selection like Find TC or "Find Stable" if you have find selected screen snap option on. If you have 3 stables this will cycle through each stable 1 by 1. However the hotkey "find ALL stable" does not snap ANY stable. This is likely due to the likely non-locality of the buildings but will select these building in the background so you can view a fight or battle while training units. This is also true for if you have 1 stable or 1 barracks as well thanks to some really clever developer who knew this would be a sweet shortcut.

I remember talking to @WickedCossack about this at the LAN and him not really being aware of this hotkey/function

Oh okay, cool. I think I still prefer control groups because of the situations where some buildings become redundant, but not a huge difference I guess.
Though, if you're using a find all hotkey, does it also snap to the building if you double tap? Because sometimes you want to.

You can just disable the instant snapping in options

Kawapasaka wrote:Nice write up! One thing though: don't find [building] hotkeys make your screen snap straight to the buildings? I think for production buildings you're going to use a lot - i.e. barracks, stable, TC - using control groups is better (and if you want to snap straight to them, just double tap). If the game drags on a lot it's also very useful that you can add and remove buildings from the group as their position on the map makes them redundant. Not likely that anyone's going to use more than 5 or 6 control groups for military units anyway.

This is probably answered - but there's a setting to decide whether or not "find X" centers the screen on that object. Once disabled, double tapping that hotkey will center the screen on it. I don't have any buildings in control groups, they are all under "find." Find all "x" buildings automatically includes redundancy. The only time this is not optimal is a late game scenario where you have an FB/side base in addition to your original military buildings, in which case I'll hotkey the forward/side buildings.

Thanks! Learning a lot, especially useful as I just started playing China and feel like I need about 50 new hotkeys

I_HaRRiiSoN_I wrote:

Kawapasaka wrote:Nice write up! One thing though: don't find [building] hotkeys make your screen snap straight to the buildings? I think for production buildings you're going to use a lot - i.e. barracks, stable, TC - using control groups is better (and if you want to snap straight to them, just double tap). If the game drags on a lot it's also very useful that you can add and remove buildings from the group as their position on the map makes them redundant. Not likely that anyone's going to use more than 5 or 6 control groups for military units anyway.

You will like this then, find buildings do indeed snap to their position if you are considering an individual selection like Find TC or "Find Stable" if you have find selected screen snap option on. If you have 3 stables this will cycle through each stable 1 by 1. However the hotkey "find ALL stable" does not snap ANY stable. This is likely due to the likely non-locality of the buildings but will select these building in the background so you can view a fight or battle while training units. This is also true for if you have 1 stable or 1 barracks as well thanks to some really clever developer who knew this would be a sweet shortcut.

I remember talking to @WickedCossack about this at the LAN and him not really being aware of this hotkey/function

Find Stable is still a nice hotkey though, I used to put all Stables from all civilizations onto S, then Ctrl+S to find stable. Everytime I held ctrl then pressed S, it snapped the view to the first, second, third, etc. build stable. If I wanted to group them, I just used control groups. In normal games you will never have more than 3 Stables anyway.

Obligatory "my hotkeys" link:
Don't forget to "allow conflicts"

I_HaRRiiSoN_I wrote:

Kawapasaka wrote:Nice write up! One thing though: don't find [building] hotkeys make your screen snap straight to the buildings? I think for production buildings you're going to use a lot - i.e. barracks, stable, TC - using control groups is better (and if you want to snap straight to them, just double tap). If the game drags on a lot it's also very useful that you can add and remove buildings from the group as their position on the map makes them redundant. Not likely that anyone's going to use more than 5 or 6 control groups for military units anyway.

You will like this then, find buildings do indeed snap to their position if you are considering an individual selection like Find TC or "Find Stable" if you have find selected screen snap option on. If you have 3 stables this will cycle through each stable 1 by 1. However the hotkey "find ALL stable" does not snap ANY stable. This is likely due to the likely non-locality of the buildings but will select these building in the background so you can view a fight or battle while training units. This is also true for if you have 1 stable or 1 barracks as well thanks to some really clever developer who knew this would be a sweet shortcut.

I remember talking to @WickedCossack about this at the LAN and him not really being aware of this hotkey/function

As useful as this may be I can not be faffed to change the habit of a lifetime.

All I want to know is how i bind the Tab Key.

Riotcoke wrote:All I want to know is how i bind the Tab Key.

You don't; that one is set to cycle through stuff like trading posts, which can't be unbound or rebound to another key afaik.

Also, hotkey-induced lag can happen. When I had eject and attack move bound to the same key, my game would freeze during unit engagements even though my hardware was more than capable of handling the game. The game ran smooth otherwise.

deleted_user wrote:...When I eject ... my game would freeze during engagements even though my hardware was more than capable of handling the game. The game ran smooth otherwise.

Nice

Zutazuta wrote:

deleted_user wrote:...When I eject ... my game would freeze during engagements even though my hardware was more than capable of handling the game. The game ran smooth otherwise.

Nice

For a time I knew what caused it, and I chose morality rather than become the next Tit.

Edit: sex

Formerly PR 31, 2300 1v1 ELO b/c I like listing worthless metrics that make me feel somewhat justified in wasting way too many hours into this game

Guys, don't forget to move your hard-to-reach control groups 6-9 to closer keys F1-F4. Assuming anyone still uses a full size keyboard.

EAGLEMUT wrote:

Riotcoke wrote:All I want to know is how i bind the Tab Key.

You don't; that one is set to cycle through stuff like trading posts, which can't be unbound or rebound to another key afaik.

You can use Tab just fine. You have to type it in manually in the NewProfile3.xml file.

harcha wrote:

EAGLEMUT wrote:

Riotcoke wrote:All I want to know is how i bind the Tab Key.

You don't; that one is set to cycle through stuff like trading posts, which can't be unbound or rebound to another key afaik.

You can use Tab just fine. You have to type it in manually in the NewProfile3.xml file.

You shouldn't do it, because then the game will attempt to do both things at once.

EAGLEMUT wrote:

harcha wrote:

Show hidden quotes

EAGLEMUT wrote:

Riotcoke wrote:All I want to know is how i bind the Tab Key.

You don't; that one is set to cycle through stuff like trading posts, which can't be unbound or rebound to another key afaik.

You can use Tab just fine. You have to type it in manually in the NewProfile3.xml file.

You shouldn't do it, because then the game will attempt to do both things at once.

Yes I am familiar with this, as I have all the unused hotkeys binded to numpad9. God only knows what my computer would decide to do if i ever hit that key.

I dont know if People use it. But i was once happy to learn ctrl+dubbleclick will select all vills thats doing the same.
(idle, walking, gather Barry, gather hunt etc etc)

Not sure if serious or swe....

Edited to vills not Units. Donno what u mean

harcha wrote:Not sure if serious or swe....

How dare you doubt the great Victor_Swe?
He is right, it was one of my favourite things to do, not just selecting all vills gathering food, mining coin or food on the screen by holding ctrl and clicking on one of them, it also selects all vills building something.