I'll start this by showing you a cross-section of hot keys available. You will find these in the options menu in-game.
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| A selection of hot keys - the full range is available in the options menu |
There are a large selection of hot keys available to you, and it is not my intention to go through all of them, and in any event, that would be a futile exercise.
Rather, I would like to encourage you to start practising some of them, and to get you started, here's a bit of a run down on how I introduced hot keys and how it helped me become a better player. Take a bit of a look, and then apply some of those lessons to your own game, introducing one or two hotkeys at at time, and gradually expanding your repertoire.
Open the book to find out more!
Home Keys
Looking at the above list, take a close look at the bottom section where it refers to the unit hotkeys. What do you notice about the keys mentioned: A - S - D - F?
In old fashioned touch typing terms, these were traditionally your "home" keys.
As it happens, I'm a touch typist from way back, meaning I naturally leave my fingers on those keys. So every game, I start with my four left fingers on the home keys, and if I'm able to use my left hand for anything without looking - that's a win - that's my focus in using home keys.
I use no hot key which would traditionally require my right hand, which I leave permanently on the mouse.
That's the first lesson - you do not have to use every single hot key to be a better player - but the more you can introduce, the quicker you get.
So what am I using with my left hand?
I use my little pinky to hit the shift key for a variety of functions (queuing instructions, making shapes with walls, etc). I'm able to do that without looking, but I can't use the control key without looking - so I limit the use of the control key - discussed below.
I can use the whole left side of the keyboard without looking.
This means I can use the following keys for building (that is, with villies selected, I press the following key and they are ready to build):
A - Archery Range
B - Barracks
C - Town Centre
D - Dock
E - Storehouse
F - Farm
G - Guard tower
Q - Fortress
S - Stable
T - Temple
W - Wall
X - Siege Workshop
If you combine cntrl with one of those letters, it will find it. I rarely use that, but have been known to use when desperate (there are other ways to do it, as I'll explain later)
Why is that beneficial? Each time you have to go looking for the item to build, you waste 2 or 3 seconds doing it and your taking your eyes off the main bit of the screen - use the letter and you save those seconds, being ready to go instantaneously with your build straight to the location where you want it, all in the one motion.
You won't use them immediately - I still don't. The idea is that you train yourself to use them one or two at a time, say, by making a special effort for each particular quest (this game, I'm building all farms with the F key).
The A-S-D-F keys can also be used to build units. For example, if you're in your Greek barracks, A refers to spearman, S to Hypaspist and D to Hoplite. The same pattern applies to all the civs.
Now, admittedly, using the shift key to build the same unit can be quicker (builds five at a time).
However, if you're building a couple at a time of something (say a palintonon), or a selection of more than one, it's actually quite quick using these keys - once you get in the habit of doing it.
Take this example, say you're doing Losing your Religion. You've got maybe 3 docks highlighted and you want to push out fireships and ballista triremes, it's very, very quick to go FGFG rather than go looking for the items to build them.
I might want an extra fireship or two, so I end with a quick FF - all done in a second - no looking away.
Hotkeying units and buildings
The cntrl key can also be used to hotkey specific units or buildings.
I find this useful when I'm maurauding with a mixture of siege and other units. As soon as you catch sight of guard towers or a fortress, you want to immediately instruct your siege to attack it without involving the rest of the your troops.
This is also useful for items such as the palintonon or the Celtic/Norse siege which have to be packed and unpacked, quicker to isolate all of them and issue the instruction if you have them hotkeyed.
Try and introduce hotkeys for specific purposes - and get used to doing it. As another example, you might want to immediately assign a hotkey to your scout at the start of every game.
You would hotkey a group of like military buildings where you quickly need to instruct three or more to continue production. Take the second objective of Legendary Renegades (spearmen only, a bit of pain in all honesty). You might have 10 barracks hotkeyed to 1, so it's a matter of pressing 1, three taps on A, and you have 30 spearmen queued in production, all within the space of a second in the heat of battle - without leaving the battlefield.
Here is something else I have done, once again, to suit my preferences.
Changing preferences
As I mentioned above, I'm a touch typist from way back, meaning using the spacebar with my thumb is second nature. So in options, I have changed the find Town Centre command to the space bar.
Once you're up and running, you get into a rythm of spacebar, issue commands, go somewhere else, spacebar, spacebar (scroll through your TCs issuing commands), go do something else - and within seconds you are effectively issuing commands all over the battle field.
As I mentioned in the first article on the mini-map, scrolling wastes lots of time, to be able to immediately get back to your TC, no matter where you are, and have more villies queued, all in a second, is a massive bonus in any quest taking up to 20 minutes - you'll shave 2 or 3 minutes off your game time - guaranteed.
Now I'm not quite there, because there are many hotkeys I just refuse to use - but I've incorporated a few handy ones which have improved my game, and that's my key message to you. Find the ones you're comfortable with, and use them over and over until they're second nature - then practice more - and on it goes.
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