[Blocklies]

I set select all tcs to q (spam q to make vills) go to tc as caps lock (useful for Budapest or to check on my tcs) and idle vill to tab, I also have a bunch for different military buildings and z for lumber camp, x for mill, c for market and v for mining camp

[Loxodontox]

TC!!!

[Archylas]

Following

[leading_suspect]

Howdy! I made a post on this very subject awhile back. I liked the idea of the grid system and tried to keep the same buildings on the same keys when doing ‘select all’ or ‘go to’ (using ctrl + alt). I think it could give you some good ideas. Have a look: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/tyw0lz/last_year_i_picked_up_aoe2_again_after_15_years/

[Slothjawfoil]

If you’re using grid then just set it so ctrl-Gridkey is set to select/cycle civilian buildings and alt-gridkey is set to select-all military buildings. Mirror the vill build menu for this and memorizing will be parallel with how the vill build menu already works.
I set tab for cycle hotkey and ctrl-tab for cycle/select all TCs. And 1 one of my extra mouse keys is cycle idle villagers.
I also have f1 set to select all idles, and f2 set to select military.

[contemporaryAmerica]

Select all TCs (I use a mouse side button to not confuse this with “go to tc” which has a key stroke). Idle villager. Control group your scout in dark age. Then control group military in feudal on, but do it in a way that’s easy for you to manage initially. If you can’t manage multiple groups separately ie Cav and archers just do one mass. The key thing is getting used to double tapping your control group to jump to your military location and then hitting your go to idle vil or go to TC hot keys to jump between eco and military. That is the number one hotkey skill to develop, and it’s not even close.

[readytochat44]

The big changes for me were

Tab – select all tc
Q – primary unit from building

[BubblyMango]

most important – goto TC, select all TCs, make 1 vil in a TC, make 5 vils in a TC (shift+the hotkey for 1 vil), hotkeys for building a farm and a house, goto idle villager.

If you dont want to start changing most of the default hotkeys, I’d recommend just changing the goto TC and select all TCs to tab and shift+tab to make queuing 5 vils a breeze (just quickly hold shift+tab+q).

For very fast hotkeys usage a simple grid layout may not suffice, this is part of the reason why a lot of pros dont use grid layouts, or only partial grid layouts (other reason being that it used to be harder/impossible to do in older versions). Though i dont think this matters much before the semi pro level.

[King_Merin]

Just start by using a few hotKeys and slowly ad more. Go to tc and create vills with the idle vill key should be the absolute minimum.

[Anonymous Player]

I’m excited to listen to your thoughts.

[Ptee92]

* ctrl + ASDF = select all barracks/ranges/stables/sw
* ctrl + Q = select all TCs
* ctrl + ZXCVB = Goto lumbercamp, mill, mining camp, blacksmith, university
* You might want to swap the garrison/ungarrison hotkeys so that they line up at G etc. move fireship and demo from 2nd page of the dock to some more nice hotkey (if they don’t overlap with other 1st page hotkeys, you can use the hotkey in dock to directly make them without page change.)
* Select all markets is handy, select all idle military can be handy, select all idle villagers is extremely handy and select next idle military and next idle villager are useful as well in certain situations.
* Besides of that standard grid build menu and so on forth should be ok enough for anyone to use.

These are just my recomendations if something else seems more comfortable, go for it, comfort is more important than efficiency often in hotkeys.

[Fear_of_the_Dark_Age]

I would say the most important are
Select all TC and next idle villager.

Set them to my 2 additional mouse keys.

I would recommend to use one new hotkey at a time. Use one till you have a feel for it and then add more until you got your full set.

[Unbridledscum]

I would recommend using grid layout for military units (i.e formations and stances) and for building-specific options (i.e research and queuing units).

I would put the least frequently used options to the right hand side of the keyboard i.e mill/mining camp/university/blacksmith.

Go-to commands on the LHS should be ctrl-key. Select-all commands on the LHS should be shift-key. *Otherwise*, just do key.

Go-to idle military & villager is tab/caps lock.

Villager build needs to be something comfortable for you, but I would avoid any kind of clash between structures on the first or second page.

[supervoegli]

i think the easiest way to approach this is by some kind of “grid” layout, that means the order of your hotkeys aligns with the order of the buttons in the ingame menu. that way you dont have to “memorize” them at all, because what you see is what you press.

create scout/knight/camel:
press q/w/e

research light cav/cavalier/heavy camel:
press a/s/w
and so forth.

this should suffice for most of the important stuff, because you can double bind some commands (e.g. villager build and military stances) and use cmd/alt to bind each key to multiple functions, without ever having to reach for the right half of the keyboard.

[Tsu_NilPferD]

[How to set up your hotkeys in AoE2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Yq_Ys0Ejw&)

Most important ones are: idle villiager, go to TC, build villiager

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