keyboard commands/buttons

[TheArsenal]

I rarely do commands by keyboard, preferring to use the mouse for everything. So if these exists as keyboard commands and I overlooked/don't know about them, please let me know. (And I will feel, trust me, very silly for starting this thread).

That said, I think the game needs these commands:

1. Activate All Units of This Type On Map/Continent. After steam power removes the need to place defending units as carefully, I would prefer to sleep units in the city they were produced until needed and only waken them when I am ready to go to war. I don't want to have to click through an incredible number of cites in the late game. Using the F3 screen sorted by units to locate them, is also way too slow due to some bug in that screen. And sure, I could use a rally point to put them in one place for later, but that makes me feel the need for this:

2. Clear All Cities Rally Points On Map/Continent.

3. Stop Worker Automation On Map/Continent When Current Worker Job is Complete. After a few wars I have so many workers I have to put some on Shift-A. I would like an easy way to gain control of them once they've completed what they are building in a manner other than clicking each one, then letting it finish its turn.

Again, if there is a way for me to do any of this now, let me know. I'm also curious to see if anyone else has ideas for useful automated commands.

[Cruddy]

You have great ideas, but they're impossible to implement. Here's a few things I do to speed things up a bit.


1) What I do is leave units in a stack outside of cities. Only after a railroad net has been built, of course! That way, when I'm peace, no sneaky peaks inside cities will reveal armed forces - plus I can activate the stack when war is on (or imminent). Big stacks are tempting nuke targets. Don't leave them in air recon range either.

OK, these are really Multiplay ideas, because the AI's have omniscient knowledge about units. I think it's a good idea to use the same tactics, for the far off day when I get a cable modem and PTW.

2) As above.

3) I half and half my workers. Half are Automated and half are not. The half that are not I hit Ctrl-P to clear up pollution that the automated workers have missed, and then put them to the end game tasks that never get finished (jungle chopping, railroading that last mountain, etc).

Now, when I want to activate all my workers, I don't give any orders to units UNTIL I have clicked on all my worker stacks and ACITVATED ALL from the menu. Automated moves are carried out after you have put in manual moves - so doing this first cancels all automatics.

Yes, it's still a pain - but I'm saving about half the time from manually moving every worker and half the time from taking them all out of automation. It's not as good as your idea, but at least it's feasible.

Finally, of course, add workers of crushed (ie no city's in that Civ) to your cities. They won't ache to go back home because it doesn't exist anymore - plus an immigrant labourer in a city is just as productive as your own, whearas the captured workers are only half as good as your workers.

Putting in workers which come from still active Civs is not a bad idea (they will eventually turn into natives) but it can cause happiness problems if you go to war with that Civ before this has happened.

Keeping large armies of slaves keeps the AIs mad at your and just increases your headaches. Well, it increases my headaches anyway.