Commanding units
Micro when you want it: select, move, form a front, focus a target, tear a building down.
Units in motion
- Pick your troops. Click a unit. Double click: every one of its role on screen. Drag a box: everyone inside. The green rings are your hand.
- Move! (a far click). Right click away from the pack: they cluster round the point, each at its own pace. The green rim round them is “near”.
- A path (a near drag). Right-drag from beside the pack: they walk the line you draw, keeping their shape, at the slowest one’s pace.
- A front (a far drag). Right-drag away from the pack: the stroke is the first rank, flank to flank; the ranks form behind it, facing away from you.
- Modes. S Move: they march past the patrol, faster, and never fight. D Engage: they stop to fight what is in reach. A Conquer: they wait in a province that is not yours until it turns.
- Stop, and let go. Del stops them where they stand. Space empties the hand.
Selecting
| Click / drag | Select a unit / box select (Shift adds). |
|---|---|
| Double click / triple click | Every unit of that role on screen / the whole army. |
| Space | Empty the hand. |
Control groups
Nine groups, one per digit, each holding what you had in hand: units, belts or your buildings (a raiding party, the belts of one front, your training buildings, your cannons).
| Ctrl + 1–9 | Keep what is in hand as that group, in place of what it held (on a Mac, Cmd). |
|---|---|
| 1–9 | Take the group back in hand. |
| The same digit twice | Take it back and look there. |
| Shift + 1–9 | Add the group to what is in hand. |
| A group’s button (over the hand panel) | Click or tap: take it back (twice: look there). Right click or hold: keep the hand in it. + keeps the hand in the first free group. |
A group keeps what you gave it: the fallen, the razed and the removed leave it, and recruits never join one by themselves. Groups last the match, a reload of the page included; a rematch starts with none.
Orders
| Right-drag starting near the group | Walk the drawn path, keeping the group’s shape. |
|---|---|
| Right click far from the group | Move! They cluster round the point. |
| Right-drag far from the group | A formation whose front rank is the stroke. |
| Right click on a belt’s banner | To the front! They join that belt from there. |
| Double right click | Disband! They leave their posts for the nearest belt. |
| Click an enemy in sight | Focus: they go for that one first (again: call it off). |
| Click an enemy building in sight | “Tear it down!”: they march on it and raze it (again: call it off). |
| A / S / D | Their mode, kept for their later orders: Conquer / Move / Engage. |
| Del | Stop where they stand. |
| Right click on the minimap | Send them there as a cluster. |
Near the group means within 60 of one of its units (of its main pack: a straggler does not stretch it); anywhere else is far.
The hand panel shows the units in hand by role, their mode, and buttons for Stop, Disband!, Army, Add (Shift) and Let go (Space).
Who they strike
Units standing idle choose their own targets, in this order:
- Your focus. The enemy you clicked, or the building you marked (by it they still answer enemies within 160).
- Enemy fighters. They walk to an enemy soldier or monster they see within 420 (within 200 of the spot you sent them to). Among those in reach, they strike the most dangerous for the health it has left first: a wounded archer before a fresh warrior.
- Buildings. With no fighter to answer, the nearest enemy building they see. The castle is a building like the others.
- Pawns, only when one comes within reach: they strike it down where they stand, then go back to the building. Nobody walks off after a pawn.
Units riding a belt fight what they meet but strike no building: buildings fall to units standing by them, or sent to them with a click.