Army groups and subgroups

Select the whole army#

A selection is limited only by the units you own, up to your whole army. When it contains more than one class of unit, the selection panel counts them by class: infantry, archers, cavalry and siege, plus villagers, caravans or others if present. Each class shows a picture, its name and a count.

Work with one part of it#

Click a class in the panel to make it the active subgroup. Your next orders go only to those units, and the rest of the army stays selected with a fainter ring. Press Tab to move to the next class in a fixed order (infantry, archers, cavalry, siege, then the whole army again) and Shift+Tab to go back. Click the active class again, or All, to give orders to the whole army.

So you can tell the infantry to hold, the archers to climb a hill and the cavalry to swing wide without breaking up the army or its control group. Ctrl-click a class (⌘-click on a Mac) to select only that class instead.

Select wounded (the W key, or the drop icon in the panel) narrows the current selection to units that are no longer healthy, so you can pull them back. A unit counts as wounded once its health bar leaves the healthy band.

Control groups#

There are ten control groups, on the keys 1 to 9 and 0.

A strip above the selection shows each group's number, its main class and how many units it has. Click a group in the strip to select it. Every key and combination can be changed in Settings; camera positions use Ctrl+Shift to store and Ctrl+Alt to recall by default. Quick saves keep your groups, and loading the save brings them back.

Let production follow your plan#

Select a production building and choose a group under New units join. Each unit the building finishes then joins that control group. This setting is only on your own screen: other players never see it, and it does not change the game.

A production building also has two presets under New units:

• Start in: the stance each new unit starts in.
• Follow: a control group. New units walk to that group's army wherever it is, following its first unit, and stop when they reach it. If you remake the group, the building follows the new army.

Presets are settings of the building, so other players' views never show them, but they are real orders to your units: a direct order to a new unit replaces its preset, as usual.

• Early rally: select a production building while it is still being built to set its rally point and presets. They stay when it is finished.
• Fallback rally: select soldiers and use Fallback rally in the command card, then click the map. Soldiers who break and run will regroup there once morale is part of the game. Clear fallback rally removes it.

Build in rows#

Houses and farms can be dragged, like walls: hold the button and drag, and a row of them appears, each beside the last. The label beside the pointer says how many and what they cost. Your builders take them in order.