Selection and orders

Give orders to your own units#

Select the units you intend to control before issuing a command. A command that includes another ruler's unit can be refused as a whole. A remembered enemy position does not grant ownership or reveal its current state.

Most direct orders replace the unit's current work. A queued order waits behind existing work. Use queued orders when that delay is intentional. If a villager is still gathering, a queued move has not necessarily failed.

Construction keeps earlier building assignments. If you start one house and then order another, the villager finishes the new house first, walks back if needed, and continues the earlier one from its existing progress. Shift-build adds the new site after the existing assignments instead. A direct move, gather or stop order cancels those assignments; the unfinished buildings remain.

Turn a building before placing it#

Choose a building, then use R to turn its placement preview clockwise or Shift+R to turn it back with the default bindings. Click to place it in that orientation. These keys turn the preview only while placing a building; R returns to Repair afterward. Drag to lay a line of palisades or stone walls; each segment is paid and queued as an ordinary building. Gates remain single placements. Rotating a producer also turns the edges where its trained units emerge.

Movement and blocked work#

A destination can be accepted before a route is found. Buildings, resources and other units may obstruct travel. Read the unit's current activity and the final order outcome rather than repeatedly clicking the same destination.

Compact and spread orders arrange a group into ranks for its direction of travel. After assembling, the group marches at the pace of its slowest member. Units can loosen their spacing to pass a choke and form up again once there is room. A blocked route or an engaged unit can delay the group.

Attack-move and patrol let military units travel while responding to nearby visible hostiles. A distant enemy revealed by another unit or an ally does not pull the marching unit across the map: automatic acquisition uses the greater of that unit’s sight radius and weapon range, measured between footprints. A deliberate attack order can pursue a farther visible target. Long-range weapons can still fire within their range through shared vision.

Hold stops movement while retaining ordinary nearby defensive action. Use Settings to review or change the current key bindings.

For stock and production refusals, see troubleshooting.