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Age of Empire 4 Hotkeys: Best hotkeys to use in Age of Empires 4

Your empire will rise with these Age of Empires 4 hotkey tips.

Updated: Nov 30, 2021 2:29 pm
Age of Empire 4 Hotkeys: Best hotkeys to use in Age of Empires 4

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Age of Empires 4 is finally here, and players getting the opportunity to return to the fan favourite RTS series on PC. Since the game is now live, Age of Empires 4 offers players the classic build-up nation and army to conquer your enemies. As you get better at the game, you will go full StarCraft 2 pro with your APM (actions per minute) going wild.

If getting good is the aim of the game, then you’ll want to know more about the Age of Empires 4 hotkeys. While the controls are fairly intuitive, there are some controls the game doesn’t tell you about. Moreso, if you want the best time managing your empire, then we will recommend the following Age of Empire hotkeys changes.

Read More: Age of Empires 4 review.

Age of Empires 4 Hotkeys

Age of Empires 4 Grid Hotkeys
Here is a description of the Grid keys. Image via Microsoft.

There are two different types of keybinds that you need to be aware of in Age of Empires 4. There is a feature known as grid keys, which uses the same keybindings for the grid part of the menu. You will notice towards the centre-left side of your UI at the bottom of the screen. When you click on a building or a villager, you will find options in a 5×3 grid. 

While the images change all the time, the hotkeys for these are always the same. It is for the best these buttons remain the same, and you get used to the empires you want to play and recognize what each unit, technology or icon is.

Age of Empires IV Keybinds

Now that we are through the Grid system, there are many Age of Empires 4 hotkeys for other general controls. The tutorial does a good job of explaining what the most common things are in the tutorial. However, there are a few keybinds the game doesn’t tell you about. Here are the following must-know keybinds, whether that is for multiplayer or general empire management.

  • Alt – Rotates the camera screen
  • CTRL+T – Defend Ping
  • CTRL+R – Attack Ping
  • CTRL+E – Notify Ping
  • CTRL+ W – Villagers working on wood
  • CTRL+F – Villagers working on food
  • CTRL+G – Villagers working on gold
  • CTRL+S – Villagers working on stone
  • CTRL+H – focus your camera onto the capital of your Empire. – saves control grouping your capital base.
  • F1 – selects all military buildings
  • F2 – selects all economy buildings
  • F3  – selects all technology buildings
  • CTRL+SHIFT+C – Selects all Military units – saves grouping your units using control groups.
  • CTRL+. – selects all idle villagers –  good for selecting idle workers you forgot to assign to a job after making them or builders who are not doing anything.
  • CTRL+, – Selects all idle military units.

Out of all the default Age of Empires hotkeys, the only thing we feel needs changing is selecting idle villagers keybind. We recommend changing it to CTRL+V, as that is not bound by default. Furthermore, the CTRL_SHIFT_+V selects all the villagers in your empire, so it makes more sense to associate V with your villager keys.

How to change your Age of Empires 4 Hotkeys

If you’re interested in changing your Age of Empires 4 hotkeys it is fairly easy. You can change your AOE keybind by clicking on the cogwheel on the main menu, aka the settings menu. After that, click on controls and press the view and remap controls button. If you do change any keybinds, the game will prompt you to make a profile so you can swap between hotkey profiles in the future.

If you want to swap between control profiles, you can do so in the top right of the change and remap controls menu. Again, we highly recommend changing the select idle villagers keybind to something that feels more natural. It feels like it’s the only keybind that isn’t already associated with a key that reflects the syllable of the name.

Images via Microsoft / Relic.


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