A hotkey for selecting an idle monk on the screen?

[USC_kiky]

As we know, unlike other units in AoE 2, monks are very special in that their power increases sublinearly with respect to their amount. Having 50 monks is not 10 times as valuable as having 5 monks. This is mainly due to the intensive attention needed to command monks in a battle field. It's trivial if you are trying to convert one knight with one monk, but it's never easy to convert 40 knights even if you have 40 monks. That's why we rarely see monks being massed proactively in a tournament, even if it's Bohemian that a player is using.

I guess there are three main ways to convert 3 knights with 3 monks currently:
1. select the first monk to convert the first knight, the second monk to convert the second knight, and the 3rd monk to convert the 3rd knight;
2. select all 3 monks to convert the first knight while pressing the ctrl key, then unselect a monk before right-clicking the 2nd knight. And we repeat this process for the last knight.
3. Pre-labeling each monk with different groups before engaging with enemy. Then we can easily ask each group to convert different knights.

Enabling auto-conversion is never a good idea because we know how crazy the most difficult AI can be in Death Match if it's using Aztec monks. On the other hand, since there has been a hotkey for idle villagers since the very first day of AoE, I don't think it controversial to set up a hotkey for selecting an idle monk on the screen. That way, when a player tries to convert 3 knights with 3 monks, he/she only needs to press this hotkey once, right click an enemy knight, press this hotkey again, right click another enemy knight, and press this hotkey for the last time, before right clicking the last enemy knight. I think this may be a good trade off between the current human-unfriendly way of manual multi-conversion and a completely auto-conversion. This hotkey will also be useful when a player needs to find a forgotten monk who was sent to pick up a relic: one only needs to zoom out to the whole map before pressing this hotkey.

 

[Bandana_]

Why don't we just automicro? It is so human-unfriendly to splitmicro and move units on your screen.

auto auto everything

 

[King_Boo]

Let’s take away the high skill value of using monks and just make them broken af 11

 

[Degaussed]

Let’s take away the high skill value of using monks and just make them broken af 11

Yes, let's.

 

[ninja14]

Why don't we just automicro? It is so human-unfriendly to splitmicro and move units on your screen.

auto auto everything

Whats wrong in it, now you have even more time for S T R A T E G Y !!

 

[otw_Da]

Why you don't try to find your joy into something like fortnite? there you can buy skins and stuff. should be great for you

 

[MrIster24]

This basically exists in the form of the idle military hotkey, except using that at least has the requirement of managing, or at bare minimum setting to patrol, other military units (which let's be honest if you're going monks you shouldn't wimp out and use other units)

 

[Faultier321]

Patrol your army, use idle military hotkey, profit

 

[_Raiden_]

It's called "Monk Shuffle" and it was discovered by slam. Basically you use the idle military key and everytime u click it, u click a unit to convert. It's the strongest way to use monks amongst the 3 known ways you mentioned. If u have army with the monks, patrol the army first and then spam ur idle military key while clicking different units to convert.

 

[The Bloodless]

It's called "Monk Shuffle" and it was discovered by slam. Basically you use the idle military key and everytime u click it, u click a unit to convert. It's the strongest way to use monks amongst the 3 known ways you mentioned. If u have army with the monks, patrol the army first and then spam ur idle military key while clicking different units to convert.

Strongest 11 1111111

 

[_Raiden_]

Strongest 11 1111111

Spill the beans Joker

 

[The Bloodless]

Spill the beans Joker

Hotkey method is way better. You get faster conversions and more time to spend on microing / macroing other things. You also get more control, as in, less monks dying to castles, bbcs, arbalesters, whatever because you can pull them back with fewer actions. Using your entire group of monks to start converting one unit before doing this gets you even faster conversions.

This whole thread is really silly. I don't think monks scale worse in large numbers at all. They're pretty balanced imo. You need to spend a lot of attention on them but it pays off... Somewhat.

So I find this pretty funny.

 

[LowEloNobody]

YES
MAKE MANKS GREAT AGAIN
AUTO-MONKERY

 

[_Raiden_]

Hotkey method is way better. You get faster conversions and more time to spend on microing / macroing other things. You also get more control, as in, less monks dying to castles, bbcs, arbalesters, whatever because you can pull them back with fewer actions. Using your entire group of monks to start converting one unit before doing this gets you even faster conversions.

This whole thread is really silly. I don't think monks scale worse in large numbers at all. They're pretty balanced imo. You need to spend a lot of attention on them but it pays off... Somewhat.

So I find this pretty funny.

I get what ur saying but you can Group 30 monks in 1 key and do what you said more efficiently with fewer actions.
I'm not sure what you mean "faster conversions" as I really don't know if there is a trick to it. I know the universal rule which is click one unit then switch to another for faster conversion. I'm all ears though.
As for the entire group of monks for faster conversion,true yes but if done wrong you will lose all faith in other monks. If you are focusing on imp then yes I can see Theocracy helping with that statement.

I agree with Monks being balanced. They are situational on other maps and mostly dominate Arena. I wouldn't make it any cheesier for monk play.

 

[brunin]

Why don't we enable attack move to monks so they can convert one unit each... lol

 

[brunin]

Monks are already super OP and the conversion times being super fast as they are already slow down the game speed by quite a bit. Every buff you give to monks or monk micro will make playing this game a worse experience

 

[The Bloodless]

I get what ur saying but you can Group 30 monks in 1 key and do what you said more efficiently with fewer actions.
I'm not sure what you mean "faster conversions" as I really don't know if there is a trick to it. I know the universal rule which is click one unit then switch to another for faster conversion. I'm all ears though.
As for the entire group of monks for faster conversion,true yes but if done wrong you will lose all faith in other monks. If you are focusing on imp then yes I can see Theocracy helping with that statement.

I agree with Monks being balanced. They are situational on other maps and mostly dominate Arena. I wouldn't make it any cheesier for monk play.

Well, I don't say that it's a terrible method to use. It's better than just clicking them manually one at a time I guess. But it's much faster to set 3 monks on each control group from 1-10, so you have 30 monks controlled better. Yeah I'm assuming theocracy at those numbers but even without it, separate control groups is faster.

You can easily stop the conversion for all of your monks if you're afraid of "wasting" conversions. Then just redo the whole thing, grab the whole group of monks, target one unit with everyone, then split up your 10 targets.

There is also the quirk of the game where if your monk is walking towards its target but not actively converting, it won't lose faith even if you don't have theocracy. Only the monk(s) that were in range and actively converting would lose faith if you don't have theocracy there. Not sure if that's clear but it plays a big role in reducing "wasted" conversions.

The big problem with doing the "idle military" method is you don't get a chance to get that faster conversion that you would get by targeting all your monks on to one target initially. Instead, you're setting your monks idle for a half second and then starting your conversions one by one. That's mainly what I mean about the conversions being faster with the hotkey method. So basically what you mentioned with switching targets carrying over conversions.

Another problem is that you may have other military in the game that flies your screen around, and it needs better precision clicking (therefore it's slower). Good luck getting your trebs to not be idle at unfortunate times, or random scouts / monks which are off screen.

Granted the hotkey method means you cannibalize all your hotkeys for monk use only, and it takes a bit of time to learn how to add monks to hotkeys quickly... But I've found it to be by far the strongest and it's been frankly carrying me to a lot of underserved wins lol

 

[King_Boo]

Well, I don't say that it's a terrible method to use. It's better than just clicking them manually one at a time I guess. But it's much faster to set 3 monks on each control group from 1-10, so you have 30 monks controlled better. Yeah I'm assuming theocracy at those numbers but even without it, separate control groups is faster.

You can easily stop the conversion for all of your monks if you're afraid of "wasting" conversions. Then just redo the whole thing, grab the whole group of monks, target one unit with everyone, then split up your 10 targets.

There is also the quirk of the game where if your monk is walking towards its target but not actively converting, it won't lose faith even if you don't have theocracy. Only the monk(s) that were in range and actively converting would lose faith if you don't have theocracy there. Not sure if that's clear but it plays a big role in reducing "wasted" conversions.

The big problem with doing the "idle military" method is you don't get a chance to get that faster conversion that you would get by targeting all your monks on to one target initially. Instead, you're setting your monks idle for a half second and then starting your conversions one by one. That's mainly what I mean about the conversions being faster with the hotkey method. So basically what you mentioned with switching targets carrying over conversions.

Another problem is that you may have other military in the game that flies your screen around, and it needs better precision clicking (therefore it's slower). Good luck getting your trebs to not be idle at unfortunate times, or random scouts / monks which are off screen.

Granted the hotkey method means you cannibalize all your hotkeys for monk use only, and it takes a bit of time to learn how to add monks to hotkeys quickly... But I've found it to be by far the strongest and it's been frankly carrying me to a lot of underserved wins lol

Just set up your hotkeys centred around monk rushing . It’s the only reasonable way to play this game.

 

[_Raiden_]

Well, I don't say that it's a terrible method to use. It's better than just clicking them manually one at a time I guess. But it's much faster to set 3 monks on each control group from 1-10, so you have 30 monks controlled better. Yeah I'm assuming theocracy at those numbers but even without it, separate control groups is faster.

You can easily stop the conversion for all of your monks if you're afraid of "wasting" conversions. Then just redo the whole thing, grab the whole group of monks, target one unit with everyone, then split up your 10 targets.

There is also the quirk of the game where if your monk is walking towards its target but not actively converting, it won't lose faith even if you don't have theocracy. Only the monk(s) that were in range and actively converting would lose faith if you don't have theocracy there. Not sure if that's clear but it plays a big role in reducing "wasted" conversions.

The big problem with doing the "idle military" method is you don't get a chance to get that faster conversion that you would get by targeting all your monks on to one target initially. Instead, you're setting your monks idle for a half second and then starting your conversions one by one. That's mainly what I mean about the conversions being faster with the hotkey method. So basically what you mentioned with switching targets carrying over conversions.

Another problem is that you may have other military in the game that flies your screen around, and it needs better precision clicking (therefore it's slower). Good luck getting your trebs to not be idle at unfortunate times, or random scouts / monks which are off screen.

Granted the hotkey method means you cannibalize all your hotkeys for monk use only, and it takes a bit of time to learn how to add monks to hotkeys quickly... But I've found it to be by far the strongest and it's been frankly carrying me to a lot of underserved wins lol

Love it dude, this is a great post.