I put all default grid-based Hotkeys of the Definitive Edition into a public table that can be searched and filtered. I believe it is the only such resource on the web. All other sources I found were missing keys and had errors, likely due to being outdated. So, I typed most of them by hand from the in-game reference.
https://keycombiner.com/collections/age-of-empires-2-de/
All 360 key bindings are also mapped and visualized via a virtual keyboard:
Generally, KeyCombiner is an app to learn keyboard shortcuts of workplace software, mainly being used by software engineers. However, I am an enthusiastic AoE player myself so this first game addition was only a matter of time.
To learn the hotkeys, there is an interactive course comprising 30 small lessons that are grouped by topic and importance: https://keycombiner.com/courses/play-aoe-2-de-like-a-pro/
Many people think learning shortcuts should happen naturally during the usage of an app. I don't think this works for complex workplace software. However, admittedly, I wasn't so sure if this course-based approach would make sense for a game. After taking the course myself, I am convinced of its usefulness. Even though I played the Definitive Edition with its grid-based hotkeys since launch, there were plenty of very useful hotkeys that I somehow didn't care to learn before. Even just taking a couple of selected lessons can help quite a bit.
After enrolling in a lesson, you can change the bindings, in case you don't want to use the default grid-based ones. Not so much fun if you use entirely different bindings, but works if you just want to change some of them.
I would very much like to know what you think. As you can imagine, this took me quite a while to put together. Signed up for this community to see what experienced players might think of it.
https://keycombiner.com/collections/age-of-empires-2-de/
All 360 key bindings are also mapped and visualized via a virtual keyboard:
Generally, KeyCombiner is an app to learn keyboard shortcuts of workplace software, mainly being used by software engineers. However, I am an enthusiastic AoE player myself so this first game addition was only a matter of time.
To learn the hotkeys, there is an interactive course comprising 30 small lessons that are grouped by topic and importance: https://keycombiner.com/courses/play-aoe-2-de-like-a-pro/
Many people think learning shortcuts should happen naturally during the usage of an app. I don't think this works for complex workplace software. However, admittedly, I wasn't so sure if this course-based approach would make sense for a game. After taking the course myself, I am convinced of its usefulness. Even though I played the Definitive Edition with its grid-based hotkeys since launch, there were plenty of very useful hotkeys that I somehow didn't care to learn before. Even just taking a couple of selected lessons can help quite a bit.
After enrolling in a lesson, you can change the bindings, in case you don't want to use the default grid-based ones. Not so much fun if you use entirely different bindings, but works if you just want to change some of them.
I would very much like to know what you think. As you can imagine, this took me quite a while to put together. Signed up for this community to see what experienced players might think of it.