Two mini-techniques useful for troops management

[pomthom]

Hi guys, this is my very first thread so hurray.

Just wanted to point out 2 little things on unit movement that I find very useful. The reason I decided to post this is because I saw some very experienced Imm+ players (via their famous YT walkthroughs ) that often struggled with this. I reckon that if they do, others probably do too

I guess this comes in handy particularly for warmongers but little tips are still good to know regardless of your approach of Civ IV. Here it is:

The Flush Technique: dealing with crazy shift-click manual selecting/unselecting of troops

Spoiler :

This happens when several groups of units get mixed up on the same tile. By group I mean units that have been selected together (by shift click or otherwise).

For example: a group of 6 Macemen just moved on a tile where a group of 4 Catapults was waiting. You want to split these evenly into 2 groups. So you select 3 Macemen manually with shift-click, then shift-click on 1 Catapult. And all 4 Catapults get selected...
It's just an example, unit selection can have several unwanted behaviors that sometimes is unexpected. When dealing with tens of troops that have been grouped/ungrouped to death this can me madly annoying.

ONE technique to solve any such problems: select all units in the tile (with Alt-click or with the button in the UI) then ungroup them all with the green-dots button at the right of the unit action interface (there's probably a shortcut for that one too). This effectively dissolves (or flushes) any previous selected group, allowing you to select a new group from fresh single units.

It's drastic and plain stupid but pretty handy when dealing with too much troops. Heck maybe everybody uses this or there's a much easier way and I'm just losing my time

The Health Quarantine: seperating (quickly) wounded units from healthy units using Ctrl+H

Spoiler :

This, I'm sure, will be useful to anyone who doesn't know the tip.

Context (example): you just captured an enemy city with 20 troops, all of which are now in the city. Some are wounded and you'd like to leave the wounded in the city, and select all other healthy units in just 1 group to head-off to the next target (without battling with the UI for 5 minutes).

Solution: select all units in the tile (with Alt-click or with the button in the UI) then press Ctrl+H. This selects all wounded troops regardless of type. You can then press Heal (or any other action for this group) and kablemo! the next group to be selected will be all healthy units on that tile.

NB: if you want to keep your unwounded super-medic in the city as well, you just have to unselect it from the healthy stack by shift-clicking.

Hope this helps! (well at least some of you ) Please point out better tips for these problems if you know them.

Cheers

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Good tips! Flush is a must, yes.
"Health quarantine" I did not know. That may see use.

 

[pomthom]

Good tips! Flush is a must, yes.
"Health quarantine" I did not know. That may see use.

Thanks! Hope the quaratine works out for you

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You don't need the whole stack selected to health quarantine; just control-h with any unit on the tile selected is enough.

Though, with how broken grouping is you might want to anyway via flushing first.

 

[Tall German Joe]

health quarantine is a new one for me, and it sounds useful. thanks!

 

[kossin]

You don't need the whole stack selected to health quarantine; just control-h with any unit on the tile selected is enough.

Though, with how broken grouping is you might want to anyway via flushing first.

However alt-click first allows you to move all the healthy units right afterwards as a stack: crtl-h creates 2 stacks.

 

[pomthom]

You don't need the whole stack selected to health quarantine; just control-h with any unit on the tile selected is enough.

Though, with how broken grouping is you might want to anyway via flushing first.

Yup I know. The objective of selecting all first is to automatically inherit a group with all the unwounded units once you've dealt with the suffering. Ctrl+H kinda extracts the wounded from the whole stack, leaving a clean already selected stack of full-healths.

If you don't, you still have to regroup the healthy units manually (which is good if you don't want to select ALL of them), and these may or may not be in the mood for manual selecting (as you pointed out)

 

[pomthom]

However alt-click first allows you to move all the healthy units right afterwards as a stack: crtl-h creates 2 stacks.

Exactly

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you don't, you still have to regroup the healthy units manually (which is good if you don't want to select ALL of them), and these may or may not be in the mood for manual selecting (as you pointed out)

It does depend to some extent whether you want to move the injured (from outside a city into it) or the healthy while leaving the injured where they are.

I wish waypoints were more usable at war; there is literally no interruption mechanic programmed in so trebs, mounted, and other vulnerable troops will happily stop adjacent to a powerful enemy unit even if the enemy unit was in plain sight before the waypointed unit moved. I abhor that the game will suicide human (but not AI!) automated workers and waypointed units; it adds a heavy layer of tedium.

I wish we had an automatic airlift via waypoints ability also. That would be a MUCH less disastrous use of waypoints than the "move next to enemy" garbage, so it's not like they'd have discluded it for that reason lol.

 

[Patchface]

Good tips for minimizing war weariness.

 

[pomthom]

It does depend to some extent whether you want to move the injured (from outside a city into it) or the healthy while leaving the injured where they are.

I wish waypoints were more usable at war; there is literally no interruption mechanic programmed in so trebs, mounted, and other vulnerable troops will happily stop adjacent to a powerful enemy unit even if the enemy unit was in plain sight before the waypointed unit moved. I abhor that the game will suicide human (but not AI!) automated workers and waypointed units; it adds a heavy layer of tedium.

I wish we had an automatic airlift via waypoints ability also. That would be a MUCH less disastrous use of waypoints than the "move next to enemy" garbage, so it's not like they'd have discluded it for that reason lol.

Temporary waypoints could be interesting too (a waypoint for the X next units). But I guess it would be too complicated to use...

 

[Izuul]

I was really excited when i discovered the health quarantine awhile back. Even if you decide to go back and send a few of the barely wounded units along with the healthy group, it still saves a ton of time.

 

[ben-jammin]

Did not know about the "health quarantine," that's certainly handy.

 

[pomthom]

Did not know about the "health quarantine," that's certainly handy.

Hope the name sticks

 

[tijup]

I did discover that "select only wounded units" a few months back, and felt pretty ashamed to
not have paying more attention to those functions earlier.
Now, I keep at least one super medic general with each of my attacking stack, and once I take a
city, I just let him heal my wounded in the taken city while the stack continue to the next target.
Since my SoD are big most of the time, I could have 2 super medics unit to minimize downtime.

At first, I was using spearmen as super medic, then I read an article here suggesting Chariots
instead, since then, I try to keep 2-3 from the early BCs for future use

 

[AnthonyIII]

Used this last nite. Good work!

 

[qazq2]

Did not know about Health Quarantine. I assumed everyone knew flushing until I played with my dad (on a team) and realized he was having trouble and when I showed him that tactic it helped him tremendously. Thanks for posting both of them.

 

[pomthom]

Did not know about Health Quarantine. I assumed everyone knew flushing until I played with my dad (on a team) and realized he was having trouble and when I showed him that tactic it helped him tremendously. Thanks for posting both of them.

My pleasure!

 

[MarigoldRan]

Ctrl - H.

Thank you.

 

[Pangaea]

Came upon this thread by looking at @pomthom's signature, and think it was well worth a friendly bump.

I remember how incredibly frustrating this could be in the past, especially with a huge stack, exactly like mentioned in the examples. I happened to learn about the 'flushing' by myself, and now use it all the time. Very useful during warfare. Didn't know about the healing thing, and that looks very useful too. I tend to select them manually though (after using the flush button, or rather the "ungroup everyone" button). Some I let heal, and others I keep with the stack because they are fit to fight. Or they are wounded siege that will simply be used to bomb down defences.

Thank you for the tips, and I think they are very, very useful for all others to see. Hence the somewhat big margin between this reply and the last one