Hello all!

So before I start I want to say I love this game. Finally a game that feels like Civ that I can actually play. I truly enjoy almost everything about this game except the controls. I hate how it auto groups units together just cause I lasso them together once. I don't even control+1 them or anything and yet they are always stuck together. Only way I have found to get around this is by selecting the units in the group and moving them away from the group but even that is a pain since selecting a unit is not a matter of clicking it's icon in the pane but clicking all the other units which for some reason deselects them. I play this game for maybe thirty mins every other day because the frustration with the controls is enough to drive me mad! If anyone has any solutions to this backwards way of controlling units then please help but until I can just get the basic RTS controls back that I know and love I don't know if I can suggest this to any of my other steam buds.

P.S. This applies to Hedemony not the Gold beta which I have not tried.

A number of suggestions could be made regarding the handling of groups and formations (the most important, IMO, being to cause missile troops to spread evenly behind the melee troops they're supporting, to the extent possible). But for me a bigger interface problem and the most frustrating thing about the game is this:

I play on a 1600x1200 screen, but there are so many overlays and pop-up overlays that I'm effectively restricted to about 800x600 in the center of the screen for ordering my troops around -- a mere 1/4 of the surface area. When I get beyond that I inadvertently click an underlined word and get an effect I didn't want, or I drag the mouse over a pop-up overlay and lose the connection I'm trying to make (e.g., when trying to set a unit's orientation at the end of its ordered move.)

I don't know how best to fix this -- the overlays contain a lot of useful information -- but I hope the developers will put some thought into other ways of providing all that information so that the effective tactical interaction area takes up most of the screen.

I have problems with this the auto-grouping with B11, but no solutions...

When I'm using massive worker trains (30+ bands of workers) to transport food from one city to another, I have to make sure I send them in groups of 4 or so. If I use a single group, the group insists on forming up in a massive column with the HEAD at the starting city, and the TAIL stretching in the opposite direction. This creates a bizarre situation where workers head the opposite direction of their destination city to get into column BEFORE they begin moving as a column.

Just to be clear, I'm assuming you'd prefer them to all move individually to the target and form up there or just cluster near the target?

My actually problem is that I want to be able to select them all and move them as a group but without establishing them as an "army" of sorts. In other words when you play a game like Rise of Nations for example you can lasso groups of units and move them but only once you hit CRTL+1 will you form them into and army that you can quick select. If I could have that then the game would be perfect. No need for fancy ways of controlling troops.


I'm not clear on this one since you can select a unit in a group from the info pane at the bottom.

I played again lat night in an attempt to get my brain exhausted enough for bed but when I did I no longer would deselect when left clicking units in the info pane but would (properly?) select them. I assume my problem must have been just a weired glitch or I am just going crazy. Sorry for the trouble on the second complaint.

...have you tried the option to upgrade supply lines or is there a specific reason why you prefer to use workers?
Even at 100t/wk, that's not going to get the 5-10,000t of food I need to keep a campaign rolling forward full tilt or fleshing out the garrisons of an entirely new conquered region. Like you said, workers just move faster than the supply lines sometimes, and that's part of their advantage.

Another reason I use workers instead of upgraded supply lines (I use those too!) is that workers are recruit liquidity, so I have a bunch lying around in cities doing nothing anyway.

I will say I've seen this exact problem happen with battle units crossing through small passes or across straits too. 4-8 units of hoplites will line up single file and head AWAY from the crossing/pass to get into column instead of just falling in as the formation approaches. I understand that I'm in some way abusing the scale of the game, but epic times call for epic measures.

Hegemony definitely plays better in widescreen. Out of curiosity, do you tend to keep one of the windows open or are you just referring to the message log and objective tracker blocking the screen?
Just the message log and objective tracker, plus the bar at the bottom is about 20% of the height of the screen, and occasionally I get in trouble by clicking something at the top as well.

Another reason I use workers instead of upgraded supply lines (I use those too!) is that workers are recruit liquidity, so I have a bunch lying around in cities doing nothing anyway.

thats a flaw that needs to be fixed. using workers as recruit batteries makes the whole system redundant. tbh i dont understand what was actualy wrong with the previous system of population limit. maybe the regeneration was a little high but couldnt that have just been adjusted? and you could still require a supply route back to the home city for regeneration.
and all these supply problems are part of the challenge of the game. they limit the size of armies you can use. 4-8 hoplites? why not just ask for food consumtion to be scrapped so u can use 20 hoplites?

coming back on-topic. i agree with the OP that lassooing isnt the ideal way to form Groups. ive gotten used to it now and am not so frustrated by it as the OP, but a simple key press to combine all the currently selected units into a group would be preferable. then in a messy battle it would be possible to lassoo all your units in the battle (its often difficult to even see your units for individual selection when theres so many units of each side plus the ground is littered with corpses) and order them to attack the same enemy target. as it stands at the moment that would work for the first order i think, but when u gave them a second order theyd merge into one group and attempt to form a battle line before carrying out the order. while they were doing that theyd be slaughtered like sheep.
i'm thinking something like F8 group units, F9 ungroup units. simple, effective, and unlikely to be done by accident. this would also give u much more flexibility in a battle to break a groups formation for a retreat.

So I am going to try out the beta now but it won't let me play sandbox cause I have a demo version? What did i do wrong? How can I fix this?

So I am going to try out the beta now but it won't let me play sandbox cause I have a demo version? What did i do wrong? How can I fix this?

The site is full of references to claiming your free serial for Gold.
Try this,

http://www.longbowgames.com/forums/topic/?id=2334#post22808body

Or the direct link

https://www.longbowgames.com/goldserial