Controls

Camera

The camera works like the one in League of Legends. It looks at the map from a fixed angle and you cannot turn or tilt it.

The slide eases in and out, so the camera stops soon after the pointer leaves the edge. How fast it moves is the Scroll speed in the settings. It does not slide while the game menu is open, while the window is not in front, or (for the arrow keys) while you type in the chat.

If you zoom out past the usual distance and let go of the wheel, the camera settles back by itself. You can zoom in until the camera is a bit over a third of the usual distance away. The camera never leaves the playable area of the map.

Selecting

A selected unit has a ring under it: green for player 1's units, yellow for anything else. If it is walking, a line shows the way it will go. The same paths show on the minimap in light green.

You can select enemy units too, to look at them. The unit panel shows them, and the command card stays empty.

Control groups

On a Mac, Cmd works like Ctrl. Units that die drop out of their groups. The digits are fixed and cannot be rebound.

Orders

The order is given the moment the right button goes down, so a click that wanders a bit still counts. A group sent to a point spreads out around it.

M and A wait for your next click. The matching slot of the command card lights up while they wait. Press the same key again to cancel. Move, Stop and Attack are hotkeys you can change in Settings > Input, and the card shows the current key on each slot. A key does something only when the selected unit can do that order: a building has no Move.

An order leaves a mark on the ground: a green ring for a move, a red one for an attack and an attack-move. It shrinks and fades in half a second.

Health bars over units can be always on, only on hurt units, or off. That is the Health bars setting. The bars ease towards the real value when a unit takes a hit.

Training and building

A building trains the units its definition lists under Trains in the editor's Objects module. A worker places the buildings listed under Builds.

Select a building or a worker, and the command card shows the entries in the second row and on, each with its name and its price in gold. The tooltip adds the build time in seconds.

Training. Click a unit's slot. The gold is taken at once. Each building keeps a queue of up to five units, and trains the first one. The unit panel says what is being trained and how far along it is. When the time is up, the unit stands in front of the building. If you select several buildings, each one gets the order. Gold comes back for everything still in the queue if the building is destroyed. Cancelling a unit by hand is not built yet.

Building. Click a building's slot, then left click on the ground where it should stand. The gold is taken at once. The first selected worker walks there and starts working, and the other workers just stay where they are. The building appears with a tenth of its health and grows while the worker stands next to it. The unit panel says Under construction with a percentage. If the worker leaves or dies, the site waits and you can send another worker to finish it. If something took the spot before the worker arrived, the gold comes back.

You need enough gold. A slot you cannot pay for does nothing. Gold starts at the map's start gold, and there is no income yet.

Fog of war

Each player sees what their own units see. The simulation works this out, and the screen only shows it, so every player in a network game sees their own fog.

The ground has three tiers:

• clear, where a unit of yours sees it right now,
• dimmed, where you saw it before and left,
• darker still, where you have never been. If the map has the black mask on, that ground is black and the terrain cannot be seen at all.

Enemy units show only on clear ground. Outside the playable area the border fades to black over three tiles. The minimap shows the same tiers. A map can switch the fog off (everything is visible) or on in the editor's map settings. While you test, /reveal uncovers the whole map.

Other keys

The command palette

Ctrl K opens a search over everything you can do. Type a few letters (att finds Attack-move, hero finds your heroes), Up and Down move, Enter runs, Esc closes. With nothing typed it lists what you used last, then what can run now. The list follows your selection: only the orders, training and buildings the selected units offer can run; the rest stay in the list, dimmed, with the reason beside them ("select your units first", "needs 40 more gold"). Entries that cost gold show the cost and the time as chips.

The palette only chooses: orders and training are the same commands the command card gives, so it works in an online game exactly like the keys do.

While a line is typed in the chat, none of the other keys work. The cheat sheet has everything on one page.