Wishlist (Reopen last unit hotkey)

[ArmChairGeneral]

The ability to re-open the last selected unit or better yet a back button that lets me skip the unit window backwards through several recently selected units would save me a ton of clicking and scrolling time. It would only need to remember a string of four or five units, you would rarely need to go back deeper than that, and really if you could at least jump back to the most recently chosen unit window that would still save a huge amount of time for the player.

For example, I have built two cannons in Memphis. I need to figure out the best place to send them, meaning I will be scrolling across the map opening up stacks across the west trying to figure out who needs the guns most. It would be very nice not to have to scroll back across the map to get back to Memphis. If I could just skip the unit window back to my guns, I could grab them and drop them right into my chosen destination without scrolling back to the guns and then again scrolling back again to the destination, wasting valuable playing time.

Another example, division management: When I split a unit or set of units from a stack the unit window follows the split force, and I usually want this. But a back-key would allow me to skip right back to the original division without clicking around so I could finish putting it back together and giving it the rest of the orders.

Another approach for similar functionality (and possibly easier to code) would be a way to quickly hot-key one stack. For example, the unit window is focused on my cannons in Memphis. I press CTRL A, tying the selected stack to the A key. I then scroll around the map opening my stacks to figure out where I want to send the cannons. When I find the target, I press A, the unit window opens on my cannon stack, (make sure the map does NOT center-on-unit when pressing the hotkey) I drag the unit right on to the map where I want it to go. We would only need a single hotkey for this, there isn't much other reason for hot-keying lots of stacks. (If there were, I imagine it would already be included in the mature and robust AGE engine!) I think the A key is in a convenient place (for us right handed mousers at least) for this function. No need to bother making any kind of visual change to the map or unit windows to indicate that this is the hot-keyed stack, there's no reason you would ever need to be reminded that the hot-key had been applied. If you need to know, just press A!

Also nice would be a command that reforms divisions automatically (split a division, send the cannon up to the army formation, hit the hotkey and the remaining units re-form their division.)

I have read a suggestion to put the rail/river movement options at the top of the tree rather than the second level so we don't have to make an extra click in the interface to choose them. I think I read that there may be limitations in the code that prevent this, but if a way could be found, I would really REALLY like it, a big time-saver!

I love this game and the others like it (AACW, WIA, etc.). My only criticism of CW2 is how long it takes to play due to the scale of the whole thing. Enhancements that make play smoother and quicker allow players to finish more turns in the same amount of time, thus increasing our enjoyment of the game and making it more accessible to a wider range of players. I think these types of enhancements (not necessarily just the ones I have suggested) should be as much of a priority in future patches as historical accuracy and game-play balance tweaks: players will get more mileage from their gametime.

Thank you again for this fantastic game, you guys have put out consistently high-quality products (and maintained them after release!) for many years now, I appreciate your efforts, and I hope that you are reaping the rewards of your hard work!

Tom