1.4 The Buildings & Hotkeys vs micromanagement.
Knowing these, will enable you to play like you never played before, and hence avoiding a lot of micromanagement. Suppose you run out of coal or iron in the middle of a battle. Rather than scrolling over your screen , hit control + B and select the market.
Control + A : selects all units, use shift to select/deselect groups
Control + B: selects all buildings, you just can’t play without this one.
Control + P: selects all peasants that do nothing, press space to center, and circle
Control + S: selects all warships
Control + M: selects empty/halfempty mines
There are a lot of combinations possible for an attack for example. Press control+A to select, en then with shift select pikes and shooters. Then hit A to put them in attack modus, and rightclick and align for the attack move.
To select all units of one kind, for example fishboats, select one fishboat, and then press ctrl +Z
To make infinite units out of your townhall or military buildings, press control while pressing the icon of the unit. To make em by 5, press shift.
For making quick a lot of houses, select a group of peasants, hold down shift and build as many houses as you want, they will build them all while you can do something else. This goes for all buildings.
The game now has many more hot keys than the original Cossacks, thus enabling quicker access to game functions and processes. Apart from the hot keys you had in the original version of the game, the following hot keys are available in Cossacks: The Art of War en Back to war.
C - build town hall
S - build stable
D - build dwelling
B - build 17th century barracks
R - build artillery depot
K - build 18th century barracks
T - build storehouse
N - build mine
H - build church
F - build shipyard
E - build market
Y - build mill
X - build wooden paling
W - build stone wall
V - build tower
J - build academy
Hot keys for 17th century barracks:
S - train musketeer (Austrian, European, Polish); archer; strelets; serdiuk; janissary; Spanish rifleman; Dutch musketeer
B - train drummer
F - train officer
P - train pikeman
L - train roundshier
H - train light infantryman
Hot keys for 18th century barracks:
S - train Highlander; musketeer (European, Saxon, Danish, Bavarian, Prussian)
B - train drummer; bagpiper; pandur
F - train officer
G - train grenadier
Hot keys for stable:
S - train 17th century dragoon; Tatar; 17th century French rifleman
D - train 18th century dragoon; French dragoon
R - train 17th century heavy cavalry
K - train 18th century heavy cavalry
T - train light Polish rider; Croat; Sich Cossack; King's Musketeer
F - train hetman
G - train hussar
Hot key for church:
S - create priest
Hot keys for shipyard:
B - build boat
P - build ferry
G - build galley
F - build frigate; xebec
L - build battleship
Y - build yacht
Hot keys for artillery depot:
R - build mortar
H - build howitzer
P - build cannon
Hot keys for academy:
K - repair cannons
J - heal units
Hot keys for upgrades:
N - upgrade mine
Y - upgrade at mill
V - upgrade tower
Hot keys for individual units:
S - stand ground
V - cancel stand ground
D - disable attack
E - enable attack
P - patrol
G - guard/don't guard
Hot keys for formations:
R - infantry column formation; cavalry wedge formation
K - infantry square formation; cavalry column formation
F - reinforce formation
G - group/ungroup
L - infantry rank formation; cavalry rank formation
J - dismiss formation
Hot keys for market:
Shift + resource amount button (100, 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000) - multiply amount by 100.
L - open/close gates
V - disembark ferry
F11 – screenshot- you can find the screenshot in your Cossacks directory under the map Screenshots. ( If there is no such folder, create one manually)