Improving my play

I have a couple of questions here.

1. Hotkeys. How did you all get adept at using them? I know the obvious answer is practice, but are there any tips or tricks? I feel like if I could properly utilize them, I would be a lot better off.

2. In the postgame, I've looked at the construction tab and noticed I'm typically building a lot slower than my opponent, mainly because it takes me longer to get into the match.

I'm currently running the following specs:

Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz; 3.0 GB RAM; AMD Radeon HD 7700. My game runs rather smooth as long as I don't have any windows open, with a lag here and there; but nothing major. Would more RAM fix my issue? I was thinking maybe a gig or two more.

I have been seeing improvement in my play, with more practice and study. I feel like these two fixes could help out tons though.

I started playing vcoh with the arrow keys only. Then versus high level guys, I found it pretty difficult to keep my eyes on everything and to do some basic actions like throwing a nade, sticky, getting out of building in time, planting mines, even reinforcing was a pain.

You have to force yourself to use hotkey. I remapped mine to esdf for camera and others actions keys. I remember seeing myself going back to the arrow keys without even noticing, or keep using the nade/sticky icons with the cursor.

Globally, it took me a few days to get used to it and 1 or 2 weeks to see ingame massive improvements.

edit: now I just can't play without it, I'll find me slow and passiv.

Hi!

This is a really good question. I used to play RTS games casually with little use of hotkeys. They come with practice, like everything else, but there are ways to speed your learning.

A good, no nonsense method is to use the Grid hotkey layout (check your options). What the grid layout does is assign "Q,W,E,R", to the first row of buttons at the bottom right of the screen. Then "A,S,D,F" to the second row, and so on. Its a very "visual" scheme that allows you to use purely visual guidelines instead of remembering intuitively ("G" for grenade, or "S" for stug, etc).

You already have this scheme enabled... Then what?
Practice away. If you like to start small, play a game against the computer on a comfortable setting. Restrict yourself from using the mouse to click any of the buttons during that match. It doesn't matter if you are slow and clumsy, we all start like that.
By means of repetition, your muscle memory will kick in, and you'll start to do it by heart.

If you keep having trouble, let me know. I'll help you out some more. Try not to start using hotkeys that you'd use in action/high stress situations for now (any infantry or tank abilities). Start by using the hotkeys for buildings. Mines. Bonfires. Stuff you can build repeatedly.

Once you get comfortable with those, use the hotkeys for your troop movement: Q for Attack move. W to stop (incredibly, useful). R for reverse, if you are a fan of that feature, and your most important one: R for retreat. Practice moving units around using these keys.

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As for your second question: you can't build slower than your opponent. You both enter the game at the exact same time, no matter how fast or slow you load. Watch the replays from your opponents to see what they did to build faster.

Maybe they used hotkeys.

Maybe they built their buildings close to their engineers, so it took them less time, etc.

Most importantly, remember to have fun!

I did notice in my most recent game that I was right on par with the initial buildings. I've just had games where there's a little bit of lag right off the bat, and then it stops; I thought maybe that could be affecting it.

Thanks for the advice!

EDIT: I'm no stranger to the keyboard in games, I've spent a large chunk of my life playing The Elder Scrolls and Fallout!

I started playing vcoh with the arrow keys only. Then versus high level guys, I found it pretty difficult to keep my eyes on everything and to do some basic actions like throwing a nade, sticky, getting out of building in time, planting mines, even reinforcing was a pain.

You have to force yourself to use hotkey. I remapped mine to esdf for camera and others actions keys. I remember seeing myself going back to the arrow keys without even noticing, or keep using the nade/sticky icons with the cursor.

Globally, it took me a few days to get used to it and 1 or 2 weeks to see ingame massive improvements.

edit: now I just can't play without it, I'll find me slow and passiv.

+1

That's exactly what's happened to me, I'm just trying to use hotkeys more.

It helps since the COH1 hotkeys are more or less similar to COH2.

Oh and btw, the most important hotkeys are T (reinforce) and R (Retreat). Have to get used to using U(reverse) though

Hotkeys are easy...

The next step is assigning a group # to every squad, and using those.

This is what I'm working on right now - it's tough. I'm too used to the other way of doing things. But I need to improve my multitasking and by hotkeying squads you can just click through and the camera instantly focuses on them so you don't miss a beat.

Basically at a certain level of play, it really just comes down to who multitasks better and doesn't lose a squad, dodges every nade, stays out of sticky range, etc... One could say then luck really determines the very top levels...Sometimes even pros make major tactical mistakes though, but rarely.

Gridkeys > normal keys

if you're gonna learn hotkeys, don't bother with anything else

How do you guys use group hotkeys? Do you group multiple squads into a single group or do you prefer assigning each squad its hotkey? Do you mix infantry with vehicles within a single group? Do you use tabbing between squads within a single group or click-select them?

It depends for me.

I usually put artillery pieces on 9,8 and seven. For certain nuits, such as PGrens, I group em together because they don't suffer if they bunch (but you still have to micro them individually!).

Its completely up to you and your playstyle. Its a tool to administer your troops, how you see fit.

cons are grouped in 2 units between 2 and 4 cons each, on numbers 1 and 2 aand i tab through them for individual squads, everything else is normally assigned its own separate key apart from artillery pieces if i ever get more than 1.

I am new to CoH2 but not to RTS games. I have found that, pure and simple, the only way to learn hotkeys in any RTS game is by practice. You need to get the muscle memory down. Force yourself to use hotkeys AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE and eventually they will become second nature.

I can only speak for myself but I highly dislike the grid hotkey option because instead of simply remembering a key combination you also have to remember the physical location of the item in a GUI and then get muscle memory. It's an extra step that just isn't necessary.

Hotkeys are mandatory. Learn em, or change, but ALWAYSuse em.

@Crells: Goddam Con spammer.

Thanks Nullist but Cons spam is not "that" strong if you have only picked ppsh HtD 5 times since closed beta.