Empire Deluxe Enhanced Edition
Unit Processing, Queuing and Control
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The Active Unit Processing Queue
All of your units are placed into a queue, a line of units awaiting
instructions on what to do each turn. Many of these units already have orders,
and can be processed by the game. Some of this processing is automatic, some of
it will need to be manual. The player can use the mouse and keyboard to both
obtain information regarding units and to command them.
Several Actions help manipulate a unit in or out of the Active Unit Queue. These Are:
Players may now slow down the automatic processing of units. To do this, edit the preferences for a player, and under Speed Settings find the option Throttle Unit Processing Speed. If you enable this, enter the time between unit processing in milliseconds you wish to have.
When a unit is not sure what to do, it will blink and wait for you, its commander, to instruct it. A unit may be waiting for various reasons, some of which are:
In several of these cases, a Right Click of the mouse will attempt to have the game continue to process the unit. Also invoking the Continue Action from the Action Tab or the keyboard will also begin processing.
There are also toggles, discussed later in this section, which set up the
criteria for when interruptions in the processing should occur.
In some instances, you may wish to halt processing immediately. Holding down the
ESCAPE key will do this.
There are also hot keys and menus to help you order your troops quickly, and
dialogs to have you give them more complex series of orders.
When And How The Queue Is Built
The Active Unit Processing Queue is constructed at the beginning of every turn, after all units from new production and new construction have been created. Each one of your units is reviewed and based on various criteria, it is either accepted or rejected by the queue.
Some units are not required to be "processed" every turn. These are generally units that either do little or nothing, or are currently involved in some time based activity, like building a road or producing a unit. Only units that are going to move or otherwise require your attention that turn should be in the queue.
Some of the criteria can be set via the Control Menu. These detailed conditions behind these settings are:
Sentry Units - No Sentry units in queue.
Sleep Units - No sleeping units in queue.
"Ignored Types" - Some unit types which are marked as "ignore" in the Unit Database (example, Airbase). This is an indicator that they are not very active.
Units That Saw an Enemy - Units that saw an enemy unit move will be added to the queue when they otherwise would not be.
Units That Saw Enemy, But Cannot Move - Units that normally do not move but saw an enemy (example City) will be added to the queue.
Producers - Producing type units are usually not in the queue.
Construction - Units constructing a unit are usually not on the queue.
Road Building/Mine Operations/Exploiting/Dug In - Units with these types of orders or conditions are usually not added to the queue.
Units with Skip Turn Orders - units with skip orders are usually not added to the queue.
Resting Units - Units that are resting are usually not added to the queue.
During a player's Active Turn, the queue can be sorted based on the specified criteria at any point. This sorting will neither add nor remove units in the queue, just simply rearrange them.
A default sorting method can also be chosen, and this method is used to sort the queue after it is built at the beginning of every turn. The options are available from the Control Menu.
The sorting methods are: