How to Select Idle Villagers in Age of Empires 2

Villagers in Age of Empires 2 like to slack off after completing their duties. These villagers are considered “idle” and aren’t doing any work at all.

There’s always work to do, so this is unacceptable! Thankfully, there’s a way to quickly select every idle villager at once. This helpful tool will help you put all the lazy bums to work ASAP!

Let’s find out how you can do so.

Selecting All Idle Villagers in Age of Empires 2

Selecting all idle villagers is easy to do on both the PC and Xbox versions of the Definitive Edition.

Players on PC can select them by making use of hotkeys.

By default, pressing the “.” key while holding the “Shift” key will select every idle villager at once. This hotkey should also work for the original PC version of Age of Empires 2.

Note that you can freely modify the default hotkey from the settings anytime you wish. Feel free to modify it if you don’t find it comfortable.

On the Xbox version, you will get a notification telling you that there are idle villagers. When that happens, just press up on the D-Pad to select all of them.

Generally speaking, villagers should rarely idle on the Xbox version of the game. The Xbox version has some automation features that should prevent villagers from idling.

Make sure to set proper priorities for villagers to automate their behavior and prevent idling.

Either way, you now know how to select all idle villagers whenever you want. Put those lazy slobs to work for the greatness of your empire!

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