Feature idea - Automatic steps for build orders based on timings

[lobeu]

I think I have a great additional idea for this.

At the moment you can only manually go to the next step in a build order. If the build order has a lot of steps this can mess up your game.

Wouldn't it be great if it auto-goes to the next step based on the timings added to the steps? I tried this with macro software but it is kind of buggy and it also doesn't follow the correct timings if it's not every 20 seconds for example.

I'll have a try at it but Python is not my main language so bear with me :D

[CraftySalamander]

Thank you for sharing.

This looks a bit similar to the Overwolf app for StarCraft 2 (see here). Something similar could be achieved for AoE4 with a hotkey to start the timer, but I do not think it would work as well as for SC2 for 2 reasons:

• You need BOs with time indications for all the steps, which is optional on all the AoE4 BO websites (only a minority of BOs have them for all the steps).
• In contrast to SC2, maps are randomly generated, which can easily mess with these timings.

A solution which would work is to analyse the villagers count to select the correct step. However, I do not want this feature in the BO overlay because any tool analysing the content of your screen can be considered as borderline cheating (in contrast to the current implementation, which is more a glorified notebook and provides no additional feature compared to a BO website open on a second screen).

But, feel free to experiment with the first solution ;-)

[jensbuehl]

+1 to crafty's comment. Might be a challenge. At some point aoe4 might have extensions points to do such stuff stable and reliable - currently it would be fragile and hacky IMHO.

Wild idea: Next improvement regarding BOs could be getting a meaningful link between the handcrafted BOs and the auto-derived BOs on aoe4world.com.

Would be cool to relate a real game BO to the theoretical optimum. For training purposes we could even derive KPIs like: "You followed the build order 80%, there is a 40 seconds delay here and there that you could improve."