If you want to get good at Age of Empires 2 then one of the most important things to master is the game’s hotkeys and efficiency-boosting features like control groups.
However, there is one extremely frustrating feature in the game that you almost need to unlearn: the default, automatically-enabled feature that means you select all of your villagers when you double-click on one of them.
Unlike hotkeys or control groups, the ability to select all of your villagers by double-clicking is almost always terrible. Competitive players don’t use it for the most part, and I’ve found it to be immensely annoying in my own games- especially as there’s no undo feature.
If you wish for all of your villagers to return to their previous job then you must manually assign them all. Depending on how many villagers you have, this can be a killer task.
Fortunately, there is a way to turn this feature off- and we can even change the default behavior, too! It’s possible to change the feature to select all idle villagers only. Here’s how to turn off double click selecting all villagers in Age of Empires 2.
How to Turn Double Click Selection Off
You can change the double click selection feature quite easily in the settings, although it’s a little hidden away and easy to miss if you don’t know where to find it.
First, click the settings cog on your Age of Empires 2 home screen, then click the Options tab in the menu.
After clicking ‘Options’ you will be given a screen of settings that has multiple tabs at the top. The tab we’re going to need is the 4th tab along on the right hand side, called ‘Game’.
After clicking on ‘Game’ there is only one final thing to do.
On the right hand side of the Game options, navigate to the ‘Villager Double-Click’ option and change it from ‘Select All Villagers’ to ‘Select Only Idle Villagers’.
Or, if you wish for it to have no functionality at all when you double-click a villager, change the option to ‘Disabled’.
All you have to do now is click ‘Confirm’ and your new settings will be good to go.
Oh, and you’ll never need to deal with this issue again! It’s worth doing immediately.
