Frontkrieg Hotkeys and Controls: Control Groups Explained

Frontkrieg is played from the keyboard as much as the mouse: number keys 1–9 select army control groups, Ctrl+number assigns one, A cycles through your armies, the period key . jumps to the next army sitting without orders, C snaps the camera back to your capital, / opens map search, Esc clears the selection, and ? opens the built-in shortcut list inside the game. The mouse adds three gestures: Shift+drag box-selects several armies at once, Shift+click adds an army to the selection, and right-click opens a quick-order menu on any province. Together they turn long click chains into two or three keystrokes.

This guide is for players who have finished at least one match and noticed that most of their session goes into hunting for the right army across a 4,800-province map rather than making decisions. If you have not played yet, start with the beginner guide and come back here.

The full Frontkrieg hotkey list

Shortcuts fire on the game screen whenever the cursor is not inside a text field — so they never interrupt you while typing in chat or search. Anything held with Alt is ignored outright, so browser shortcuts keep working normally.

• 1–9 — select the army control group stored on that number.
• Ctrl+1…9 (Cmd+1…9 on macOS) — assign the current selection to that group.
• Pressing the same number twice — centre the camera on that group.
• A — cycle forward through your armies; Shift+A — cycle backwards.
• . (period) — jump to the next army that has no orders.
• C — snap the camera to your own capital.
• / — open map search and jump to a province by name.
• Esc — clear the army selection; if a panel is open, it closes first.
• ? — open the in-game help with the hotkey section and the glossary.

Tip: if you forget a combination mid-battle, do not leave the match — press ?. The same list lives in the in-game help, alongside explanations of resources, buildings and units.

Control groups: RTS muscle memory in a slow-burn strategy game

Control groups come from real-time strategy, where a player binds a squad to a number and recalls it with one press (real-time strategy as a genre). Grand strategy games rarely ship them — which is exactly why the players who use them gain an edge.

Assign a group in three seconds

1. Select the armies that operate as one fist: click the first, then Shift+click the rest, or sweep them up with a Shift+drag box.
2. Press Ctrl+1 — that set is now bound to the number 1.
3. For the rest of the match, pressing 1 restores the exact selection no matter where the camera sits.

You get 9 slots. A workable layout for an average match: 1 for the strike force on the main axis, 2 for capital defence, 3 for the fleet or an amphibious group, 4 for aircraft, 5–6 for secondary fronts.

Double-tap moves the camera

Press the same number twice within 350 milliseconds and the camera flies to the group instead of merely selecting it. It is the fastest way to audit a distant front: 2, 2, and you are looking at the divisions guarding your capital.

The same behaviour is available with the mouse. On desktop a row of numbered chips sits above the map: one click selects the group, a double click selects and centres. The row is hidden on phones to save screen space — there you rely on touch gestures, covered in our mobile browser guide.

Groups survive a page reload

Groups are tied to a specific match and stay in place after you refresh the page or come back the next day. Because a single in-game day outlasts one sitting, that persistence matters: a layout built on Monday still works on Wednesday. If an army in a group is destroyed, the slot simply recalls the survivors.

Mouse and touch: three gestures worth learning

Shift+drag — box-select your armies

Hold Shift and drag across the map to draw a selection box that picks up every army of yours inside it. The map does not slide along with the cursor: while Shift is held, dragging means selecting, not panning.

Right-click — the quick-order menu

Right-clicking a province opens the game's own context menu instead of the browser one, so you can issue an order without hunting for the matching panel. That saves two or three clicks per march, and a match contains dozens of marches. For planning the routes themselves, see our guide to troop movement and logistics.

Wheel and pinch — from theatre view to trench view

Zoom runs on the mouse wheel, or a two-finger pinch on touchscreens. The scale range runs from 0.35×, with all of Europe in frame for reading allied fronts, to 9×, where individual counters and exact positions outside a city become visible. Left-drag pans the map.

Three moments where the keyboard saves minutes

The morning check. The goal is to understand overnight changes in five minutes. Tap . repeatedly: the game walks you through every army standing without orders, and each one is a lost day of marching. Then press C to inspect the capital.

Running two fronts. When the war burns in the east and the west at once, keep 1 and 2 as two fists. Switching between them costs one keystroke instead of a long scroll. That is the difference between reinforcing in time and reading about the breakthrough tomorrow. The tactical side of such a transfer is covered in our offensive tactics guide.

Short sessions. If you log in for 20–30 minutes, controls decide how much of that goes into decisions and how much into clicking. Chaining ., control groups and / to jump to a named province roughly halves the routine. The full short-session routine is described in playing 30 minutes a day.

Common control mistakes

• Stuffing everything into one group. A 12-army selection moves as a single block and loses all flexibility. Split by axis — that is what the 9 slots are for.
• Forgetting to refresh a group. After you reinforce an army with fresh recruits, press Ctrl+number again, otherwise the reinforcements stay outside the group.
• Typing with chat open. While the cursor is in a text field the game deliberately ignores shortcuts and you simply type letters. Click the map to return focus.
• Ignoring the period key. An army without orders is the most expensive mistake in a match: your 8 starting provinces only grow through troops that are actually moving.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need hotkeys to win in Frontkrieg?

No. A match runs for days and no decision depends on reaction speed. Shortcuts save time and attention: with up to 500 players and 70 AI nations in a match, the winner is whoever thinks through more moves, not whoever clicks faster.

How do I set a control group?

Select the armies you want (click, Shift+click or Shift+drag), then hold Ctrl and press a number from 1 to 9. From then on, a single press of that number restores the same set of armies.

Do hotkeys work on a phone?

Phones have no physical keyboard, so touch gestures carry the load there: tap to select, pinch to zoom, drag to pan. Connect an external keyboard to a tablet and the shortcuts behave exactly as they do on a desktop.

Where is the shortcut list inside the game?

Press ? on the game screen to open the help panel with its "Hotkeys" section listing every combination. The glossary sits in the same panel; the expanded version lives in our grand strategy glossary.

Summary

Hotkeys in Frontkrieg are not a pro-player gimmick — they are how you spend your session on strategy instead of hunting counters across 4,800 provinces. The minimum worth learning in your first match: Ctrl+1…9 for groups, . for idle armies, C for the capital, / for search and ? for the cheat sheet.

Try one exercise: in your next match bind two groups, one offensive and one defensive, and never look for them with the mouse again. The change of tempo shows up by the second in-game day.

Frontkrieg is free to play in the browser with no pay-to-win shortcuts, and a new match starts every day — join a match. More mechanics breakdowns and history features are collected on our blog.