Use of Aoe2 Hotkeys?

Hey,

I noticed that hotkeys could really speed up my game and give it a new strategic feel (I think) that I'd really like to acquire to see if it adds significant dimensionality to my experience. Bought AoE2 on steam not so long ago and have been enjoying playing. But I'm plateauing at Moderate on Single Player and have gotten flattened by others in my like 5 games in multiplayer. Plus, I'm starting to feel like getting better in the game (i.e. behaviors I've tried in the past watching some YT tutorials) might be making the game boring for me. My problem is that instead of thinking organically, if I detect f.ex. water early on I'm like "OK Galley rush" and basically play this same game over and over again of getting a bunch of wood and having poor land game. OK what I really mean to say: I fear that getting better in the game is going to turn out to be merely increases in task management efficiency and then basically following algorithms ("Galley rush") vs. actual nuanced strategy that actually unloads the mind's burden of task management a bit to be able to really strategize and have fun.

See, I used to be super into Red Dead Redemption 1 back when people were playing online. IT WAS THE BEST!! The reason is because of the kinesthetic *feel* to it. Once you become adept at knowing how to navigate your local cover situation + rolling and popping off headshots, you can go through a shootout game and just mop your way through. I used to call them/us runners, the people that wouldn't have to take cover but would run all over the map and exploit the shit out the gameplay mechanics.

Pure flow. Pure feeling.

I don't play video games often and the reason is because no where else I've had a similar game experience to Red Dead.

So some Q I have about hotkeys:

- Say I have nothing selected and I'd like to call my scout in Dark Ages. Does it have to be through the group commands? Was kinda hoping I could set a key where I could call f.ex. all villagers with "V" every time I press V. Can anyone who has a special feeling for using groups to micro in battle for example say a bit if you think it improves the feeling of the game more than not using it?

- Being able to speed the game up vs. slow it down with hotkey in single player would be cool. Now the 'hotkeys' menu says "Num-+' f.ex. to speed the game up. So I exit but pressing + doesn't work. What else could Num-+ be?

- Any hotkeys that you guys really appreciate or have interesting things to say about?