The Gather Point (called Rally Point in Age of Empires IV and Age of Mythology: Retold) is a game feature in all games of the series wherein players set a location from a selected building where they would want a newly created or ungarrisoned unit to automatically go. A Gather Point can be changed or removed at any time. The location of a Gather Point is marked with a small flag, and an "X" mark on the mini map, both only appearing when the respective building(s) has/have been selected. By default, there is no Gather Point set, and units will simply spawn adjacently south of the building until they surround the perimeter of the building.
Gather Points are very effective to reduce the amount of micromanagement needed for units being trained, since they automatically get deployed to a desired location. They are also helpful in micromanaging economy, as setting a Gather Point from a Town Center to a certain resource type makes newly trained Villagers automatically gather resources. For example, if a Town Center Gather Point is set to a Gold Mine, created Villagers will automatically gather gold on the respective Gold Mine. Gather Points also help when replenishing an army as units can be assigned to automatically move to a battlefield to reinforce the armies at battle.
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition[]
With update 125283, when setting gather points, holding Shift will allow spawning units to follow multiple waypoints. Pressing Alt + set gather point hotkey will now set the Gather Point of a building to itself.
Age of Empires III[]
A single building can have two separate gather points for economic and military units, which is most useful for Town Centers and other buildings which can summon Home City Cards. There are also separate economic and military gather point banner objects used for the two points.
Age of Mythology: Retold[]
Rally flags show a golden VFX when assigning a unit to a resource and a blue VFX when rallying into an existing unit's control group. There are also icons for separate economic and military gather points, similar to Age of Empires III, although these appear to be unused. When the gather point is tasked to an attack target (such as an enemy unit, building, or wild animal), a pair of crossed swords appears above the gather point banner object.
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