Settlers II keyboard shortcuts and game speed
Search for "Settlers II cheat codes" long enough and you will find lists of typed sequences from the 1996 original. This port does not have them — not hidden, simply not implemented, for a reason covered at the bottom of this guide. What it does have is a full keyboard layout and a real game-speed system, both listed here exactly as the code dispatches them.
Every key this port binds
| Key(s) | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Scroll the map |
| Z | Zoom in |
| Shift+Z | Zoom out |
| Ctrl+Z | Reset zoom |
| H | Go to headquarters |
| B | Go back to the last position |
| Space | Construction aid on/off |
| C | Building names on/off |
| S | Building productivity on/off |
| L | Map |
| N | Post office |
| I | Stock |
| M | Main selection |
| F12, Q | Options |
| F2 | Save game |
| Enter | Chat (multiplayer) |
| + / = | Game speed up (single player) |
| - / _ | Game speed down (single player) |
| V | Cycle game speed (single player) |
| P | Pause (single player) |
| F8 | Keyboard layout |
| F9 | Readme |
Options answers to two keys, F12 and Q, because the original split them into separate windows this port merged into one panel, and Ctrl+Z is carried over from the original's own "ctrl+z" case as a hard reset to default zoom, not an undo. C and S are the pair worth using together: C labels every building, S overlays its productivity percentage — read that alongside the pile-ups the road network itself shows you, in roads, flags and carriers.
Game speed
Game speed is a single number: the length of one game frame, in milliseconds. The ladder runs from 80ms per frame (slowest) down to 10ms per frame (fastest), moving in 10ms steps. Since 50ms is the reference frame length the rest of the simulation's timing assumes, the fastest setting is 5x that reference speed — the practical ceiling, not an uncapped turbo mode.
+/= and -/_ each move one step and stop dead at either end. V moves
one step too, but wraps instead of stopping: pressed at the fastest setting,
it snaps straight back to the slowest, cycling the whole range from a single
key. All three are single-player only — in multiplayer the frame length is
not a local preference, it is the server's clock.
What's not here
Besides typed cheat codes, a handful of keys from the original are deliberately absent rather than stubbed out: F3's map debug overlay, F10's settings window, F11's music player, the 1–8 replay-player switches, and the replay-only GF-skip and fog-of-war keys — none of them belong in front of a player in a normal game.
The deeper reason: nothing in this simulation may read outside its own seeded state, ever — see Determinism is the feature. A typed cheat that hands you resources or reveals the map is exactly the local side channel that idea rules out. Two players running the same commands from the same seed must reach the same world, and a code word only one of them typed breaks that.