A few UI ideas

[Bringa]

I'm LOVING Civ 5. I am playing it non-stop. I've really only had it for two nights, but I've already racked up 9 hours of play-time. A LOT of the things that were changed are great--streamlined, simplified, made more relevant--and this mostly extends to the UI (oh how I *love* the F10 view). But there's a few things I think could be improved:

1) When there is something that requires your attention before the round can end, it is displayed in the lower right hand corner where normally the "NEXT ROUND" button would be. This is great, keeping you from missing important announcements. However, in the interest of streamlining input, pressing return should function in the same way as clicking whatever notification is displayed instead of "NEXT ROUND". So for instance, if there's a "UNIT NEEDS ORDERS" notification, pressing return should select that unit and jump to it.

2) Hovering the mouse over a territory tile that belongs to another player should bring up that information in the tooltip (think "100% Russian" from Civ 4)

3) Hovering over the unit icon in the F10 strategic view should display the description of that unit, as it does in the normal world view ("German spearman")

4) The description for an enemy unit should include its base strength, even if you don't have a military unit of your own selected.

5) When a city is starving, I would like to be able to see how many turns I have before I lose a point of population.

Not sure how many of these could be addressed with mods, but I think there's a good chance Firaxis might still implement small tweaks in their UI, seeing how it's early days for Civ 5.

 

[Craftsman]

Great thread! Your sugestions are extremely relevant.

If you don't mind, I will continue your wish list with my sugestions for the UI.

6) Re-add the Clock! (Specific thread here.)

7) Better way to select a unit from stacked units. Currently, it's difficult to select a civilian unit that is "under" a military unit (the only situation allowed for stacked units).

8) Allow unlimited stacking of civilian units, in any hex, including inside our cities (it's a pain to receive that annoying message "Move Stacked Unit", when a GP is born, and to have to move it right into the battlefield - already cluttered with military units). Also, it's a pain to have our workers wandering on the same battlefield, unable to protect themselves in a city.

9) Toggle button (just like the one for the strategic view) to activate/deactivate a "Grayscale Battlefield". This would turn only the landscape into grayscale (it would be easy, since now the art is just painted), leaving only the cities and the units in full color. During city sieges, or major battles, it would be much easier, IMO, to see and to organize the tactical placement of the units.

That's it, for now.

 

[matt94]

I fully agree with all of these! here are some more!

10. add an info screen that shows which civs are protecting which city states(how am I supposed to know who announced they were protecting a city state thousands of years later when I’m deciding to attack!?)
11. fix the intro movie or allow me to turn it off(I think everyone has this problem)
12. show civs relations to me!
13. show what a pact of cooperation and pact of secrecy does and/or add better diplomacy options
14. be more exact with info like and use numbers instead of “increase” or “decrease”( we are not afraid of a few numbers!)

This one is more gameplay but...
15. allow some sort of way to change social polices(would add a lot more strategy. I think a 3 turn revolution+ resetting all culture points would be good. like you would have to get 15 again than 30 ect. and build up your tree again.)

 

[Craftsman]

Indeed! I fully agree with your sugestions!

Also, about the Civs' agreements, there is at least a case when an Open Borders agreement isn't shown - I will post a bug report in the apropriate thread later.

As for the intro movie (#11), there's an ".ini" file (sorry, I don't remember which one) where you can set a SkipIntro to 1 (true). The problem is, in fact, that the intro movie is a big fat loading screen - that's why it is useless to press ESC, SPACE, ENTER, whatever, until the end of the hidden game loading process. Thus, without the intro movie, you'll just have a black screen without any "loading" indicator.

Best regards!

 

[Wirapuru]

Liked most of them, and forward to mod if anyone doesn't do before. But, some of them I think:

2. This happens if you keep the mouse there for a bit more time. It's not intuitive as it should be but works. I would put in the first tooltip though.

6. As said at the linked thread, they have done an "example mod" that re-adds it, but if you want ONLY the clock back you have to lose achievements, since when you're playing mods the game disables it. Not worth it for me =/ maybe we we have an UI overhaul, or they flag mods as "achievements-friendly" (more on that here)

I'm more worried about the lack of useful and interesting stats like the ones matt94 said. I'm really missing objective information screens and unique ones like the "always-present-in-all-civ-games-and-could-not-EVER-been-left-off" Top 5 cities.

Right now I'm researching ways to create good stats screens, if possible (which seem to be so far).

 

[Craftsman]

2. This happens if you keep the mouse there for a bit more time. It's not intuitive as it should be but works. I would put in the first tooltip though.

About #2: in fact, we can adjust the time lag of the mouseover (default == 1.5 seconds). But the problem with this tool is that sometimes the information is incomplete. We can see that there's a border right there (sometimes, the border colors aren't very distinct, and the city is still under the FOW), but when we check the hex with the mouseover, only its yield information appears.

I am just wondering if this is on purpose, because if you don't know which city (and who owns it) is hidden under the FOW, you may not have that information yet. But, IMO, this is a lame excuse, as the game has already given part of the information to us: the color of the foreign border.

Best regards!

 

[.plaid]

16. I'd like very much for units that need orders to be handled via proximity. I have, on several occasions, manually selected unit groups that are near each other (but far away from other unit groups) in the hope that I can process those units in that same order on subsequent turns. The order gets lost within a few turns and I end up being automatically bounced around the map, including back and forth. Very distracting & frustrating.

17. Please don't show NEXT ROUND until all units that need orders have been given an order (even if that order is to do nothing). It's disconcerting to click the NEXT ROUND button only to be taken to a unit that I missed. I don't mind being taken to that unit, but there's no reason for the game to think that my round is over in that case.

18. Allow individual units & cities to be assigned shortcut keys. I have limited success with clicking the right spot on the minimap, and scrolling is slow and semi-broken as discussed in another thread in this section (admittedly my issue is on the right side of the screen as the cursor scrolls off the window and on to my 2nd monitor).

19. More cowbell!

20. Since combat & non-combat units can stack, tiles that contain combat units should be available for improvement. This is of particular concern when making roads near city states or trying to improve tiles occupied by units from civs with whom I have open borders. They come, they loiter, I can't get anything done.

These are the things that have made me yell at the game so far; otherwise: a pretty good game.

 

[Sc0rp1us]

@17 I usually find that happens because units following a multiple-turn move are dealt with after you hit next turn, and find they can't reach their destination. Instead of losing any remaining movement, the game allows you to give the unit new orders.

21. Allow me to at least look at the loaction of a gifted city before I choose what to do with it. Twice now I've been offered a city in exchange for peace, but when being asked whether to raze, annex or puppet it I can't see it's location. I puppet the city, and then find it's exactly one tile out of reach of a resource I'd really like, and in the way of where I'd ideally put a city Had I known, I'd have just razed it

Edit: Scratch 21, and who do at Firaxis do I send my thanks to? Selecting Raze city gives you 1 (or more) turns to change your mind, but you get an annexed city and not a puppet. However, a puppeted city that then gets annexed can still be razed, even umpteen turns later! I love this!

 

[matt94]

all of these are great!

@17 as scorplus said, the next turn button is actually a trigger for units whos orders were give in previous turns. This is good because unlike civ 4 where those orders could be done at any time, in this game you have the whole turn to decide if you want to change them, although they should really replace "next turn" with something like "complete orders" or something

@19 no idea what this means

I hope modders are reading this because Im pretty sure firaxis isn't going to do any of these!

 

[Sodavich]

@10 - The whole diplomacy overview needs a major overhaul. I'm not clear why they discarded the "quilting circle" kind of display from Civ IV. As it is, it's quite difficult to visualize everyone's connections with everyone else, and yes, which city-states are in whose pockets.

 

[PWH]

Civ 5 to me plays more like Civ 3 with the maintenance cost system, the culture expanding being more staggered, I rather not automate workers, &c...

Not really my point because I'm perfectly fine with the core game changes.

I think Civ4 BTS has so far been the best version of the game and I think certain features from that expansion are missing in the vanilla version of this game. I know it is a trend of the series to strip down the game down to the new core system. I'm cool with that because I believe a solid core game helps develop better mods. However, I still think certain changes to the core need to be made that existed in BTS.

This thread has some good suggestions. The clock back in and better feedback of how other civs are reacting and interacting with you to name a few. Just so you know, I have no idea the cause of any war on me in my first civ 5 game. I was just being awesome I guess.

I figured this would be the best place to add a few more. I also endorse the Holy City States thread and would add here that even non Holy City States should take on religion and complicate world politics more. Other then that I like where that is heading.

After completing one game on the huge earth map where I was in east Asia, I've been able to come up with a basic critique of the new installment.

The battle system is great. The fact that my military can be in Europe and Africa while two units protect my civ back in Asia is awesome. I have always wanted a system where you can go on conquest or concentrate your military at strategic points and not have to defend every city or poor all your production towards military. If your military goes too far, then you choose between losing newly gained territory or marching your whole military back to defend.

I only two suggestions for the system: 1) Production time of units, even on a standard time game, is too long. Building and wonders are great, they should take longer. However in my game I was forced to take over Europe with 2 mech infs vs maybe 6 units. Some which may of been workers. We're not reaching the full potential of this battle system. 2) More strategic resources and make them yield less troops. An iron square, 2 troops or maybe some iron yields only 1. Cutting trees needed to make Archers and catapults. Tie in the need for resources into the race for the biggest/strongest army.

In civ 4 I remember always choosing the same civics at the same points during the game. It didn't add much to the gameplay. So social polices are great. They make culture victory a lot better and I see how the system allows for a lot of variation between games, but something is lacking. I can't name it right now, but it sparked an idea: Civ 4 had a lacking system... Civ 5 has a lacking system. Why not just add Civics to conflict with social polices. The needs of the state conflict with the people. Social polices once adopted stay unchanged, but Civics can change. Certain Civics have bonuses for certain social polices and negative effects on others. Now we are adding strategy to the game.

Science pacts are an awesome way of dealing with tech trading. Only one minor change. If you join a pact, and a nation declares war on you. Then you choose a technology of theirs to learn and if you declare war vice versa. This way a pact becomes a peace treaty as well. Who wants to give up a free tech, no one. Not unless you can take a nation without worrying, but that can backfire. Maybe add tech trading back in as well, but exclude all research pact gained techs.

Trade Maps and satellites tech reveals map back in.
Sell buildings so you can reduce maintenance costs, but increase unhappiness
Espionage as it was in BTS back in. Tweak if you can, but awesome.

Corporations back in. If resources are limited more, the benefit of Corps is to maximize the resources and trade them. Every civ builds it's own corporation. You can have different management types that determine benefits & negative effects of using Corps such as extra/minus cash, happiness, culture, Science, &c... Tie this into a global trade market system. If 5 civs have their corps up and running then they can trade in a market something like oil. Lets say 1 civ has 1 troop worth of oil, another 0, another 8, another 5, another 14 &c... The Civs with extra can put oil on the market and gain their chosen benefit depending how how many Civs exchange their negative modifier for it. The ones putting oil in spilt the benefit put in depending on how much they put in the market. If too much is on the market, the cost of the civ buying is lower and the benefit lower. Relations between Civs can get if your overloading the market or not putting enough in. Causing a different late game feel then the early game. Having a corporate system like this would then allow bigger Civs with money or happiness problems or Smaller Civs that need more science or culture with certain resources to team up and extort each others lack of certain resources. However, depending on all the resource rich Civs, the market can backfire and lead to war or no benefit for giving up good resources. Can work with both strategic and luxury resources.

That's about it for me. I'll go enjoy more Civ 5 and leave these suggestions to be judged.

 

[Craftsman]

Civ 5 to me plays more like Civ 3...

Spoiler :

with the maintenance cost system, the culture expanding being more staggered, I rather not automate workers, &c...

Not really my point because I'm perfectly fine with the core game changes.

I think Civ4 BTS has so far been the best version of the game and I think certain features from that expansion are missing in the vanilla version of this game. I know it is a trend of the series to strip down the game down to the new core system. I'm cool with that because I believe a solid core game helps develop better mods. However, I still think certain changes to the core need to be made that existed in BTS.

This thread has some good suggestions. The clock back in and better feedback of how other civs are reacting and interacting with you to name a few. Just so you know, I have no idea the cause of any war on me in my first civ 5 game. I was just being awesome I guess.

I figured this would be the best place to add a few more. I also endorse the Holy City States thread and would add here that even non Holy City States should take on religion and complicate world politics more. Other then that I like where that is heading.

After completing one game on the huge earth map where I was in east Asia, I've been able to come up with a basic critique of the new installment.

The battle system is great. The fact that my military can be in Europe and Africa while two units protect my civ back in Asia is awesome. I have always wanted a system where you can go on conquest or concentrate your military at strategic points and not have to defend every city or poor all your production towards military. If your military goes too far, then you choose between losing newly gained territory or marching your whole military back to defend.

I only two suggestions for the system: 1) Production time of units, even on a standard time game, is too long. Building and wonders are great, they should take longer. However in my game I was forced to take over Europe with 2 mech infs vs maybe 6 units. Some which may of been workers. We're not reaching the full potential of this battle system. 2) More strategic resources and make them yield less troops. An iron square, 2 troops or maybe some iron yields only 1. Cutting trees needed to make Archers and catapults. Tie in the need for resources into the race for the biggest/strongest army.

In civ 4 I remember always choosing the same civics at the same points during the game. It didn't add much to the gameplay. So social polices are great. They make culture victory a lot better and I see how the system allows for a lot of variation between games, but something is lacking. I can't name it right now, but it sparked an idea: Civ 4 had a lacking system... Civ 5 has a lacking system. Why not just add Civics to conflict with social polices. The needs of the state conflict with the people. Social polices once adopted stay unchanged, but Civics can change. Certain Civics have bonuses for certain social polices and negative effects on others. Now we are adding strategy to the game.

Science pacts are an awesome way of dealing with tech trading. Only one minor change. If you join a pact, and a nation declares war on you. Then you choose a technology of theirs to learn and if you declare war vice versa. This way a pact becomes a peace treaty as well. Who wants to give up a free tech, no one. Not unless you can take a nation without worrying, but that can backfire. Maybe add tech trading back in as well, but exclude all research pact gained techs.

Trade Maps and satellites tech reveals map back in.
Sell buildings so you can reduce maintenance costs, but increase unhappiness
Espionage as it was in BTS back in. Tweak if you can, but awesome.

Corporations back in. If resources are limited more, the benefit of Corps is to maximize the resources and trade them. Every civ builds it's own corporation. You can have different management types that determine benefits & negative effects of using Corps such as extra/minus cash, happiness, culture, Science, &c... Tie this into a global trade market system. If 5 civs have their corps up and running then they can trade in a market something like oil. Lets say 1 civ has 1 troop worth of oil, another 0, another 8, another 5, another 14 &c... The Civs with extra can put oil on the market and gain their chosen benefit depending how how many Civs exchange their negative modifier for it. The ones putting oil in spilt the benefit put in depending on how much they put in the market. If too much is on the market, the cost of the civ buying is lower and the benefit lower. Relations between Civs can get if your overloading the market or not putting enough in. Causing a different late game feel then the early game. Having a corporate system like this would then allow bigger Civs with money or happiness problems or Smaller Civs that need more science or culture with certain resources to team up and extort each others lack of certain resources. However, depending on all the resource rich Civs, the market can backfire and lead to war or no benefit for giving up good resources. Can work with both strategic and luxury resources.

That's about it for me. I'll go enjoy more Civ 5 and leave these suggestions to be judged.

IMO, you post is great, but I feel that it would be better on its own thread, in "Civ 5 Discussions -> Civ - Ideas & Suggestions", using your post's title: "First reaction and suggestions for CIV 5".

And welcome to Civfanatics!

Back to the UI wish list:

@19 - What the... ?

Since the old #21 was scratched by Sc0rp1us, here we go again.

21) New button, or "shift+right mouse button", to dismiss *all* notifications (at the right of the screen) at the same time.

22) Sort the (kind of useless) advisor's messages (at their screen) in a priority list, using red font for urgent messages, yellow for not-so-urgent messages and green for good news (more relevant and objective informations would be a plus!).

23) Button to summon any of the advisors at the diplomacy screen (when facing another civ), to consult them about matters related to that civ (Pleeease! More relevant and objective informations, advisors!).

24) Context menu to select a unit from stacked units. I realized that we have to continously left-click to select a civilian unit that is "under" a military unit. Considering sugestion #8, a context menu would be handy.

25) Option to select multiple units and to move them to another location (specific thread here). Yes, I know this would be a little tricky for the devs, but this could be handled just as it is now, when a unit that is moving during multiple turns realizes that its destination is occupied: one of the selected units would park in the selected destination and the others would park on the hexes just behind the first unit. The maximum distance would be of the slower unit. It would be very easy to advance our frontline troops like a wave across the battlefield. Another example: in my first game, I had to deal with four ships (Caravel, Worker, Musketman, Settler) half way across the globe, moving one unit at a time. What should be a simple task (moving a bunch of units from point A to point B, turns out to be a very time consuming task that punishes our mouse controlling hand. It would a lot easier to select all of them and move them to a destination at the maximum distance of the slower unit (in this case, the embarked land units).

26) Clear highlighting of the resources' icons, both on the main and on the strategic map: a red circle around strategic resources' icons; a yellow circle around luxury resources' icons; and a green circle around food resources' icons.

Best regards!

 

[PieceOfMind]

<snip>

That's about it for me. I'll go enjoy more Civ 5 and leave these suggestions to be judged.

This really isn't the right thread to be making gameplay change suggestions. It's about UI ideas. (User Interface)

 

[matt94]

right I dont think we should go into gameplay changes in this thread but I would like to just say about how you mentioned making a penalty for starting a war after making a research agreement. I disagree because the penalty is already there, you will not get the random tech you already paid for.

 

[grandad1982]

I totally agree with the City state protection thing!

27) Give me back the ability to place signs!

28) Add a BUG like dot map tool

 

[marekb]

29) I would like to have a notification when some civilization can trade new resource or sign research pact.

30) More information about UU/UB when starting a game (its stats, what they replace, etc.)

31) In advance setup: give informations about age of the world, rainfalls, etc. This screen in CIV IV was much more informative.

 

[r_rolo1]

32) Intel on the tech pace inside the city screen . Simple: it makes far easier to feel the influence on the tech pace of the decisions made at city level ( example: specialist hiring )

33) Put the turns needed to heal in the hover of the heal action : this is critical intel and no one will do that kind of math during war

34) Put the spec slots of the same type together : heavens, who had the stupid idea of dividing them by buildings and, to add shame to injury, to put those buildings by alphabetic order?

35) Make the symbol for worked tile inside the city screen less obtrusive - self explanatory. Even making it half transparent unless you hover it would make wonders ...

36) Give some kind of sign in the map view and in strategic view that a tile is being worked - it evens looks better But the main reason is streamlining the acess to that intel ... no need to go to the city screen just for that.

37) make panels resizable at will or atleast make them scale with resolution -self explanatory. People might like to see the map when they are playing in a 15'' laptop

That is all for now . Will surely think on more

 

[matt94]

38. Make the symbol for hammers, gold, and beakers like civ 4. They all look to similar in civ5!

 

[Ktulu]

39. When clicking "choose production" it should open the city screen (this could be optional for those that don't want it) instead of zooming to the city and only showing production options. If you're taking me to the city anyway you may as well give me all the info on the city.

40. When entering the city screen the view should be zoomed in, not all the way out.

41. Add a "border pop" notification when a city gains a new tile via culture.

42. On the main view, display how many turns until a city will gain a tile via culture.

 

[Kolath]

A few more interface mod ideas taken from my post in the mod component sticky...

43. Add "net gold" column to economic advisor to show gold minus building maintenance per city
44. Add "building maintenance" column to the economic advisor so you can see how much maintenance a city contributes
45. Mod the Civ4 relationship web back into the diplomacy advisor or at least some better way of seeing who is doing what to other empires
46. Add "estimated maintenance" entry when constructing units to give an idea of how much they will cost
47. Shade tiles or darken the range border for "rebase" air unit mission. The current pale blue line at the edge of their range is hard to see
48. Add a range border for the "air sweep" mission for air units. There doesn't appear to be any indicator of how far you can go
49. Add "small science" info bar: remove the technology icon and progress circle and just show a progress bar with text
50. Add option to turn off unit animations during combat (specifically thinking of the unbearably long bomber animations)
51. When viewing plot yield icons on the map or strat map, somehow differentiate worked from unworked tiles (in Civ4 the worked icons were slightly larger)