Let's talk UI

[Rosty K]

0. True.
1. Select any unit, click on it's name.
2. Typically when they reach their home city, short routes might travel more than once.
3. Not sure where you'd want this for, but you can just select a spy. Typically it's when you're planning a new district, and in that case you're looking at your city anyways, and for ED and IZ you'll have to look at their exact position anyways.
4. There's no "alert" function? (I'll admit, I never bother with religion myself, and even when I do it's just "all send them forward right now")
5. Even when you have no religion yourself? Besides, I think you'd get spammed with messages anyways.
6. They cut it because it's sooooooo much of your camera moving and showing stuff that can be done faster if they don't show it. You can move the camera around in the warzone if you want anyways, and for the rest of the map their positions are all that matters.

1. I very much expect them to add it sometime, it won't be the first time they add stuff from mods. Remember that range can vary though.
2. Mouse over the tooltip, it shows the adjacency bonus plus what you get from city-states.

2. I know they can go multiple times. I want to know when I can reassign a trader next time.
3. I'd like in in the form of 'you have 5 Harbors, 3 Industrial Zones, 3 Theater Districts and 4 of what's the plural for 'Campus'...
4. No, only sleep. Also, the standard 'alert' thing won't work when you're not at war with the owner of the approaching unit anyway.
5. Well, that's a problem. Though scanning my borders for religious visitors every couple of turns is annoying.
6. Same here, somehow it's annoying to scan, and sometimes the AI does build ships, which can then pop up and pillage in very unexpected places. And I'm not saying they should make it a default, it can be an option which you can turn on and off.

2. Well, I might have worded it slightly wrong. Can we see what effect will putting a new district (or improvement or wonder) have on existing adjacent ones?

 

[Balkans]

I actually think it's fine. I never miss any information, and I don't feel like it's making me do more than needed. If anything, the UI feels very efficient to me. Everything that needs to be there is there, but it's not crowded out by other stuff.

I know many people disagree with me, however, so please, explain.

I am stunned by your first line. It's wrong on so many levels. As for me to start the explaining why i think it's so is pointless and tedious. Every single bit of UI problems is well documented, you just need to read through it. I just don't understand how you don't feel that there are horribly designed parts of UI through your playing. Half of game energy for me goes to clicking back and forth through horrible UI trying to muster up some data to help my game and you think it's fine. Not sure if you don't understand what the concepts around UI are or i know too much about it and what it should be like. Nothing personal, but it's almost a crime to call CiV VI UI fine.

 

[Maximo the Xth]

Duplicate copies appear as a number in the box with the luxery resource icon. As for duplicate copies from trade, they don't appear because trade deals last 30 turns, so you lose them before your next deal ends. Can't trade away what you're getting in a trade.

But that's only for luxuries you have connected yourself. If you have an active trade deal with civilization X that gives you for example spices and you want to negotiate with civilization Y you won't see anything, not even the slightest clue about that trade deal with civ X. So civ Y can offer you spices and you cannot know whether you own them already or not. The same with luxuries from city states.

 

[bbbt]

I do like a decent bit about the UI initial design, but a lot of it feels unfinished. I do prefer a less is more approach in general (CQUI is too busy for me, though not nearly as bad as EUI was for civ 5).

However, it's still far from perfect. My outstanding (unmodded/Vanilla) issues, just off the top of my head:

1) No production queue
2) Sortable trade routes
3) I want a clickable, sortable city list like in Civ 5 - where I can sort to find my highest production city and click to go there. The city reports doesn't cut it. It's not a UI, it's just a barely qualified data dump.
4) All those notification messages blocking the screen off turn. I want to be able to watch the combat between the AI and my troops. Instead, it centers on the combat, and then sticks up a giant text box telling me about the combat ('Your archers has been bombarded by a city center' or whatever') blocking my view of the combat. That's horrible UI.
5) I find it hard to select units sometimes, almost like the 'clickable' outline of the unit is not correctly mapped to the unit. I often have to zoom in to be able to click on the unit correctly. The worst offender: if I have a ranged unit in a city and there's the city attack button: clicking on the city attack button first (to use it to fire first, not the ranged unit) is nearly impossible without almost completely zooming in. It happens other times too, like when I'm trying to aim at a unit.
6) You definitely need to be able to see what luxuries you already have in the trade screen. Heck, it's hard enough to see even outside of the trade screen (they are tiny little icons at the bottom of the city reports). The AI absolutely offers you luxuries you already have.
7) Additionally, it would be nice to be able to see a civ relationships to other civs from the trade screen when a joint war is offered for instance. That was asked for in Civ 5 too though.
8) There's no 'overview' of diplomacy: want to find out which civs are at war? You have to click through every single one of them. Want a lot of the info on a particular civ? You have to scroll through all the 'gossip' messages, there's no centralized place for it. It's a little odd, as they put in this whole diplomatic access levels system, and then really obscured it's usefulness by hiding or not reveal a lot of information.
9) Minor one: on the Civ loading screen, in prior games you could mouse over the unique units/buildings/etc. to get info about them. Not in 6.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

A 'back' button in the Civilopedia would definitely be very nice...

EDIT: Also a way to disable ALL Civ animations. Why do I have to wait 5 seconds to be able to say 'Goodbye' when an AI pops up to inform me of some useless opinion of theirs?

 

[kaspergm]

1) No production queue
2) Sortable trade routes
3) I want a clickable, sortable city list like in Civ 5 - where I can sort to find my highest production city and click to go there. The city reports doesn't cut it. It's not a UI, it's just a barely qualified data dump.
4) All those notification messages blocking the screen off turn. I want to be able to watch the combat between the AI and my troops. Instead, it centers on the combat, and then sticks up a giant text box telling me about the combat ('Your archers has been bombarded by a city center' or whatever') blocking my view of the combat. That's horrible UI.
5) I find it hard to select units sometimes, almost like the 'clickable' outline of the unit is not correctly mapped to the unit. I often have to zoom in to be able to click on the unit correctly. The worst offender: if I have a ranged unit in a city and there's the city attack button: clicking on the city attack button first (to use it to fire first, not the ranged unit) is nearly impossible without almost completely zooming in. It happens other times too, like when I'm trying to aim at a unit.
6) You definitely need to be able to see what luxuries you already have in the trade screen. Heck, it's hard enough to see even outside of the trade screen (they are tiny little icons at the bottom of the city reports). The AI absolutely offers you luxuries you already have.
7) Additionally, it would be nice to be able to see a civ relationships to other civs from the trade screen when a joint war is offered for instance. That was asked for in Civ 5 too though.
8) There's no 'overview' of diplomacy: want to find out which civs are at war? You have to click through every single one of them. Want a lot of the info on a particular civ? You have to scroll through all the 'gossip' messages, there's no centralized place for it. It's a little odd, as they put in this whole diplomatic access levels system, and then really obscured it's usefulness by hiding or not reveal a lot of information.
9) Minor one: on the Civ loading screen, in prior games you could mouse over the unique units/buildings/etc. to get info about them. Not in 6.

I agree with all of these points. Several of them are fixed with CQUI which I really like, but I get your point about some UI mods being too busy - I didn't use EUI for Civ5 for the same reason.

Anyway, one point I really feel missing from your list:

10) No clickable notification about barb camps, in fact, no notification what so ever about barb camps apart from the drum sound. I mean, that's just criminal, considering there are actually some of us playing without sound. And even if I do have sound on, it's annoying bordering on absurd having to spend time searching the map, only to find that oh, it was on a different continent on the other side of the world.

 

[Leyrann]

2. I know they can go multiple times. I want to know when I can reassign a trader next time.
3. I'd like in in the form of 'you have 5 Harbors, 3 Industrial Zones, 3 Theater Districts and 4 of what's the plural for 'Campus'...
4. No, only sleep. Also, the standard 'alert' thing won't work when you're not at war with the owner of the approaching unit anyway.
5. Well, that's a problem. Though scanning my borders for religious visitors every couple of turns is annoying.
6. Same here, somehow it's annoying to scan, and sometimes the AI does build ships, which can then pop up and pillage in very unexpected places. And I'm not saying they should make it a default, it can be an option which you can turn on and off.

2. Well, I might have worded it slightly wrong. Can we see what effect will putting a new district (or improvement or wonder) have on existing adjacent ones?

2. How would you put it in? Not saying that I think it's not possible or something, just wondering.
3. I suppose opinions might differ on this, but why would it be important to know this apart from which districts got discounts (which is something easily visible in any city)? I typically just build districts if I want more of whatever they give.

2. These effects are very simple though; wonders give +1 culture to Theater Squares, and all districts give their adjacent districts (of the types that grant yields) +0.5 of the yield, rounded down. If you can count wheter a district currently has an even or odd amount of districts next to it, you can figure out wheter it gives you +1 or not. And of course features like rainforest are removed.

I am stunned by your first line. It's wrong on so many levels. As for me to start the explaining why i think it's so is pointless and tedious. Every single bit of UI problems is well documented, you just need to read through it. I just don't understand how you don't feel that there are horribly designed parts of UI through your playing. Half of game energy for me goes to clicking back and forth through horrible UI trying to muster up some data to help my game and you think it's fine. Not sure if you don't understand what the concepts around UI are or i know too much about it and what it should be like. Nothing personal, but it's almost a crime to call CiV VI UI fine.

I am stunned by your second line. You assume your opinion is hard fact, which stands squarely against the whole point of this thread. As for the "well documented UI problems", it's all kinds of little things in a thousand different threads. I made this thread with the intention to have a single thread discussing the UI. If you're talking about tedious, that's the reason I made this thread.

So please, either comment in a way that contributes to the discussion, or don't comment at all.

I do like a decent bit about the UI initial design, but a lot of it feels unfinished. I do prefer a less is more approach in general (CQUI is too busy for me, though not nearly as bad as EUI was for civ 5).

However, it's still far from perfect. My outstanding (unmodded/Vanilla) issues, just off the top of my head:

1) No production queue
2) Sortable trade routes
3) I want a clickable, sortable city list like in Civ 5 - where I can sort to find my highest production city and click to go there. The city reports doesn't cut it. It's not a UI, it's just a barely qualified data dump.
4) All those notification messages blocking the screen off turn. I want to be able to watch the combat between the AI and my troops. Instead, it centers on the combat, and then sticks up a giant text box telling me about the combat ('Your archers has been bombarded by a city center' or whatever') blocking my view of the combat. That's horrible UI.
5) I find it hard to select units sometimes, almost like the 'clickable' outline of the unit is not correctly mapped to the unit. I often have to zoom in to be able to click on the unit correctly. The worst offender: if I have a ranged unit in a city and there's the city attack button: clicking on the city attack button first (to use it to fire first, not the ranged unit) is nearly impossible without almost completely zooming in. It happens other times too, like when I'm trying to aim at a unit.
6) You definitely need to be able to see what luxuries you already have in the trade screen. Heck, it's hard enough to see even outside of the trade screen (they are tiny little icons at the bottom of the city reports). The AI absolutely offers you luxuries you already have.
7) Additionally, it would be nice to be able to see a civ relationships to other civs from the trade screen when a joint war is offered for instance. That was asked for in Civ 5 too though.
8) There's no 'overview' of diplomacy: want to find out which civs are at war? You have to click through every single one of them. Want a lot of the info on a particular civ? You have to scroll through all the 'gossip' messages, there's no centralized place for it. It's a little odd, as they put in this whole diplomatic access levels system, and then really obscured it's usefulness by hiding or not reveal a lot of information.
9) Minor one: on the Civ loading screen, in prior games you could mouse over the unique units/buildings/etc. to get info about them. Not in 6.

Just taking out the ones that I haven't talked about in my prior posts but do want to mention:

2. I can see this one. Was it there in Civ V? Because I honestly can't remember...
4. Gotta agree on this one, it would be better if the rumours weren't so much in the middle of the screen.
5. Agreed about the ranged city attacks, but I don't recognize the "selecting a unit" at all. Don't think I've had that happen even once. Only that if a unit is walking, I need to click on it's destination to select it again, not the place it currently is, but that's very minor and only if I'm moving many units in the same turn over big distances (I use a mod that reduces movement cost on roads).
6. You can see your own luxeries, as for luxeries you got from other civs, that's a hard one to show at all. It certainly wasn't there in Civ V, or if it was it didn't tell you that it was one you got from a trade deal. I don't see a way to show them without having to create a new menu. Might be the best option, but it will make the screen more crowded, and if there is one thing I like about Civ VI it's that the screens aren't crowded.

Oh and I very much agree about CQUI by the way. I've used it for a (very) short time, but I vastly prefer the base game UI.

 

[Victoria]

The diplomacy screen is a good example

For a start I have no idea when my declaration of friendship is going to end

One of many similar example is I want to know who is best to denounce, I have to click through every player to do so. And remembering who likes/dislikes between screens is just stupid.

Worse, I want to know which civs have what warmonger feelings toward me I have to drill in 2 screens for each and remember

A decent diplomacy screen would be rather useful.

There is loads of information, it's fairly impressive but lacks in areas. Reports with sort and filter would be handy.

Ergonomically it just wears your hand out. Designed by an RSI specialist

 

[Hammurabbit]

Interesting thread. Personally I really like CQUI, it fixes and improves the UI.
Some of my issues (CQUI fixes some of them)
- A clear way of getting out of a move state of a unit. Example: I select a unit and press the Move icon (or 'm'-key). I'm now in "move"-mode and I can see suggester routes as I'm hovering over the tiles. Let's say I want select another unit? Do I dare to click on another unit to change selection, or will that result in my currently selected unit? Or can i exit the "move"-state and go back to selecting units, clicking icons? etc, etc. This state handling is very unclear, and even if I know there is way out of the "move"-mode, I cannot recall it now, and I often find myself worrying about if I click on anything on the screen while in move mode ("you better not start moving...").
- The policy screen is a mess. Small texts, often small differences in text ("Classical" vs "Ancient" vs"Modern" etc). Why not some better iconography and grouping options? Also, I often find myself going back between policy screens, wikipedia and tech trees to understand if I can use e.g. a wonder policy card to improve production on a specific wonder or if units. ("What era is this wonder from?"->Find wonder in civilopedia to understand which tech/civic advancement that enables it->open tree to find which era that tech belongs to).
- I also often find myself doing "mental notes" about my future policies ("Next time I finish a civic I must not forget to change to this and that policy"), and then I forget, as its sometime 8-10 turns away. Or I might even save and quit the game, and next time I start i forgot completely. A solution could be a place to put "candidate policies" that I should consider in the next policy switch.
- Without CQUI the city state screen is extremely poorly designed. Typical example: I get a few new envoys. I immediately put a few envoys to win back suzerainship on one city state i just lost. Where should I put the rest? Is anyone threatening my suzerainship in another city state? click on city state, then click once again to see who is influencing it. Exit back to city state list. Now my initially added envoys are reset. CQUI solves this perfectly, by displaying all info on first screen (who is influencing, who is challenging, how many envoys are needed to become influencer).
- I also think CQUI really improves game experience with for example iconifying who is suzerain of city states. This visualises better how suzerainship can be an important strategic element and inspires a more detailed game play.

 

[Leyrann]

The diplomacy screen is a good example

For a start I have no idea when my declaration of friendship is going to end

One of many similar example is I want to know who is best to denounce, I have to click through every player to do so. And remembering who likes/dislikes between screens is just stupid.

Worse, I want to know which civs have what warmonger feelings toward me I have to drill in 2 screens for each and remember

A decent diplomacy screen would be rather useful.

There is loads of information, it's fairly impressive but lacks in areas. Reports with sort and filter would be handy.

Ergonomically it just wears your hand out. Designed by an RSI specialist

DoF ending: I guess this is just the same as with trade deals; a timer for when a deal ends.

As for who to denounce (btw, quite sociopathic to denounce based on who will like you the most for it ), how could that be done differently? The only thing I can think of is a grid where you have all leaders on horizontal and vertical lines and then their relationships in the grids, which, in my opinion, is super ugly.

Interesting thread. Personally I really like CQUI, it fixes and improves the UI.
Some of my issues (CQUI fixes some of them)
- A clear way of getting out of a move state of a unit. Example: I select a unit and press the Move icon (or 'm'-key). I'm now in "move"-mode and I can see suggester routes as I'm hovering over the tiles. Let's say I want select another unit? Do I dare to click on another unit to change selection, or will that result in my currently selected unit? Or can i exit the "move"-state and go back to selecting units, clicking icons? etc, etc. This state handling is very unclear, and even if I know there is way out of the "move"-mode, I cannot recall it now, and I often find myself worrying about if I click on anything on the screen while in move mode ("you better not start moving...").

This is something I don't know at all, as I always just move by right-clicking (as does, I believe, 99% of the community, but everyone their preference I suppose). However, if you're in "move" mode, then you can, assuming it works similar to "ranged attack" mode, get out of it by right-clicking somewhere, while moving is left-clicking.

- The policy screen is a mess. Small texts, often small differences in text ("Classical" vs "Ancient" vs"Modern" etc). Why not some better iconography and grouping options? Also, I often find myself going back between policy screens, wikipedia and tech trees to understand if I can use e.g. a wonder policy card to improve production on a specific wonder or if units. ("What era is this wonder from?"->Find wonder in civilopedia to understand which tech/civic advancement that enables it->open tree to find which era that tech belongs to).

In my opinion this is more a gameplay fail than anything else - A card should simply buff everything from that time and before, as right now a lot of cards become obsolete before the units (or wonders) they buff become obsolete.

That said, a tip for in the meanwhile: The wonder production cards aren't really worth it. Either you're ahead of the AI and you can build wonders without it, or you're not ahead of the AI and the card isn't gonna matter.

- I also often find myself doing "mental notes" about my future policies ("Next time I finish a civic I must not forget to change to this and that policy"), and then I forget, as its sometime 8-10 turns away. Or I might even save and quit the game, and next time I start i forgot completely. A solution could be a place to put "candidate policies" that I should consider in the next policy switch.

This is just a gameplay thing: Part of being good at the game is swapping in and out policies at the right times.

- Without CQUI the city state screen is extremely poorly designed. Typical example: I get a few new envoys. I immediately put a few envoys to win back suzerainship on one city state i just lost. Where should I put the rest? Is anyone threatening my suzerainship in another city state? click on city state, then click once again to see who is influencing it. Exit back to city state list. Now my initially added envoys are reset. CQUI solves this perfectly, by displaying all info on first screen (who is influencing, who is challenging, how many envoys are needed to become influencer)

I always first check where I want to put my envoys and only then do I actually put them down... But yeah, it's kinda annoying that they reset.

 

[Rosty K]

2. How would you put it in? Not saying that I think it's not possible or something, just wondering.
3. I suppose opinions might differ on this, but why would it be important to know this apart from which districts got discounts (which is something easily visible in any city)? I typically just build districts if I want more of whatever they give.

2. Um well, just add 'K turns left' to the current description of the trade route...
3. Might be unnecessary indeed. Must be some of my personal stuff, like trying to keep about equal amount of campuses and theater squares...

2. These effects are very simple though; wonders give +1 culture to Theater Squares, and all districts give their adjacent districts (of the types that grant yields) +0.5 of the yield, rounded down. If you can count wheter a district currently has an even or odd amount of districts next to it, you can figure out wheter it gives you +1 or not. And of course features like rainforest are removed.

Unless you are Brazil, Greece, Japan, or a bunch more civs, for which all this is completely different

 

[Leyrann]

2. Um well, just add 'K turns left' to the current description of the trade route...
3. Might be unnecessary indeed. Must be some of my personal stuff, like trying to keep about equal amount of campuses and theater squares...



Unless you are Brazil, Greece, Japan, or a bunch more civs, for which all this is completely different

Japan: +1 for every adjacent district instead of +.5, Brazil: Rainforest gives +1, Greece: additional +1 culture for acropolis from adjacent districts.

I admit I had to look Greece up, but if you're playing as them (I didn't play any of these three for something like half a year), then you'll probably read it before the game starts. Still, only one special bonus you have to remember, which I'd argue isn't all that hard and doesn't warrant adding a special mechanic.

Now, if you'd overhaul districts in a way like what I got in my mind, then you whould probably need to add something like this because you'd have over 30 districts and a lot of special interactions of the kind of Hansa getting +2 production from being adjacent to Commercial Hub.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

Japan: +1 for every adjacent district instead of +.5, Brazil: Rainforest gives +1, Greece: additional +1 culture for acropolis from adjacent districts. I admit I had to look Greece up, but if you're playing as them (I didn't play any of these three for something like half a year), then you'll probably read it before the game starts. Still, only one special bonus you have to remember, which I'd argue isn't all that hard and doesn't warrant adding a special mechanic.

Well, under that logic, why does the UI tell us anything about the game at all? Apparently the UI is completely flawless....

Oh, but I'll say it one more time. Just because *you* don't thing it's useful doesn't mean it shouldn't be included if *others* think it's useful. Any information that is presented in a horribly clunky way can be improved, and almost every improvement suggested you have criticized as not being needed, yet someone else wants the information.

Sorry, this will be my last post here since I'm getting *very* frustrated with this thread....

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

1) city bombard. covered a lot
2) units: a usable list of them, who's avail, who's asleep. Who can upgrade? etc. Sort by name, type etc.
2a) units, trade: a LIST of them, sorted by whatever. I prefer sorted by origin city. Showing how long to go, etc.
3) Cities: who has what districts? I really like this with CQUI putting an icon on the city itself.
4) map UI: more lenses, I like the scout one AND the barbarian one. Makes it much faster to find where the barbs are, but really miss the notification from V that would take you there.
5) production queues. omitting those was just wrong.
6) diplomacy. CQUI helps, but the whole thing needs work.

Base UI is usable, but far, far from optimal.

 

[Leyrann]

Well, under that logic, why does the UI tell us anything about the game at all? Apparently the UI is completely flawless....

Oh, but I'll say it one more time. Just because *you* don't thing it's useful doesn't mean it shouldn't be included if *others* think it's useful. Any information that is presented in a horribly clunky way can be improved, and almost every improvement suggested you have criticized as not being needed, yet someone else wants the information.

Sorry, this will be my last post here since I'm getting *very* frustrated with this thread....

If you are under the impression I think the UI is flawless, then you have not been reading this thread. I have conceded a number of points already, and I might just concede more if you come with arguments. Like has happened already. Also, most of the points that people brought up that I have argued against (I would even dare say, almost every point) I have argued against because, in some way or another, it is already in the game. And for most of the ones that are not, my arguing has not been that they're not useful. More often, I have argued against it, like with the one in the post you are replying to, that it is not feasable to add it in a non-clunky way.

To expand on the point of "showing which bonuses other districts get from building this district", consider the screen you see right now when you build a district. It shows all tiles inside your borders as well as tiles outside your borders that have more than 0 adjacency bonuses, and on each of those tiles it shows you how much bonus yield from adjacency you will get from placing your district on that tile. I think that everyone agrees that this is an intuitive, straightforward way to deliver information. If not, please say so, and please say what would be a better way (because, as I argued in another thread as well, "this sucks" is not helpful to a discussion, wihle "this is bad but this other way would be better" is helpful to a discussion).

Now, with that screen in mind, how exactly are you going to show the bonuses from placing that district? There's maybe ten possible tiles to place that district, and each of those tiles is going to mean something different for adjacency bonuses for current districts. How, exactly, are you going to show for every tile in that screen what every district does or does not get, considering that we just established that the way this screen is build up is a logical and intuitive way? (again, if you disagree, please say so)

And there is also a very easy rule of thumb for this: More adjacent districts = better. Special adjacencies are something that only happens to very few civs (Greece, Germany, Brazil) and in the cases of Greece and Brazil it's for city center and rainforest respectively, which means that the district always comes later than what gives the special adjacency bonus, which means that all you have to remember is Germany = put Hansa's and Commercial Hubs together.

Maybe that's too hard to remember, that's fine, but please think of a way to show it to people before criticizing that, right now, it is not shown.

1) city bombard. covered a lot
2) units: a usable list of them, who's avail, who's asleep. Who can upgrade? etc. Sort by name, type etc.
2a) units, trade: a LIST of them, sorted by whatever. I prefer sorted by origin city. Showing how long to go, etc.
3) Cities: who has what districts? I really like this with CQUI putting an icon on the city itself.
4) map UI: more lenses, I like the scout one AND the barbarian one. Makes it much faster to find where the barbs are, but really miss the notification from V that would take you there.
5) production queues. omitting those was just wrong.
6) diplomacy. CQUI helps, but the whole thing needs work.

Base UI is usable, but far, far from optimal.

Only gonna reply to points that I haven't yet addressed as otherwise this thread just takes up too much time.

2. The units list is accessed by clicking on a unit and clicking on it's name. This shows all military and civilian units as well as their current status if they have any (sleep, fortify, alert, etc). Granted, it does not show upgrades, which would indeed be a nice extra to have.
2a. I'm not entirely certain (I barely use it myself) but traders might also appear in above list, though they won't show origin city and time. You can find origin city by clicking on them on the map though.
4. Considering I don't use CQUI myself (obviously), what exactly do these lenses do?
6. What parts of diplomacy exactly have bad UI? (excluding those Victoria already mentioned)

 

[Hammurabbit]

This is just a gameplay thing: Part of being good at the game is swapping in and out policies at the right times.

Well, swapping policies at the right time is a gameplay thing, what I'm saying is that the policy screen is poorly designed to support that particular gameplay. It's not "gameplay" to force the user to navigate in and out of screens, to figure out what the best policy cards to use are, or to read the details of every card to find the one you are looking for when some better iconography could have made it much much easier.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

If you are under the impression I think the UI is flawless, then you have not been reading this thread. I have conceded a number of points already, and I might just concede more if you come with arguments. Like has happened already. Also, most of the points that people brought up that I have argued against (I would even dare say, almost every point) I have argued against because, in some way or another, it is already in the game. And for most of the ones that are not, my arguing has not been that they're not useful. More often, I have argued against it, like with the one in the post you are replying to, that it is not feasable to add it in a non-clunky way.

To expand on the point of "showing which bonuses other districts get from building this district", consider the screen you see right now when you build a district. It shows all tiles inside your borders as well as tiles outside your borders that have more than 0 adjacency bonuses, and on each of those tiles it shows you how much bonus yield from adjacency you will get from placing your district on that tile. I think that everyone agrees that this is an intuitive, straightforward way to deliver information. If not, please say so, and please say what would be a better way (because, as I argued in another thread as well, "this sucks" is not helpful to a discussion, wihle "this is bad but this other way would be better" is helpful to a discussion).

Now, with that screen in mind, how exactly are you going to show the bonuses from placing that district? There's maybe ten possible tiles to place that district, and each of those tiles is going to mean something different for adjacency bonuses for current districts. How, exactly, are you going to show for every tile in that screen what every district does or does not get, considering that we just established that the way this screen is build up is a logical and intuitive way? (again, if you disagree, please say so)

And there is also a very easy rule of thumb for this: More adjacent districts = better. Special adjacencies are something that only happens to very few civs (Greece, Germany, Brazil) and in the cases of Greece and Brazil it's for city center and rainforest respectively, which means that the district always comes later than what gives the special adjacency bonus, which means that all you have to remember is Germany = put Hansa's and Commercial Hubs together.

Maybe that's too hard to remember, that's fine, but please think of a way to show it to people before criticizing that, right now, it is not shown.



Only gonna reply to points that I haven't yet addressed as otherwise this thread just takes up too much time.

2. The units list is accessed by clicking on a unit and clicking on it's name. This shows all military and civilian units as well as their current status if they have any (sleep, fortify, alert, etc). Granted, it does not show upgrades, which would indeed be a nice extra to have.
2a. I'm not entirely certain (I barely use it myself) but traders might also appear in above list, though they won't show origin city and time. You can find origin city by clicking on them on the map though.
4. Considering I don't use CQUI myself (obviously), what exactly do these lenses do?
6. What parts of diplomacy exactly have bad UI? (excluding those Victoria already mentioned)

2: The basic unit list is a joke. All you can do is select a unit from it. CQUI, you can sort them by unit, scroll much easier rather than that teeny window.
2a) you cannot sort them, which is the big issue. they are a jumble.
4) the lenses are what give you various filters on the map. appeal, continents etc. bunch more in cqui
6) she pretty much covered it.

If you haven't used CQUI lately, you may want to take a look at it for a game or two.

btw, just the new city attack reminder makes it worthwhile.

 

[Jarhead60]

I agree with all of these points. Several of them are fixed with CQUI which I really like, but I get your point about some UI mods being too busy - I didn't use EUI for Civ5 for the same reason.

Anyway, one point I really feel missing from your list:

10) No clickable notification about barb camps, in fact, no notification what so ever about barb camps apart from the drum sound. I mean, that's just criminal, considering there are actually some of us playing without sound. And even if I do have sound on, it's annoying bordering on absurd having to spend time searching the map, only to find that oh, it was on a different continent on the other side of the world.

CQUI has a barbarian lens that makes them much easier to spot.

 

[Manifold]

I actually think it's fine. I never miss any information, and I don't feel like it's making me do more than needed. If anything, the UI feels very efficient to me. Everything that needs to be there is there, but it's not crowded out by other stuff...

Honestly, you did not really want to defend the current state of UI, but in fact you only want to get everyone here to write down their problems with the current UI.

It is playable at the moment not more.
If I can not see how long my trade deals and trade routes last, than for the many other necessary improvements is not enough space here. That should not occur in the basic version at all. It looks just unfinished.

 

[kaspergm]

CQUI has a barbarian lens that makes them much easier to spot.

I didn't even know. I normally find it a bit bothersome to toggle lenses on and off (I hate the religious lense when selecting a religious unit), but I'll check it out. I guess it's better than nothing.