List Your Biggest UI Grievances

[Human Crouton]

Too numerous to name. My main issue is with diplomacy though. When someone asks me if I want to be friends, I need to be able to see that civ's resources, income, science, culture, what every other civ thinks of them, and the world map. With how popular the infoaddict mod was for V, it is concerning that they did not put functionality into vanilla.

 

[qadams]

You know how in your city management screen you can see the list of buildings you have in the city you selected? Well, I didn't until a friend pointed it out to me very recently after me having over 100 hours into this game. Why? Because the buttons that show those distinct tabs on the top of your city management screen is the same color and border as everything else in the city management screen. All you need to do is color the tabs or color the borders of those tabs for me to see them. Otherwise those tabs just blend in with everything else and I'm not going to notice that it's there. That's a freaking amateur mistake.

This does sound like a big problem, but it's not clear to me what you're referring to. Can you provide a screenshot?

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

Lack of restart button.

How the HELL did Firaxis pork the pooch on that one, I've no idea...

 

[drubell]

This does sound like a big problem, but it's not clear to me what you're referring to. Can you provide a screenshot?

I've attached one here. Maybe most people noticed the city tabs at the top of the screen within the first 100 hours of play, but I didn't. Because of the coloring my eyes are focused on the green parts covering food and the gold parts separating the growth information. As you can see by the red highlighting I made, player focus is directed toward the middle of the tab here by this game's UI design, so it requires player effort to look at the top where you can switch through tabs. Since my eyes are focused toward the middle, I never looked at the top to see that there were tabs to switch to at the top. If those tabs were highlighted more as a priority than an afterthought perhaps I would've seen them.

 

[sonicmyst]

My biggest UI issue is the placement of the minimap (lower left side of the screen), wherein if an AI leader suddenly wants to trade while I click on the minimap, results in one of my cities to be selected and offered in the trade screen.

 

[Brian Boru]

[I haven't played the game yet—still seeing way too many issues listed by you all]

Restart button
Is there not an auto-save for 4000 BC which you can reload anytime?
Bit clunky if the workaround is to manually save at the start of the first turn. Cue keyboard with macro capability.

ETA: just saw a comment from member Herod in another thread "there's a mod which puts the restart button back"

Saving settings
Is there no file [XML, ini, ???] which records the start settings, which you could quickly copy after clicking Start Game? Then paste it back over the default before restarting.
Clunky of course, but maybe better than having to reselect all your settings every time.

 

[nzcamel]

Here is the sheet I made up for trade deal info if anyone would find it handy.

Improved version...

 

[vonJahgmann]

Many a great list in this thread. Here is one more peeve that I did not see noted:

• The C key no longer centers the screen on the active unit, so now I have 15 years of muscle memory to unlearn.

And +1 to everyone the mentioned (1) the giant empty Great Prophet box in the Leader screen, (2) unsaved settings, (3) blue start screen, which reeks of budget cuts, (4) failed ranged attacks, where the dang unit moves instead of fires, and (5) no restart button.

Lastly not a UI problem, but I really miss the Civ5 map replay video at the end of the game. For games that took me a month to carve out the time to play to the final end, that replay was very satisfying to watch. The Civ6 current game-ending is remarkably unsatisfying.

 

[DCGolliher]

I love Civ6 and hate to complain, but I don’t think anyone has mentioned #23 on my list of ‘UI Things to Improve’.

When trying to read the notifications on the lower-right ABOVE the map, a balloon full of information about the TILE BELOW covers up what I’m trying to read.

It’s not a big problem---with just a couple dozen extra clicks, every turn, I can speed-read the messages before the balloon covers them up---OR I can simply drag my map over undiscovered territory, where there are no tile information balloons--750 times per game, [I play Epic, for more immersion].

 

[Horizons]

^

Agree with all the above, but surely the religion overlay has got to be the worst of all.

No demographics screen, difficult to find unit list, city details text too small, etc etc.

Civ5 had none of these problems, which makes it all the worse.

 

[nzcamel]

Many a great list in this thread. Here is one more peeve that I did not see noted:

• The C key no longer centers the screen on the active unit, so now I have 15 years of muscle memory to unlearn.

And +1 to everyone the mentioned (1) the giant empty Great Prophet box in the Leader screen, (2) unsaved settings, (3) blue start screen, which reeks of budget cuts, (4) failed ranged attacks, where the dang unit moves instead of fires, and (5) no restart button.

Lastly not a UI problem, but I really miss the Civ5 map replay video at the end of the game. For games that took me a month to carve out the time to play to the final end, that replay was very satisfying to watch. The Civ6 current game-ending is remarkably unsatisfying.

Agree with all of these, except the blue colour scheme that I love

You'd think with the Prophet, that it could be moved to one end or the other so as not to have the blank spot in the middle, given they will be the first to run out every game.

 

[Mesix]

Too numerous to name. My main issue is with diplomacy though. When someone asks me if I want to be friends, I need to be able to see that civ's resources, income, science, culture, what every other civ thinks of them, and the world map. With how popular the infoaddict mod was for V, it is concerning that they did not put functionality into vanilla.

It would also be great if this was combined with another shortcoming of game design: the spy minigame. If spies could actually help you know gain more intelligence about the other players, they would be much more useful in the game. Perhaps more information about AI players would become available as spies learn their secrets.

 

[Jimdigriz]

Here's a strange one. When I swap worked tiles etc why does the city status not reflect the change in food/production until the next turn?

 

[Lorthirk]

Oh man, the tile tooltip! Every single time it covers all the messeges I'm trying to read. I hate it!

I also noticed that the Civilopedia opens on the great person's category when right clicking on a g. p. I already have, rather than opening the specific page. It would be better to open the latter, where I can see his/her active and passive.

 

[Tuvok694]

Good thread.
Made me smile when I realized that so many people have the same complaints and ideas concerning UI.
Made me sad when I realized what a mess this game still is, months after release.

 

[Jimdigriz]

Oh man, the tile tooltip! Every single time it covers all the messeges I'm trying to read. I hate it!

I also noticed that the Civilopedia opens on the great person's category when right clicking on a g. p. I already have, rather than opening the specific page. It would be better to open the latter, where I can see his/her active and passive.

Ah yes, the tooltip. They need to think of another way round this. I hate it bringing up information all the time. I mean obviously we need it but I'm constantly keeping the mouse away from what I'm looking at in order to see it without the damn tooltip message coming up!

There must be a better way surely? And has the scroll mouse at border been fixed yet because that's been unusable for me because you cant press any of the buttons near the edge without scrolling! I don't like dragging the screen around with mouse but I haven't got any choice. C'mon 2K fix it! And give us options on how we want unexplored territory/territory not in line of sight represented too while youre at it...couldn't take much to do that surely?

 

[BuzWeaverCiv]

I'm not sure why we don't have a Citizen Population Notification. With the levels of city management the way they are Civ VI, I'd like to believe we'd have a notification like we did in Civ V.

 

[Felis Renidens]

Haven't read everything here but a few things:
- Adviser screens where I can see all cities and change building, all units and upgrade, relationships\possible trades with all civs.
- In diplomacy screen let me know whether the AI thinks a deal is good or not. And perhaps also, if I have good visibility with them, what resources they value. If I get relation points for a deal I should know it.
- When a leader pops up to tell me something have a button that will take me to the diplomacy screen so that I'll be able to immediately do something about it (like send a delegation when I first meet them).
- Actually give me the option to send a delegation before getting to the diplomacy screen. It is usually something that should be done immediately or not at all.
- A journal for all the gossip as there is usually too much of it and it's easy to miss.
- If the spy is placed my first option should be to give it a mission. If I want to re-base it I'll have to click a button, placement should happen when a spy is created or returned
- If a barb camp spawned I need to know where.
- City bombardment is very inconvenient and easy to miss. Also, I would appreciate a notification that I can do it.
- A Civ2 style council telling me about things I've neglected to do.

 

[smvalentine]

Ditto so many others above. (esp: last built bug, last trade route, info available on trade screen, build menu covering up city details).
I think this one is new (for this list - been a bug since game was released):
Cycling through the city focus states requires moving the mouse.
Example: Click once on production focus once to set "production" focus.
Click on it again to set "NO production" focus.
Click on it again to cycle back to default. But wait, that didn't work. It's still on "NO production" focus!
Now move the cursor off the button and back, then click again. Grrr.

Why didn't they include more lenses and pre-filled pins in the game?
A strategic resource lens would seem obvious to include.
Pins that I can just pick and drop to indicate where I plan to build each type of district (without having to type any text every time).
Yes, I know some of these are fixed/added in a UI mod, but for the price of this game, they should have been baked in.
Generally I'm disappointed that the CiVI UI didn't start where the CiV improved UI mod left off and improve from there out of the box.

I like the "hand drawn map" look of the explored areas in principle, but in practice it is awfully hard to read.
They did improve visibility of the strategic resources in a patch which has helped.
As others have pointed out, the tribal villages are too easy to miss.
Automatically dropping a pin in them (and automatically removing it when you pop them) would be helpful.
I would still like an option to switch to a CiV style fog.

Oh, and the squiggly lines between tiles in strategic view is just annoying. Just give me straight line hex edges!

 

[shaglio]

Speaking of pins, I'd like one that's shaped like the city recommendation icon for when I decide where I want to build new cities. That specific icon just seems so obvious to me.