Below is my list of IU/UX complaints, that I have already posted in another thread. This is pretty much a compilation of issues mentioned above and elsewhere, although they all came straight from my first full playthrough of the game.
-
In general, information is often unavailable or buried too deep. Some interface solutions are far off from optimal and it seems as if, in many instances, they have been designed with noobs in mind. In no particular order:
- No demographics tab.
There is some partial info about it here and there, but that does not seem enough for a game like Civ.
- Unhelpful Civilopedia.
Once again unnecessarily criptic and brief. Descriptions for many items seem more like placeholders than helpful information. And there is no "back" button. C'mon!
- City(?) report tab.
...is an example of a really bad design. More annoying than useful.
- Ammenities mystery.
Some form of summing up and following what's going on with ammenities in your empire is a must. But it evidently did not seem that way to developers. There is a similar problem with housing, although not as glaring.
- Gossip dumb.
Valuable information from gossips gets flooded by meaningless crap like someone having build granary. I can't even tell if there really is anything interesting there, because this constant avalanche of bullfeathers just forced me to ignore it altogether.
- Unit cycling.
Player should be able to turn it off. It causes unwanted unit movements again and again and pisses me off like hell.
- Removing city screen was not a good idea.
I can imagine that developers wanted to make the game more immersive (?) or approachable for noobs (?), but the prescribed cure turned out to be much worse than the disease. It forces you to literally click thousands of additional times per playthrough to get to options (production, buying tiles, etc.) and info about the city (buildings, what the hell is going on with ammenities, etc.).
Moreover, you can't queue production and even cycle through cities with keyboard arrows (why not?).
- No game log.
Quite a lot happens during the game and often you just notice that something happened, but not quite exactly what it was (notifications disapear pretty quickly). Well, you have no option to get back to it.
- Border expansion.
No information about it. You can't tell when it will happen, which tile will be claimed next, and the game does not notify you when it happens.
- Unit list.
Hidden. I haven't even noticed it at all during my first playthrough. And I won't justify it with a lack of perceptivity on my part. I have played Civ games for 15 years and if I haven't detected it by myself, then it is just plain bad UX design.
- Experience points.
...for units should be more readily visible. Why I do have to hover at the edge of screen over a barely visible bar to get a small tooltip about it?
- Tooltips.
A game like Civ should be flooded with tooltips. Everywhere. And if someone doesn't like it, just let them switch it off. Currently, in many situations, there is no helpful information readily available. Why do I have to go to Civilopedia to see district bonuses? The same goes for the already built district. Why the map with turned on yiealds does not show me their production?
- Diplomacy overview.
Wouldn't you think that a need for one is quite obvious? Maybe I am dumb, but it seems that now you have to just manually click through all the civilizations to get some basic data about it.
- Renaming cities and religions.
Why they decided to remove this is a mystery to me. You seem to be able to rename your religion, but my copy of the game did not quite allow for it to happen.
- Cryptic tech boosts.
It won't be rare that you get some technology or civic boost and will not know what caused it. Why the notification doesn't tell you that in a clear way?
- Exiting pop-ups and tabs.
Often it is waaay too hard. Why do you have to aim for the little X at the top right to make it go away? For the wonder mini-movies, clicking on the screen should be enough. For discoveries, clicking outside their pop-up should do the trick.
- Animated leaders and diplomacy screen.
When leaders contact you or react to something, you have to wait too long to take action. It would be all nice and fun if it happend only a few times per game, but for a playthrough that takes dozens of hours it gets old very quickly.
- Layers.
This is not a bad idea in itself, but its execution leaves a lot to be desired. First of all, it is way too heavy handed – turning any layer on makes terrain features barely visible. It is even worse for settlers, because their layer (I can't now remember what it is called) turnes on automatically and makes it needlessly hard to move them around. And it pisses me off.
- Religion enhancement screen.
It might not be the only one that does it, but this was the one that came to my mind first. What is the problem? Well, its priority seems to be beauty, not usefulness. When you are choosing a pantheon, it takes over your screen, so you have to constantly switch it on and off to check subsequent bonuses with the land you own (and might own in the future).
Making it a sidebar would be a better solution. Moreover, choice list is unnecessarily crammed in a tight space, so you have to scroll it up and down to go through your options, while a huge section of the religion screen above is designated for your religion's symbol.
- Not remembering game settings.
Currently you have to set your game from scratch each time. Jesus Christ, this just seems like game devs wanted to piss us off here, intentionally.
- No restart location option.
It is a minor issue for me and I would easily let it slide, but there are so many issues like this with this game...
- Tile allocation.
Is it just me, or did allocating citiens to tiles become a pain in the ass?
- Lack of keyboard shortcuts.
Many of the problems with UX (city screen!) might have been mitigated by shortcuts. But these are only available for the major overview tabs.
- Notifications.
Again, this might just be me, but I could use more notifications about deals ending, barbarian camp spawns, cities growing in the early eras, and so on.
- Map issues.
Hills are sometimes hard to distinguish from flat land. Similar problem for improved/unimproved tiles. Tribal villages might be a little hard to notice, but I am OK with that myself.
To end on a positive and not to leave the wrong expression:
I like quite a lot about the game, but the many problems with user interface just grind my gears. Make it right!
