FIraxis has several major, specific UI deficiencies in recent games:
- You need to do far more inputs than is necessary to accomplish the same thing. It's to the extent where managing 50 cities in Civ 4 is substantially faster than 20 cities 5 or 6. By several minutes per turn (2-3 times slower at least in mid-late game in the newer games). Civ 4 wasn't perfectly optimized in that regard, but it's glaring how much more straightforward and fast it was, despite the newer games being allegedly "streamlined". You lose hours/game on this stuff (I used to make videos, and have actually recorded the difference).
- The UI is inaccurate (displays information different from what will happen). Concrete example: game shows you'll make a ranged attack, your unit instead moves towards target and does not.
- The UI fails to present the rules of the game in a way that players can constrain anticipation of what will happen. In a strategy game, this is degenerate. Concrete example: how war weariness works.
Civ 4 had some of these issues too, to a less extreme extent than the newer titles. For example the game would average opinion if you had vassals, but the game's UI didn't display this and would therefore display false information. Heck, prior to a patch the combat odds were on rare occasions wrong
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- It can avoid making players spend several hours to complete the game longer than a good UI.
- It can avoid lying to players about what will happen.
- It can accurately constrain anticipation of the game's rules to what the game actually allows.
In contrast to something like a "good strategy game UI", these are not things that other games can't manage. Even in the context of the Civ franchise, it has regressed on these points.
