I posted a bunch of answers to quick questions in another thread here, and posed a few of my own. Many of my points were of the 'I wish I could do X' variety, and I was encouraged to post them here so that people could see them.
The list is mainly concerned with improving the UI, primarily through providing more relevant knowledge to the player at the point they need to make a decision. However, there are a few other suggestions here, as well.
UI suggestions:
1) There can be pretty wild swings in happiness and income from turn to turn. In my most extreme instance, I went from -10 to +43 gold per turn over one turn change. In the -10 turn, I panicked and deleted some [~5] military units, but that should not have created the huge jump. Aside from checking my tooltip every turn, is there another way to see what happened?
2) In multiplayer, we noticed only a 50% success rate that the Ruins bonuses were displayed on screen, and these never created items in out notifications logs. Is it possible to get nothing from a Ruins? Will the ruins results be added to the Notifications log in a future patch?
3) The battle predictor is fairly accurate, but the random factor of battles and the predictor's margin for error are unknown. Is there a way to find out?
4) In the cases where an attack seems possible but isn't, no tooltip or information is displayed. Some cases are:
-No Ranged Attacks over a hill or forest [unless attacker is on a hill]
-Attacker has already attacked this turn [but may move after an attack]
Could these and other situations be added to the tooltip / battle predictor?
5) Can the Puppet/Annex popup also offer the option of examining the city before deciding? It would also be very useful to remind the player if the city in question can be razed; it's very frustrating to annex with intent to raze, only to be stuck with an unhappy city because the raze button is inactive.
6) I would like buildings and units that cannot be purchased to appear on the purchase list with 'cannot be purchased' listed as the cost. It took a while to realize that I couldn't buy a Courthouse in an unhappy annexed city.
7) I would like the one tile that will be selected for the next area expansion to be highlighted, rather than the 1-4 'good tiles' that I assume are all candidates for selection. Better yet, I'd like to select the tile I would like to expand into next time expansion is possible.
8) I would love to have a button that allows me to select a resource and dim all other resource icons on the map, thus making it easier for me to find a resource that was just revealed through tech. Scrolling the map for several minutes looking for coal is no fun.
9) I would also like a small number to appear on the resource bubble, indicating the quantity of the resource so that I don't need to hover over the tile to find out.
10) I would like a list of all resources I have access to - basic, luxury, and strategic - as well as info on how I access it [trade, City-sate relation, national borders], and how long I'll have it [remaining duration of trade agreements].
Other concerns:
1) How does the Social Policy cost increase for additional cities scale? Is this based only on game speed, or does era, empire size, happiness, or any other factor contribute?
2) Why can't helicopters hover over coast tiles? I want to be able to attack cities from the shore!
The list is mainly concerned with improving the UI, primarily through providing more relevant knowledge to the player at the point they need to make a decision. However, there are a few other suggestions here, as well.
UI suggestions:
1) There can be pretty wild swings in happiness and income from turn to turn. In my most extreme instance, I went from -10 to +43 gold per turn over one turn change. In the -10 turn, I panicked and deleted some [~5] military units, but that should not have created the huge jump. Aside from checking my tooltip every turn, is there another way to see what happened?
2) In multiplayer, we noticed only a 50% success rate that the Ruins bonuses were displayed on screen, and these never created items in out notifications logs. Is it possible to get nothing from a Ruins? Will the ruins results be added to the Notifications log in a future patch?
3) The battle predictor is fairly accurate, but the random factor of battles and the predictor's margin for error are unknown. Is there a way to find out?
4) In the cases where an attack seems possible but isn't, no tooltip or information is displayed. Some cases are:
-No Ranged Attacks over a hill or forest [unless attacker is on a hill]
-Attacker has already attacked this turn [but may move after an attack]
Could these and other situations be added to the tooltip / battle predictor?
5) Can the Puppet/Annex popup also offer the option of examining the city before deciding? It would also be very useful to remind the player if the city in question can be razed; it's very frustrating to annex with intent to raze, only to be stuck with an unhappy city because the raze button is inactive.
6) I would like buildings and units that cannot be purchased to appear on the purchase list with 'cannot be purchased' listed as the cost. It took a while to realize that I couldn't buy a Courthouse in an unhappy annexed city.
7) I would like the one tile that will be selected for the next area expansion to be highlighted, rather than the 1-4 'good tiles' that I assume are all candidates for selection. Better yet, I'd like to select the tile I would like to expand into next time expansion is possible.
8) I would love to have a button that allows me to select a resource and dim all other resource icons on the map, thus making it easier for me to find a resource that was just revealed through tech. Scrolling the map for several minutes looking for coal is no fun.
9) I would also like a small number to appear on the resource bubble, indicating the quantity of the resource so that I don't need to hover over the tile to find out.
10) I would like a list of all resources I have access to - basic, luxury, and strategic - as well as info on how I access it [trade, City-sate relation, national borders], and how long I'll have it [remaining duration of trade agreements].
Other concerns:
1) How does the Social Policy cost increase for additional cities scale? Is this based only on game speed, or does era, empire size, happiness, or any other factor contribute?
2) Why can't helicopters hover over coast tiles? I want to be able to attack cities from the shore!
