Gather all User Interface issues with civ5 here

[Robert]

An important part of any Civilization game is the interface. Getting the correct information easily is of major importance to play the game. Knowing how to get the right commands across is important to play the game intuitive.

There's a lot the interface has to cover, so it's always difficult to come up with a good one. Let's help the developers of civ5 here and compile a list of all interface issues here.

Once the list has matured we'll try to get the developers focus on it, making sure that they get all the things we'd like to get improved at one sight, making your troubles hard to be overlooked.

[Robert]

- When you've moved a certain unit, the focuses to another unit, often at the other side of the map. Let the focus prioritize on other units in the current neighborhood of the last unit, or give us an option to disable automatic unit-cycling. Especially for multiplaying, but also for single playing. It's annoying when you are organizing a war strategy!

- The extra row of unit-actions often contains only one option; automate. Then just please put this option in the normal bar and save us an extra click.

- In simultaneous multiplayer games you can't make any changes anymore after you ended the turn, giving an enormous advantage to the player who ends his turn last. This will result in nobody ever ending their turn anymore. Please let us manager our empire, even after we have ended our turn!

- Please show the route of the road my worker will create between A and B when I am giving orders.

- Experience points of a unit are hidden under another mouse-over. Can these be listed with the other unit stats?

- Make the pop-up stats that occur once in a while available all the time in an expanded demographics screen

- when opening diplomacy automatically open the trade-screen. That saves us extra clicks. The other options can remain at the right-side of the screen for simple toggling between them.

- A list of surplus resources we and other civs have would be nice. Now I have to visit all of them to see if there's someting to trade. (like the F4 screen in civ4)

- ...

[MxM]

- when opening diplomacy automatically open the trade-screen. That saves us extra clicks. The other options can remain at the right-side of the screen for simple toggling between them.

I think it is a design decision for them to do that. They want first to welcome you, and when you click trade they will ask you "what do you want". The idea I think is to make it as close to natural communication as possible.

[Proteus_MST]

• Give us more informations about income and expenses in the overview (for example which unit types cost me how many maintenance, which cities earn me what money etc.)
• If a ranged unit bombards a city let us see clerly whether the unit is able to bombard or has no LOS (almost lost a crossbowman because, instead of bombarding, he ran towards the city and tried a frontal attack)
• Give us some more information about our strengths/weaknesses compared to other civs (while I agree that we shouldn´t see everything, I think that it would be realistic to assume that, via informations from travellers, we could be up to date about, whether another civ has more military/tech level etc. than our own)

[Fidel]

I want to see:
- who pledged to protect whom
- who wants which luxuries
- who has surplus of luxuries
- who is allied with which CSs
- general attitude between AI civs. The info need not always be correct (kind of diplomatic fog of war)
- in leader screen I want a button where I can see our present and past deals


MASSIVE update of Civilopedia. It is useless now, half empty.

[quinalla]

Give us options to permanently open all the hidden things. A checkbox in the game options for things like:
-Show all unit actions
-Show building queue
-Show citizen assignments
There are probably others I can't recall.

And yes, the not being able to do anything after ending your turn in multiplayer needs to be changed. I often end my turn in multiplayer and then if someone is taking forever, I will go look and add things to my building queues or decide maybe I do want to move that archer I haven't moved yet and so on. You should definitely be able to do things after ending the turn, or at least be able to have this as an option to turn on.

If a unit comes across an obstacle unit, have it pause and ask for instructions instead of using AI pathfinding, or again, at least make this an option.

[MxM]

- In the city list view, the one to the left, there is no number for production (there is number for gold, science, etc). It shows only how many turns left to build. I want to sort it by production and SEE it
- puppet states should be switchable on/off (to show) in the above list. Or at very list they should be of significantly different color
- There should be a way to inspect puppet city
- There should be a way to inspect city that you just conquered to see if you keep it or raze it.
- Diplomacy screen should show relationship between states
- There should be an easy way to see who protects each SC, and what is relation between SC and particular AI
- The most important buttons, like diplomacy details are hidden through clicks, the least important like social polices, which I NEVER click (I click "select policy" above mini map when I have enough culture) or adviser button that I click more often in the beginning but not anymore are shown in huge. Civ IV approach was better - show them all at reduced size.
- Is there easy way to see which city (especially puppet states) consumes how much gold for building support?

[MxM]

- who has surplus of luxuries

It is visible in one of the diplomatic screens, there are small notes under the name of each civ, which shows type and amount of resources that it can trade or treaties that you can sign with...

[pdxsean]

I'd like to see information on unit maintenance costs. Either in the mouse-over info or in a list somewhere (maybe military summary).

Great list, Robert. And MxM, you really fleshed it out there! Nice.

- The extra row of unit-actions often contains only one option; automate. Then just please put this option in the normal bar and save us an extra click.

- A list of surplus resources we and other civs have would be nice. Now I have to visit all of them to see if there's someting to trade. (like the F4 screen in civ4)

- ...

I kind of like the first item, since you don't accidentally click delete. However, they could resolve that issue by having an "Are you sure?" popup which would net the same number of clicks.

As for the second item, you can see who has resources to trade by going to the diplomacy overview screen. I'm pretty sure it only shows luxuries that you don't currently have, and also all of their strategic resources.

[Guynemer]

More info in the "economic advisor" or whatever that screen is, which list cities with food surplus, production, etc. Most importantly, the number of turns until a city spawns a GP, and the type of GP it will be.

[pdxsean]

Here's a few I haven't seen:

I'd like the game to remember my settings from the previous game I'd started, as the documentation indicated. There are a lot of advanced options to select and I'd hate to be in a hurry and forget to change the game speed or difficulty and accidentally start on Chieftain without realizing it. This has been a Civ feature as long as I remember, certainly back to SMAX if not earlier.

If fog of war is uncovered by a unit's movement, the unit should stop moving if an enemy unit is revealed. This basically already applies to workers, who will abandon their improving if an enemy moves within two hexes...

Units auto-garrisoning when they move into a city. Sometimes I will move into a city just as a waypoint, and when the unit auto-garrisons it's easy to forget about it the next turn, let alone the next ten. Often this represents a significant portion of your army, especially in the early game when you're more likely to use cities as waypoints.

Bring back the little red cross icon on units with healing ability, or similar way to pick healing unit out from crowd.

Scorekeeping is messed up. A space race victory in less turns than a diplomatic loss scores less points on the same difficulty level? Wahh?

[Guynemer]

Not really an "interface" issue, but still...

I want a "replay" option at the end of the game! That was one of my favorite aspects of winning a game, seeing the whole map and how civs rose and fell. I can't believe this was removed.

[pdxsean]

Not really an "interface" issue, but still...

I want a "replay" option at the end of the game! That was one of my favorite aspects of winning a game, seeing the whole map and how civs rose and fell. I can't believe this was removed.

Here here. And the ability to retire. Makes no sense, when the HOF keeps track of other times you lost legitimately.

[Aro]

Let me see... I would like to click on my units in the military panel and actually know where this unit is, or select it. In Civ III, I could even upgrade the unit from the military advisor panel... And I would (badly) like the right button of the mouse back.
I'm becoming (more or less) used to the pop ups, and I agree that we have too little info from there.

[Aro]

Not really an "interface" issue, but still...

I want a "replay" option at the end of the game! That was one of my favorite aspects of winning a game, seeing the whole map and how civs rose and fell. I can't believe this was removed.

Au contrair! A perfect legitimate "interface" issue, IMHO. I want that back too!