Icons, icons, icons

[tjfday]

I know this has been brought up in various other threads, but here's a thread devoted exclusively to them.

Is it just me, or is this one of the goofiest design decisions ever? I'm sorry, but an array of indecipherable icons has no advantages whatsoever over a text listing. It's really quite infuriating to try and find things.

The advisor popups for setting a new research area or build queue item have a nice text listing of your options. However, if I want to change either of those later I have to sort through a list of icons, using the mouseover text to find the one I want.

Please, please tell me there's a way to fix this and I've just overlooked it. It's just plain awful GUI design. Hell, I'd rather be micromanaging pollution cleanup than memorizing 500 icons!

Otherwise I like the game so far, but this one issue is so pervasive that it's always slowing me down and getting in the way. It also makes the Civilopedia a joke.

[kaitanan]

sorry...

the icons are great, just like any game after you play for a few hours they become natural and you wont even notice it. Thats the point of a good UI

[ieolus]

No he has a point.. icons are WAY overused. There are some places where text would fit fine but icons are used 'just because'. It is pissing me off too :P

[LongTom]

At least in the Civilopedia they are in alphabetical order.

[Bill3000]

Alphabetical order doesn't even help much if you have to freaking search through the icons to find the one you want...

If you put the right click menu back in (Yes, it's possible), you will remove the highlights from the icons too. That sucks.

[MrFun]

This icon thingy does sound annoying.

[evizaer]

The fact that mouseovers can sometimes not appear randomly is really starting to get annoying. (that's the principle problem i have with the overuse of icons. Otherwise, it's OK.)