[0.95]User Interface Issues

good ideas!

I totally agree on atleast most of them, got a comment on 2 of them.

1: This does not seem very compatible with the idle bonus granted by some building and city level-ups, but if combined with conclaves bonus when idle would meaby make them more interesting, I don't agree you should be able to produce research, growth... and production?... keep it simple, besides try to make sure its not abusable into silly strategies, giving a growth bonus will again benefit large empires, and research is so scarce that it is ok if its not available for idle bonus.

2: I really want this too, but I have some alternatives to being able to place troops at the start of each combat (that can get tiring too),
 first alternative: Units can be setup in formation before combat, choosing combat formation for each stack
 second altternative: Units start on the combat field more spread out so you can always move melee units and units with charge to the front.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Age of Wonders did the idling mechanic very well. If you happened to forget to select anything it produced 'Merchandise' by default which gave a slight gold boost. But you could also select 'Housing' which increased your growth. I'm thinking that selecting one of the idling mechanics in FE would boost that area by 20% - which is not a lot for most cities (I think that FE uses floating numbers rather than using the integers it displays). So as an example if your city had a total growth of 1.6 per turn, if you chose Growth it would be 1.92, etc. The other boosts from buildings would still apply as well.

With regards troop placement, I agree that a pre-arranged layout per stack would work. I had suggested in the past using the 3x3 army view in the  strategic map to position troops in rear, mid, and front ranks when they are placed in tactical battles. This would be a really easy way for players to manage where troops are going to be placed.

Agreed.  I'd like to add that there should be a limit as to how many "stacks" there are on a single tile as well.  That would motivate the player to research larger groups.

I don't think so, I just think a better UI is needed for multiple stacks.
Like rendering 2-3 small armies on the square instead of just the top army.

The wolf-head doesn't do much for me, because sometimes it doesn't show up, sometimes it doesn't go away....
There is plenty of reason to research larger groups, since you can bring more units to a battle.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I just think we have different opinions (I have NEVER needed an idle production thingie, and usually when my cities where idle they had something to build.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

My issue with most games is that instead of so many "stacks of doom" there should be things like warbands, warparty, etc.  Call it what you will, but fighting stack after stack is very annoying and generally not fun for me.  But that's just my opinion.

I am not sure I understand, .
You want many armies on separate tiles, but you don't want to fight many armies?
Or you think that every faction should only have 1 stack of units?

Edit: The "Stack of Doom" I heard of was because earlier in the game the game favoured heavily on one group of 7-9 units rampaging through the game getting extensively powerful, so favouring the "1 stack with all my units" approach.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Another UI issue - but not all that important.

* Change the colour selection from RGB to HSV (much more intuitive for people who don't know how RGB works).

Regarding the need to be able to select Goods, Growth, Research as options in the build queue, the game really needs to not punish players for overlooking cities that have stopped production. Now the next beta is going to have the game not auto-turn until cities are producing but this doesn't go far enough - and it forces players to use auto-turn if the city production is a bigger problem than not having the option to use unit actions at the end of the turn (recruiting, building settlements/outposts etc). My preference is to not auto-turn but deciding to use it or not should be about personal preferences rather than game mechanic annoyances. The game needs to have an obtrusive pop-up appear when production is finished but if you don't want the specific city building, then the game will also need an option to queue Goods, Growth or Research so the pop-up doesn't keep firing for that specific city.

Don't forget the less than optimal quest UI, which has so many different fonts and dialogue boxes  it makes me vomit in my mouth every time I look at it.

This would have to be an option, because I don't like this idea.  At all.

It would really help if you put your extra suggestions into a little edit box in the mainpost Thanks though, really great stuff here.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

My 2 cents.

1. Random sovereigns- This is a feature request.  I dont have a problem with this but it would be very low on my list of stuff to add to the game.  We have added new world creation sliders to the creation screen which allow you to do things like create worlds that have more Kingdom or Empire factions, but not like you suggest.

2. Multiple stacks on a tile is a big issue for me too.  One of the top 3 post-beta 5 issues we have to address.  This is a UI issue.

3. Build gold/research/growth.  This is a feature request, again I don't have a problem with it.   But its just a different way to get to a similar place and our current way works fine.

4. Unit formations.  Another feature request and I don't have a problem with it was originally speced in the design but there were some technical issue that kept us from doing it.  In short we know that some player would love the micro it provided, most wouldnt use it, and it may actually be a little more frustrating for players that didn't want to hassle with it.  If it was an easy thing, I'd probably still add it, but it effects a lot of things.

5. City details when leveling.  This has been added in Beta 5.

6. HUD on the left and right is difficult to read on large monitors.  I can see where you are coming from but I think its fairly minor for the amount of time it would take to resolve (a UI redesign).  As we talk through future projects we have been talking more about horizontal panning and centralized UI for wide screen monitors.

7. Being able to zoom to a destroyed resource- I thought you could click ont he notification to go to the spot, but I will check it out (that is the intent anyway).

8. Ledger should show unused Essence- We have updated the ledger for Beta5.  We have a column that shows the amount of enchantments on a city, it wouldnt be hard to show the min/max.  I'll add it.

Awwwww yeh! Shouldn't stuff like that be in the changelog?

Taken from .98 changelog:

Can you elaborate on this^?

And since I haven't yet, thank you Derek.  Excellent work

Funny... this is probably the most reported bug in every beta so far.  Now can you give 2 more cents using Heavenfall's UI post?  Do you have 4 cents?

You know I think the core of the issue isn't that we don't have manual control it's that the automatic setup from the AI sometime screws us over. If the automatic setup was a little smarter everyone could be happy.

Some general rules.

• Ranged units should always be in the back.
• High initiative/move units should always be in front.
• Higher health units should generally be in front if no other rules apply.

I think if those three simple rules were applied most everyone would stop complaining about the inability to setup their formations. 

Also I'd like to add the ability to remove city enchants from the main screen or city screen

Thanks Derek for responding.

Sorry, I don't think I was very clear about this one. I didn't mean generating random sovereigns on the fly - I just meant being able to select X number of players at the start and have it randomly choose from the existing sovereigns. At the moment when you start the game it appears random but then seems to remember your settings for each subsequent game. It would be great to be able to have three extra choices per AI player above selecting a specific sovereign: 1. Random would just select a random sovereign from the list; 2. Random Kingdom would pick a random kingdom sovereign from the list; and 3. Random Empire would pick a random empire sovereign. Most strategy games have this at game start and it always surprised me that WOM and FE didn't. Battle for Wesnoth does this very nicely if you load in the Grafted Units mod as an example.

My suggestion with this would be to allow the 3x3 grid on the strategic screen to drag and drop untis into positions if you want. 3 front rank, 3 mid rank (ends up in either front or rear) and 3 rear rank. This would very simply allow the player to place the critical units in the desired ranks. If a unit wasn't specifically placed in a rank the AI would auto-place into the rank it thought best. No micromanagement unless you want to and you can then ensure that the few critical placements are made. An indication of initiative would round this out perfectly.

Another easier fix to the units messing up would just be to make a space in the starting formation for each 2 units, a 1 tile wide space is open so charging units have a chance to escape the unit blocking.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I checked on this and it's already on the list.  The dev already has code for it but it won't be in in time for Beta 5.

This is coming.

Hopefully a picture tells a thousand words.

This is what I meant for random selection at the game start...

This is how Wesnoth handles it...

And this is sort of what I meant about using the 3x3 grid...

i'm with you das...hopefully derek will give those two another look