Probably not the most insightful feedback you ever get, but I do resonate with a couple of comments from others. Firstly, battle management is much improved if compared to opendev v1. I think parts of the city management are also better.

I find the policies, religion and diplomacy aspects promising. But just as with the era stars I feel I am flying through the scenario without really tilting anything towards a specific play style.

Policy points: how they are earned and what I did to affect things in the policy screen is not quite clear to me. Diplomacy: It is a pretty reactive thing for me so far, and not something I feel I plan. The difference between the AI empires is also not really something I think I could observe or see. The main difference is one is north and one is south. I find them also too easy to steamroll. So I think this lacks a bit of character at least on this game speed (a topic I find myself coming back all the time). Religion: even when I set events towards faith outcomes, it is something where I don't understand how religion is created and when. It just pops up at some point and I see I do better than the AI. But during that time it sort of feels it is a game feature that I can largely ignore as it is unclear to me, plus finishing off the competitors without it is easy anyway. I also feel the AI pumps out way too many scouts with its population. They just don't do much v a four unit army with a half decent balance between Numbian arches and some melee. And then era stars, they just come and I find it nice that I collect them, but frankly I have no idea how my era star collection compares to the AI and how to optimise my game style for a given culture (which again I think just changes too fast re game speed). So it is a nice game. I think balancing some of the concepts is a huge task. I will enjoy it eventually I am sure.

Yet I feel diplomacy, policies, religion and era stars development should be more under my control. I know this is a demo and hence tool tips and an encyclopedia is not implemented as it will get, but I think the players information management to keep track of things and plan ahead is an area, where at least I, tend to not fully understand the evolution in game.   

For combat, my first impression was that the combat was fun and engaging, but the movement and mechanics of reinforcements was confusing.

For the rest of the game, the changing of cultures between ages never seemed like it would be beneficial to me since the special areas of one civilization require a very specific city architecture that can take upwards of 100 turns to implement. Also, the Cush had a fantastic unique unit, and switching to another culture would keep me from being able to produce and maintain my army of powerful archers.

The mechanic of changing cultures between ages is the most interesting and intriguing part of this project to me, but right now it seems like sticking with your original culture would be the optimal play in the vast majority of cases. I am not sure what you would need to do to make switching cultures work well (I ran out of time and didn't actually get to try a culture swap), but I do think that the 'guilding a culture' and keeping it for the next age being an option takes all of the weight and depth away from the decision. I think that in order to properly deliver the culture change mechanic, it either needs to be mandatory or nonexistant.

To make the changing of cultures feel cohesive, it might be a good idea to allow for one or two aspects of the ancient cultures to persist throughout the game so that the foundation is never truly gone, but you get to change the flavor.

My first impression of the UI was that the colors and things were nice, but the controls and placements were not at all intuitive. I had trouble figuring out how to enter and exit menus, accidentally commited to combat multiple times, and accidentally assigned an outpost to the wrong city. Also, the battalion and city management screens are confusing. I had trouble forming and dispersing battalions and the movement points of my units seemed to get confused a lot. The resource production values and population cap values were not displayed. In order to find them I had to look at the bar that is away from the rest of the city management screen and move my mouse over an icon. That information should be prominanly displayed like it is in your other games and in other games in this genre.

Tormex wrote:

For combat, my first impression was that the combat was fun and engaging, but the movement and mechanics of reinforcements was confusing.

For the rest of the game, the changing of cultures between ages never seemed like it would be beneficial to me since the special areas of one civilization require a very specific city architecture that can take upwards of 100 turns to implement. Also, the Cush had a fantastic unique unit, and switching to another culture would keep me from being able to produce and maintain my army of powerful archers.

The mechanic of changing cultures between ages is the most interesting and intriguing part of this project to me, but right now it seems like sticking with your original culture would be the optimal play in the vast majority of cases. I am not sure what you would need to do to make switching cultures work well (I ran out of time and didn't actually get to try a culture swap), but I do think that the 'guilding a culture' and keeping it for the next age being an option takes all of the weight and depth away from the decision. I think that in order to properly deliver the culture change mechanic, it either needs to be mandatory or nonexistant.

To make the changing of cultures feel cohesive, it might be a good idea to allow for one or two aspects of the ancient cultures to persist throughout the game so that the foundation is never truly gone, but you get to change the flavor.

My first impression of the UI was that the colors and things were nice, but the controls and placements were not at all intuitive. I had trouble figuring out how to enter and exit menus, accidentally commited to combat multiple times, and accidentally assigned an outpost to the wrong city. Also, the battalion and city management screens are confusing. I had trouble forming and dispersing battalions and the movement points of my units seemed to get confused a lot. The resource production values and population cap values were not displayed. In order to find them I had to look at the bar that is away from the rest of the city management screen and move my mouse over an icon. That information should be prominanly displayed like it is in your other games and in other games in this genre.

The unique quarters don't go away when you change eras, so you can still use the abilities after you change eras. Same with unique units, so long as that category of unit is still relevant (ie if you would still be able to build the base unit) you can still build the unique version.

I just played a bit on the last day and hope there is a way to finish my game and fill out the survey.  Given the opportunity  to test Stadia, I can say it is notthing for me.  

Beside that I was positive surprised th have the chance to play Humankind again. In general I can say I would like to see more: more options on events and in diplomacy, more diffrent animals( eg. pumas, crocodiles,rhinoceros, gorillas etc.), more (optional) weather effects(for the ui), and proberbly alot more of other stuff I could not test jet.

So, i havent lot of time to spend on it, only did one full game (around 70/80 turns with persia, I stopped because there was no more challenge or point) and an half one (around 50, greeks).

I was glad to play a more complete version of the game, I have had mostly good feedback, a few meh points (mostly UI, which already improved since latest openDev) and some reserve on a few point (but this is quite personnal point of view)

There were a few bugs, nothing really game breaking but I hope we wont have this much at launch (maybe a proper beta focused on bugs and balance just before launch could help)

So here i go, going from what I like most to what should be imo improved (and I criticize and give the improvement points mostly when I like something I want to see improve)

Really Cool Things:

- Diplomacy : grievances are a cool system, its an original (or CB system reboot) way that allow for interesting gameplay and strong potential narrative build-up (if its not too easy to get). The treaties are interesting, maybe having a bit more, and more nuanced instead of just "Default/Good/no treaty"; like if i agree open military but not preachers or cultural works, or the reverse; or maybe a temporary one

-Diplo Avatar dialogs: I was quite pleasantly surprised that the dialogs were actual conversations,not just catchphrases. I hope there will be a vast variety and different combination so that it doesnt get redundant

-Music: who would have guessed right? discreet but the few pieces are really good

Cool Things

-Details of landscape: especially the people walking, its a bit sad they are not higher res/quality or whatever its called so that we could zoom more. Id like to have the displayed building engine we can see on the thing we are currently  animate too

-Narrator: so i expect this one to not bit like by everyone, as he his just commenting by using his classic 21th morale values to criticize what you do. So thats good you can put him off. Personnaly I like the humour and just see it as some guys giving his opinion without trying to impose it to me. I just find it funny. A few times though he started a setnence but stopped to start another one at beginning of a turn when we trigger several ones

-Battle animation: doing synchronous animation is reallgy good improvement

UI to be improved

- Civics: please put a number below the circle so that i know how much i have and make it clearer when i can use one. Several times I missed it and i even had 2 free once i didnt notice i had 

-Ideology: when enacting a civics, please indicate our previous position on the ideology track, and wether we are going left or right with some arrows or movement for example. Now i just see the position i will have, which is important but i also want to know by how much this move me away from my current position, and to where I'm heading

-Influence and Faith spread: I'm not sure wether the spread is just a simple sum or if the tooltips are not clear enough, id like to know exactly how is the territory influence calculated, and also if its currently going up or down (like whats the trends of the last 5 turns or so) so that i can know if i should invest more in it

-Discoveries: same probelem than in 1st openDEv, i still dont always know what i gained, because the notification last 1s before disappearing. Maybe you can show that as a floating text on the tile, maybe it could even stay on it for this turn?

-Building screen: so i did a thread for this, but basically please auto-enable the FIMs ui mode and Primary tile outpout Mode when I4m building something in the city

-Political Map Mode: I'd like to have this, like someone made an example of reddit, but its basically like when you zoom out in ck3, having the name of your empire print and be colored to see its extent, maybe with different shade to differentiate outpost from cities,and vassals

-Oupost: please can i have a building queue for them and be notified when it has finished building something , i have always missed a few turns of building something in it because of it

Also when relocating, please show me the FIMS like if i was bulding an extension or just building it for 1st time

- Exploitation graphics: i wanst able to easily see what tile i exploited , i had to look at my extension and then their adjacent tiles.

-Notifications are not informative enough (please add some extra text on it): 

1. Era star gained: yeah thanks? could i know which one? 
2. New pop: could i know what has he been affected to? maybe this way I4ll know i dont need to manage it

Worry points

So, this include the balance i mentionned above, and:

still some balance thing, but i wanted to talk about it here: the FIMS numbers. So this is quite personnal taste and might go against hte design intent, but i think the numbers go to high and too quickly. tHis is similar to your other games, and thats something i dont really like. So on the pro it might help to feel powerful of having lot of yields, but for me at some point you have so much you can't really appreciate any more FIMS for what they are. Like i was at +500 money/turn or so, why would i care about doing another building I'm rich af. Should i do industry or science? i have 100 / turn do i need more?

Other

-Trade: buying resoucre is interesting, but I'm a bit disappointed about trade routes, they seem very short with not a lot of room to get pillaged (starting from the bought resource is nice though). I'm not even sure naval trade route can be pillaged which would be one of the main inccentive to build a fleet (also please trade screen to see EVERY trade route, not just the one i bought from the zhou)

-Faith: ok but a but bland. Having some contest to become faith leader at least would be intersting, based on holy site but also faith output, or like having influential members of the faith which compete to access some benefit or leanway to control it more

-Independant people: i like the concept, but the diplo with them is a bit not enough, just upgrading a bar with 2 treshold is boring, and having some basic relations, demands, colation or proxy wars could be interesting. Also Id have liked to see more with 2 territory and please give them an actual army to defend themselves

-Spying: so this is a bug chunk that i understand is not in, but when seing some spy related units i expected to have actual proper intelligence mechanics, like assinging missions to d olot of stuff that happened in history, not just a guy that goes unoticed to ranskack and fight (and not that bad). So for me these units ar emore about abush and irregualr warfare, which is fine but Id have liked proper intelligence system, hopefully in an extension

Thats all i could think of, there were more bugs i dont remember

Keep going and hopefully another openDev or beta will come berore launch !

Hello peoples, here are my first (and overall) impressions of this Open Dev (with some delay I am sorry).

I played 6 playthroughs to gather many different data, but open dev ended earlier than what I though so I coul not finish my only scientist game where I was searching medieval techs

Here are my feedbacks:

1. Early thoughs
   1. Fistly, THANKS A LOT. I was so happy to see a new Open Dev session! Being able to play some content early and give a feedback that will be processed is very rewarding as a community member
   2. (Side note on STADIA) I was not sure about stadia at first. But now I am sure I do not want it. The quality is okayish at best (probably ~720p on Youtube), but what bothered me the most were the connexion issues
   3. I was very happy to notice change since the last open dev, like combat speed, some UI adjustments, etc. Thanks for your efforts! :D
2. Open dev difficulty
   1. The IA on casual was very easy (as expected). Not sure if there is something to say here, I just had the impression that the IA was sleeping
   2. Bear seems very easy to fight and that is kinda strange, especially for the ancient era where I thought they would still rule over basic units like scouts or hold ground vs basic infantry (in 1vs1).
   3. Did mammoths go extinct? I get that they could be removed due to the historical irrelevance in bronze era, but I wondered if they got removed from the game. Gameplay speaking, I liked that you could challenge strong pacific opponent for the sake of early boosts.
3. Notifications
   1. I love the new notifications, glad you reworked it
   2. Anomalies still need tampering though, because they disappear before you get a chance to look at them, you should put their effect in the notification bar if you make the tooltip disappear this quickly
4. Events
   1. I am beginning to hate “flooded lands” … Each game I got it and find it very frustrating. I am not sure why though, maybe it is the probability of a good/bad effect not displayed? maybe the penalty not shown at the start?
   2. The new events are nice, and I am eager to see more of them
   3. What bother me in events is that they tend to get very repetitive (in open dev at least, where I guess we have only a fraction of them). In this regard, if there are not that many events, I hope there is a way to change their occurrence in the game settings
   4. It is also hard to tell how much impact on civics the choice of events will have (is it one bar? Is it much more?), and since I always forget which traits name or icon I am going for in my games, I am then obliged to close the event, check the civics and check the slider to remind which effect I prefer between the 2 extremes
5. Wonders
   1. Wonders are very interesting, and bring some good fresh air in 4x wonders mechanics
   2. Spending influence for them is smart, it makes for an interesting use of the resource
   3. The fact that you redeem them beforehand is also very interesting. Firstly, it is a lot less frustrating than going through the whole process only to be denied the wonder on the same turn you were supposed to end it. It is also more beginner friendly and a more viable strategy if you aim for a specific wonder. In more advanced games it also means that you can cancel wonders for other player who will have too many gains from having it
   4. The fact that it is not linked to tech is also interesting, because it means that you can choose not to rush science to get a specific wonder.
   5. I also wonder (hehe) if it is a viable way to victory. It could be an interesting focus on influence on spam wonders and victory points this way
6. Religious quarters
   1. The fact that they are built like wonders was not expected from me and I really was surprised when I finally understood after 3 minutes of trying to make all my cities build one district
   2. Being dead tile (as in “not linked to the map yields”) is very intimidating in my opinion. I am not sure if this is a bad thing, but it could be interesting to add some synergies with tenants, techs, or civics.
   3. Religious quarters all work the same way, and that is somewhat a shame.
7. Religions
   1. The religion system is very enjoyable ? However, I am not sure if I understand fully how it works
   2. The advantage of having multiple religious quarters instead of one (beside the additional faith) is not intuitive. I have understood that it is a way to ensure that your religion will not be taken by another player (by having more religious districts), but I hardly understand how it is interesting when all tenants are districts
   3. Changing religion is also very interesting, being both a gamble and an opportunity
   4. I hope that the game will have lots of tenants because each step is very nice and add very interesting things. Adding more (as in lots) will also fuel the need to steal other religions or being the first to unlock the 10th tenant. Think of it as a run inside the game. Reaching the goal in mid game (100% tenants unlocked) will create dead 
8. Fame system
   1. The fame system is very interesting and smart, I really love it
   2. You sort of get fame points very often, and I am wondering about how difficult it will be to win the game.
   3. The fact that you can “fast next age” or not is very nice, but I hope it will be a viable option to do so. Imagine you achieved to sprint though all the 6th eras in 80 turns only to be stuck with almost no points… (I think I saw that ending the tech tree will end the game, but I am not sure)
   4. Transcendence do not show what you will gain, but what you already have…
   5. I hope that you can end the game without going through the whole 300 turns each game, because from what I saw when playing this scenario, there is nothing more frustrating than having done all you wanted to do and wait 40 turns with barely any change in fame or events (again not sure about the tech thing)
   6. Fame is very abstract, and I would have like to have an idea of the value of the said resource. I would like to be able to compare it to other for example
9. Civics
   1. I really like the system overhaul, the fact that it synergizes with what did happen in the game is very satisfying and immersive
   2. You should display the points available on the main screen, it is an important data which is still 2click away. (I am also not sure if there is a notification for new points as well neither)
   3. The fact that diplomatic influence does influence your civics is so immersive! I really think this is a wonderful idea
10. Tech tree
    1. A shame you cannot pick a gameplay from this tree, it would have been interesting to make a full merchant run without any army
    2. Too quick, again. But this is my feeling compared to Civ gameplay, where each tech unlock key features. Maybe my opinion will differ on the whole game with the six era accessible
    3. Some techs seem not very interesting (in my humble opinion at least). I rarely am eager to search for techs that only unlock infrastructures like aqueduct.
    4. A shame you know the strategic resource as soon as you reach the corresponding era
11. Cultures
    1. All cultures seem broken, and that is fine :D What I mean is that all seems to have a proper impact on the game and can really change the course of the game depending on what you choose
    2. All are enjoyable and that is great
12. Culture orientation
    1. Not very fond of orientations (merchants/ etc) effects except the agrarian and aesthete ones, which doesn’t have any downside (except the cooldown) as opposed to military (cost 4pop) / science (stop all except science) / builder (stop all except indu) / expansionist (grievance) / merchant (must buy from trade)
    2. Militarist TRAIT IS BROKEN (as in bugged): you can make militia from 1 pop each who will then create 2 pop each on destruction, hence infinite pop
13. Map
    1. Lacks pings (“I want a city there” for instance)
    2. I think there is too many resources spots (both strategic and luxuries) since I mostly play games with low resources. But I guess (and hope) you can change the rarity in the game settings.
    3. I am worried about the look of cities in the long run. Because, even if I love the looks of the special quarters (Wonders, City centers, Emblematic quarters), I do not very much like the looks of other quarters (worker, farmer). I cannot say what bugs me, but it may have to do with how the grounds look on quarters, being untextured and greyish and having strange blend with the road. Sometimes I also think that there are too few buildings or furniture’s compared to EQs
    4. I would really love to have a closer look with the zoom though
    5. I find that the look of exploited resources (both strategic and luxuries) is not very visible. I mean okay, I see that the TILE is exploited, but not if there is an artisan quarter on it or not. I hoped to see if the resource was exploited without the blue/black icon
14. Resources
    1. I did wonder about influence in the long run. Because currently you can spend it in 3 ways: claim territories/attach outpost/“buy” Wonders. But when you enter medieval and all territories are claimed, what will you have (beside wonders) to spend influence?
    2. Is it normal to have so many resources (money/industry/food/science) so quickly? Around turn 50, my yields are so strong that I can buy all improvements in the bronze and classic era for one city in 5 turns
    3. Forced labour seems way useful than in the first scenario (and like the fact that you only can use them to “buy” wonders)
    4. Still not sure about the “cut tree” effect, it does not seem very powerful cost in the mid run, and since the tile yields are not so clear it is scary (lack the “+1 indu from forest” showing the decrease on hovering the action on a tile)
    5. Stability is strange, because you do not really know how much you need and what affect it.
    6. Food still lack the exact yield instead of “growth” imo
15. City management
    1. Overhaul city management is the thing I am the most enthusiast for at the current time (beside combats), it has so much depth and you can manage your city in lots of ways.
    2. I found it frustrating to get so many cities from invasions, with no mean to choose what to make of it, like “attach it to a city”, “destroy it”, “pillage it”, etc. I seem too basic that the only option was to capture it as a city.
    3. There is also the fact that you cannot destroy one of your cities or evacuate the population if you know that you are going to lose it.
    4. I found the fact that you can move through a cliff it when a city have quarters from each side a waste. Because strategically you want to have stronghold using the terrain. Making new paths only make it easier for you opponent when attacking. Instead, I thought it could be more interesting if you could build the path on said cliff with a dedicated building or something similar. This way, you can choose, between having a stronghold or a shortcut 
16. Quarters
    1. Previously (1rst opendev scenario) loved the quarter builds concept
    2. Today, a little bit worried with how it will play in the long term, because I do not have a grasp in how you should build in late game
    3. Harbour do not show on lake (WIP or bug maybe?)
17. City improvements
    1. Not clear what the gains will be (a hassle to calculate for each city)
    2. Too many constructible, lack categorisation (the filter is not very useful in this regard)
    3. Why can you construct rivers/coast improvements if there is none in the territory or exploited?
18. Armies
    1. A very nice touch that you must spend population to make an army
    2. An even nicer touch that you can destroy the army to improve the city population
    3. Automatic exploration still cannot be cancelled by moving manually
19. Battles
    1. Battles still need to understand multi-turn movements in my opinion, even if they only move the first turn. Because it is strange to order something you can do on the global map that the game do not understand in battle
    2. In global map, avoid spoiling the player through the fog of war in by displaying encounter panel. It happened to me multiple time when I wanted to move a scout (all the while maintaining right click) and saw a battle panel in 1 tile in particular
    3. I also encountered the case where the game will not show the attack preview because there was a unit in the way 
20. Diplomacy
    1. Very nice overhaul
    2. I like how both characters speaks (but maybe there is some delay when making successive actions)
    3. Trade: unclear of what it does to the empire, especially for luxury resources (loyautee? industry? money?)
    4. Lack explanation for each tabs (the grayed out tab seem like it is locked by a missing tech instead of no demand)
    5. War mechanics are not clear at all (force surrender etc) I surrendered once because I thought I was forcing the enemy to surrender. I also accepted a white peace because I though I could make some demands afterward
    6. Do IA comeback after being fully invaded? Or players?
    7. Why is there 2 time the condition occupation for some cities when forcing surrender?
    8. On forcing surrender, it is hard to see which city is which (hard to remember only by names)
21. Independent people
    1. It reminded me a lot about ES2 system, but my interest in them is stronger here, they add more spice to the whole and can be a very interesting way to add no man’s land and early commerce
    2. In my games though, I must have a bug, because I could not assimilate them in any way because I was not a patron even though I was in the list of patrons.
    3. The fact that the price of assimilation rises each time you patronize them is not clear enough 
    4. Overhaul the UI for independent faction is not clear, I did not have a full grasp of what the effect will be when one precise settlement is being patronized
    5. You can also see that other patronize them, but it is not clear if they get the same bonus as you do
    6. I am eager to see how games will play out in games with lots of peoples with theses factions, I hope to see players competing to assimilates them or things like that :D

I’m a little bit late to the party, but I had gathered a long list of feedback that I wanted to share, now that I have brought it into a somewhat concise form. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed playing the Stadia OpenDev (way more than the earlier OpenDev scenarios), but there is a bunch I’d love to see optimised (mostly UI things):

City/Resources

– Show the exact Food production value (as a number) directly in the UI (as with other resources), not just via tooltip.

– Show the exact Stability level somewhere when it is over 100 %, so you don’t have to manually add all numbers up. It is valuable to know how much you are above 100 %, for example when you are set to be losing temporary modifiers. Also, list the baseline stability without modifiers (that is 75 %, I believe).

– Numbers in resource production don’t always add up correctly (probably due to rounding) – for example, at one point I was producing 24 Food, which resulted in +15 Stability.

– Show the collective FIMS percentage bonus per settlement, gathered from various sources all over the place (like civics). I want to be able to see at a glance roughly how much resource production would change when moving pops without actually moving them there and back again.

City/Population

– Moving pops (starting count from the left) is backwards to Endless Legend, which is terribly confusing going back and forth between the games. I’m not sure if one or the other is more intuitive if you haven’t played either, but I’d suspect a substantial percentage of the Humankind playerbase to also have played Endless Legend, and it will always be confusing for those. Muscle memory and all that.

– At some point (weirdly not all the time) there was a button to switch between drag ’n’ drop and click to move a pop. Seeing that felt weirdly out of place in the UI. I would either enable both, or make it a menu option. No need for an extra button in the city UI, I don’t think.

– Population assignment policy should not put more population into Food when already at Super Growth and no population into Food when not being able to get to Super Growth, unless Stability is a priority (and not at 100 %).

City/Construction

– Filtering possible constructions by resource type is great, but in addition I’d love to see those resource icons on the construction images (or make it otherwise clear with colouring), so you can see it at a glance without bothering with the filter dropdown box (lots of possibly unnecessary mouse clicks over time).

– Make it more apparent which quarters are already built where to allow for better planning.

– When Holy Site had finished constructing, it was not shown as last construction (possibly due to it being a shared project).

City/Various

– In general, the City UI takes up a lot of space (the resource panel at the top and the consctruction panel to the right), leaving little space for looking at the map, which is especially important when building quarters.

– Make it more clear what the Unadministered malus is (numbers!).

– It was not immediately clear what the Extension limit does. Would it be a hard limit? Needed trying it to find out that you can build more extensions (and that not all extensions count towards the limit, like quarters do and the city center, I believe, but not resource extractors), but at a loss of Stability (-10 per extension over limit?).

– Exiting city view (right-click) and army view (left-click) shouldn’t be different. I know there is probably not an easy solution as right-click for units is reserved to moving, and left-click in cities probably also has its uses (although I’m struggling to remember what those might be). But having it differ just invites misclicks.

Outpost

– We could make use of a better in-game explanation of what converting an outpost into a city versus attaching it to an existing city does.

– There is no notification when an outpost finished a construction / is idle, which is quite annoying if you forget for a number of turns that you could build resource extractors, for example.

– Outpost relocation should show the complete FIMS of the new location and exploitations, not just the outpost tile itself.

Units

– As noted with the City UI before, the Army UI takes up a lot of space, especially in battle (preparation) with the panel at the top. Very small map space when zoomed in.

– I only found out by accident that there is a button to complete unit movement (the circle around End Turn). That should be differnetly designed or better explained/labelled.

– Closing an Urgent Affair with right click, while having an army focused, moves the army, which shouldn’t be a thing. Not much more frustrating than accidentally moving units and not being able to undo it.

– Might be a deliberate design decision, but I’d much prefer partial movement of units to be possible in battle as well. So moving less tiles than their movement maximum without it ending your movement for the turn. Just as it is outside of battle

– Combat numbers do not always add up. For example, I think I observed a Crossing River malus to be additionally added as bonus for the opponent (which might be deliberate, but not intuitive).

Map

– Terrain tooltips always get in the way. I much preferred it in Endless Legend where the tooltip always was at the bottom left corner. Now I have to purposely put my mouse above anything that does not show a tooltip if I’m lookingat the map.

– Improve strategic view (when you zoom out) to immediately recognise which terrain a tile is.

– Show “Anomalies” terrain (don’t know what they are called here, special terrain with extra FIMS) in strategic view with a symbol, just like in Endless Legend.

– Also possibly show FIMS in strategic view?

– Showing tile output should also show resources that are currently not exploited on tiles belonging to a city.

– Deposit symbols sometimes cover FIMS.

Research

– Overall, research progress feels a bit too fast.

– Exiting the technology screen should also close the science progress panel in the bottom left.

– I’d prefer an option to circumvent the research progress panel altogether. I cannot see me using it ever, I want the full view to plan my research. Again, it’s just adding unnecessary clicks (for some).

– Show the Industry cost for constructions in the research tree. I might not choose a research (yet) when I’m seeing that it is way too expensive to build at the moment.

Diplomacy

– In general, Diplomacy/Treaties feel a bit bland. More options for Counter would be an obvious choice, but overall I feel the system could be much more refined.

– In the Trade window have a way to quickly switch to another empire, saving unnecessary mouse clicks again.

– When you cannot afford to buy a trade license for a resource deposit, you should be able to see what the cost is.

– Have a way to easily see the number of Trade Routes per city. (I forget why, but I assume there were buildings with bonuses per trade route? So, in fact nothing really to do with diplomacy. Oh well.)

Eras

– In the notification, show which Era Star was just unlocked. Don’t make me open the screen and try to remember which one it might have been.

– The order of the Era Star categories should be fixed and not variable. They seemed to swap around all the time without any logic I could spot. 

– There are too many clicks involved when looking at Cultures before choosing a new one. If a culture card is expanded and you click on another or use the Previous/Next buttons, open the new one also expanded.

Various

– WASD movement of the map is too slow.

– How does Territorial Influence work and how is it calculated?

– How much Faith is produced? I couldn’t find a number anywhere.

– It isn’t clear (until you try it) whether the number of Administrators is a total or the remaining number. A clarifying tooltip would help.

– I would like to see more variance in Luxury resource effects, no 2 resources having the same.

– The symbol for Copper looks like Thread.

– Show the industry cost for Wonders when claiming them.

– When collecting a curiosity, the notification should remain in the notification area to see what you collected.

– And at last, my number one pet peeve (as in the Endless games, altough at least EL fixed it at some point, I believe): Don’t use two hyphens instead of an en/em dash, unless you’re writing on a typewriter!

Well written - I think this makes a lot of sense. One thing I can resonate a lot with is the pop management. I find it tedious to go into the city screen and make sure they do not end up as farmers when you already have super growth. To be fair I haven't used the option to focus the city on certain resource production, but I am somewhat sceptical that these options work efficiently enough (might be wrong). I was wondering whether it is possible to indicate where the next pop should go to or to add them to where the last pop was manually added to. 

I generally agree with all you said, I'm just taking the opportunity to give feedback on some of your points.

PeteCrighton wrote:

Eras

– In the notification, show which Era Star was just unlocked. Don’t make me open the screen and try to remember which one it might have been.

– The order of the Era Star categories should be fixed and not variable. They seemed to swap around all the time without any logic I could spot. 

About the first point (which Era Star was unlocked), you might also find interesting the suggestion I made in this thread, I felt exactly the same as what you experienced and are describing.

About the second point, I guess it has to do with the change of affinity once you select a new culture in the next Era.

Various

– How much Faith is produced? I couldn’t find a number anywhere.

As far as I know, at the beginning of the scenario, you'd generate faith with Meroe Pyramids. Once a certain threshold reached (I can't remember the number), you'd be choosing your first beliefs (Polytheism or Shamanism), allowing you to accrue faith to choose Tenets. Once the religious screen was available, you could see the amount of faith you generated and the amount needed to choose Tenets.

But, I agree with you, in early game, faith could be a bit more explanatory.

Waykot wrote:
About the first point (which Era Star was unlocked), you might also find interesting the suggestion I made in this thread, I felt exactly the same as what you experienced and are describing.

Yes, I could see something like that working very well. Although, I feel like ideally the info on which era star was unlocked should also be included in the notification itself, so I don’t have to go to the extra screen.

Waykot wrote:
About the second point, I guess it has to do with the change of affinity once you select a new culture in the next Era.

The main category on top, yes, and I think that’s fine. But the other six categories were in a different order all the time, even just after closing the screen and immediately reopening it. Felt more like a bug than being intentional.

Waykot wrote:
Once the religious screen was available, you could see the amount of faith you generated and the amount needed to choose Tenets.

I don’t remember exactly now, but wasn’t the threshold for new tenets based on the number of pops of a certain faith, rather than a numerical value of faith produced? To be honest, I don’t remember now why I made that note, but I assume there have to be certain things relating to faith produced in each city (like buildings giving a percentage boost or the like).