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Feedback: User Interface and User Experience

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 1:24:35 AM

It seams like there is a bug with the visualization of eliminated players when loading a save file.

Orange has been eliminated here as the tool tip says but it is not shown in the ribbon:

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 1:39:59 AM
workswithdragons wrote:
Instead of "The Mauryans feel differently", just say "The Mauryans feel friendly".

Yes, I want to second this and say wonderful feedback, thank you for realizing this and bringing it to attention

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 2:02:43 AM

I greatly enjoyed the closed Dev. I missed Victor, bud did play Lucy. Several interface issues. 

  1. Sometimes a combat overlay would show, and not disappear, even if I did not initiate the combat. Only a save and reload would fix. 
  2. Several times, either my gold total or influence total would freeze. Going into another screen, then back to the main menu would fix.
  3. Units would sometimes disappear. The unit was there, but no graphical representation. 
  4. A few times the diplomacy screen would go crazy. I would click on Black, but green would come up. Then no matter who I clicked on, it would continue to go to green.
  5. I unlocked all the gamer avatars. The game would randomly assign them to a civ/colour. The picture would not match the image. Upon a reload, the names and icons would be randomized.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 3:24:22 AM

Cheers for the beta and here's some feedback. Can't say I read the whole thread, so some sentiments are most likely echoed elsewhere here.


UI and control feedback:


  1. There need to be dynamic tooltips for infrastructure—It’s very unclear how much a stone works or lumber mill tech will help a particular city unless I go and count up how many of those tiles a city/region has. In the late game it doesn’t matter much, but if I’ve just established a city or the production costs are otherwise high, I want to know how much these will benefit my cities to better make informed decisions on what to build. The same with buffs to science, gold (how many trade routes are even going through a city anway?), etc.
  2. Pillage results stay on the map far too long and need to be dismissible—What if I want to see if I can settle a city on the same tile that I just pillaged some one else’s outpost? The pillaging text hides the outpost yields and I can’t see how much food/production the settle tile is worth.
  3. More robust citizen slots policies—I appreciate the ease of being able to drag priorities around, but sometimes I want just one citizen in a certain slot, rather than avoiding it entirely. Some sort of advanced screen where we could mathematically define some if-then conditions.
  4. Ability to auto-hide certain types of tooltips (city growth on outposts is especially one of these that I super don’t need to know, for instance). Whether this is an option in the menus or a “Don’t show this type of notification again” button on the popup.
  5. Better information on religion in general. Tool often have I chosen benefits to holy sites and gotten the +1 holy site text…only to not be able to build anymore holy sites because my religion has spread to other players who have them. If I can’t build another holy site/benefit from that choice, don’t display the text, or otherwise display a “maximum number of holy sites within religion X/Y” type of tooltip. It’s a big ouch if I’m counting on having benefits from holy sites that I then don’t get to even build.
  6. Due to embarkation taking full movement, if movements are queued, then units will wait for orders when they try to embark/land and still have partial movement left. (As in, embarking from land with 3/4 movment left and then sailing for a certain distance in the water.) The player shouldn’t have to manage this.

 

 Bugs:

  1. Total owned gold not updating every turn unless I hover over it—Not sure what is causing it
  2. Some district placement preview not showing true values for emblematic districts—I have to read the more detailed pop-up text to fully account for adjacency bonuses, where as the small map tooltips are sometimes inaccurate. (As in, way too low—a Dutch VOC displaying less than 10 gold when hovering over an applicable spot near a harbor)
  3. Sometimes battle previews (no battle initiated) stay frozen on the map until a new battle in the same area updates/removes this. This makes it impossible to see the tiles or unit movements there.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 4:15:24 AM

A few UX aspects that could be improved:

  1. Wonders: there doesn't seem to be a way to access the wonders screen other than through a notification. If for any reason you missed it (ex. minimized it then forgot about it) then the only way to select the wonders seems to be to reload a save (which is super annoying).
  2. Combat: For ranged units that can move after fighting, it would be super useful to identify which units have already taken their shots. (useful for large battles)
  3. Relocating outposts: the widget used to calculate the yields of the new location should be the same as the one used when placing an outpost for the first time. Right now it seems to be showing only the change in yields but the values don't seem to be calculated correctly.
  4. Notifications: "Ship lost at sea": it probably shouldn't be displayed for units that are on auto-explore.
  5. Notifications: "Close to defeat": This notification seems to be triggered even when not at war with a nation.
  6. Notifications popups: They are not minimized when opening the diplomacy window which results in the notification being displayed on top of the "propose" button.
  7. Events: the current background and font colour make the description quite difficult to read.
  8. Civics impact: In addition to the civic in itself, there seem to be a secondary impact related to the type of policy (progress/tradition/etc.) it enacts. Those secondary impacts should be a lot easier to access than having to hover on the slider. For example, they could simply be integrated to the main description of the civic ... This also applies to some events that move the policy sliders one way or another but don't always tell you what effect it will have.
  9. Outpost / city placement: a quality of life option would be to have a view mode that hides the fog of war (of the discovered terrain only, of course) and units so we can get a better, clearer, look at the map.
  10. Trapped units: It is possible to get trapped inside enemy territory if an open border deal is cancelled while your units are still there. In theory this could be an interesting situation forcing you to declare war or make sacrifices to reopen the borders but, in practice, it leads to having to micro manage the trapped units to make them skip every turn. In addition, you can't even disband the units if they're in enemy territory.
Last, but it maybe more of a personal preference, but I think it would great to have one more zoom level before entering the greyed out/high level map.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 5:56:05 AM

Skimmed over the other messages and I don't think anyone else mentioned this, I noticed that if I changed an AI avatar before starting a game (eg. change Vlad to Frankie), after saving the game and returning later the AI avatar would revert to the original (Loaded save game has Vlad).

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 8:15:47 AM

Although this itteration of the game has improved a lot in the UI department, there are still some items worth noting:


1) It would be useful if we had a tool of some sort (perhaps a mouseover?) that informed us of the benefit one gains by constructing a certain building in a city. Some buildings are straight forward (i.e +3 food in a port), others are extremely complicated (+1 industry per forest/woodland). You have to search your city tiles one by one in order to make an informed decision. Something along the lines of "you will get +3 food and +5 gold if you build this" would represent a great quality of life improvement. 

2) Unit veterancy is difficult to inspect as it is. You have to enter the army interface, click on the unit, click on the veterancy icons (three stars) and then you get to see how much XP you have accumulated. Doable but cumbersome

3) There is no information panel whatsoever for the management of minor tribes/civilizations. You have to remember to visually scroll to the map to check on how your influence is doing. 

4) I can't really understand why the combat tactical mini-game has to gray out the terrain tiles. It's quite annoying that you have to click over a tile to check and see whether you're on a river crossing and it's not immediately clear if you have a height advantage. Some terrain coloring would be nice and it would visually aid with combat administration. 

5) There is no easy way to manage trade routes. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the only way to do this is via the diplomatic interface through the trade tab by checking for active imports and exports. This is tedious to say the least. Although there are some icons on the map which state that X trade routes flow through X administrative post this is confusing and inconsistent. Perhaps a trade view on the map showing trade routes similar in function to the culture or religious filtering would help. 


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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 10:52:05 AM

1. the models of different districts are almost identical. it's hard to distinguish from different district on the map. I never know which district is already built or which is not built in this city unless i check every lattice carefully.

2. natural wonders are too few. I have only seem one of them on the map.

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 11:55:22 AM

I really miss a minimap to navigate. Sometime i find myself deep in the fog and didnt know where i was.

Then there were the issue with white font used on really light background.

The option for tooltips(the slider you configure the timing when it apears) should split(like in civ V) for tolltips on terraintiles(because i want them to appear faster to see which type of terrain, district etc.) and the tooltips in the menu.

The district overlay is to ugly and unspecific, so i would love to have an improved overlay where i placed which districts, espacially when i am building new ones.


The messages of events(bottom left) needed to long to show up. I would love to see a very short or none animation so its fluent

the theater had a very od locking lod (even on max settings, it wasnt even round anymore)

units sometime were invisible and if they joined a battle with Eg half HP the game played a animation like they were attacked.


Bridger wrote:

One thing which really feels missing is a part of the tooltip which displays the 'actual' yields of a given infrastructure.


For example: If an infrastructure gives +1 industry for each woodland and forest tile I'm exploiting (for industry), it should calculate and display the total increase in yields I will get if I build that infrastructure (based on the current city exploitation).

I agree. It would lead to a better overview.


Jarke wrote:
workswithdragons wrote:
AOM wrote:

The pop-ups telling me an AI has changed their feelings towards me. These are not helpful, as the AIs are constantly changing their opinions, and there's not much I can or want to do about that. They make it so useful pop-ups are lost in the mix (like ones that tell me I'm being pillaged).

Yes, exactly! It would be nice if the pop-up told you the new opinion, so you didn't need to open the diplomacy screen. Instead of "The Mauryans feel differently", just say "The Mauryans feel friendly".

+1

I just had 3 opinion changes in one turn - much clicking only to realize that all of my neibours hate me.


As QoL I would be more than happy if hovering over diplomacy button You can see the name of an empire, something like this:

For me it is hard to remember all of the cultures and when they enter next era I lose track who is who and when I need to talk with for ex. Celts I just click one after another until i find this one specific civ.

+

Gzstg wrote:

I feel like a tooltip for food is missing. as i lose a population only to gain it back a turn later. then i lose it again like two turns later. I think a tooltip providing some more information on food would be helpful. Also at the end of turn 149 the game freezes. something is stopping the turn from completing and advancing to turn 150. I don't know what is holding it up but I was having fun up till that point. 

+

Sothere wrote:

I would absolutely love a fast movement option for units. There is a slider for Battle Speed already.


I felt the units moved at a snails pace, sometimes stopping you from ending turn and taking other actions until they had finished crawling 6 tiles.

+

I really hope for it. I played civ V in fast animation mode. I really dont see humankind with that fast animations but the should really speed up. I found myself fighting against Hunnic Horde and the animations took ages



Danbo999 wrote:
AOM wrote:

The game has a lot of text boxes that pop into existence blocking your view of whatever it is you're trying to see. It would be nice to be able to defer some of them and turn others off entirely. Examples include: 


The very large drop-down combat preview box that appears during battles. It obscures so much of battle scene that I have to shift my screen view to see what's going on. Meanwhile, I don't need the information it contains, as it will not influence my move in any way. It would be nice if players who don't want this box could turn it off.


The pop-ups that appear in the middle of the screen at the beginning of a turn (boxes to do with wonders and techs). These obscure the middle of the screen and require dismissal. Clicking through them at the beginning of a turn when I'm trying to maneuver my troops to be first into battle is annoying. It would be nice to defer these to the end of the turn. Alternatively, the completion of a wonder could be announced by a musical notification instead of a popup, and the science tech completion box made optional; after all, I'm going to be prompted to select a new tech, so I don't really need to be informed that I just completed one. If I have more than one queued, I know that, and I can keep track of the progress myself.


The pop-ups telling me an AI has changed their feelings towards me. These are not helpful, as the AIs are constantly changing their opinions, and there's not much I can or want to do about that. They make it so useful pop-ups are lost in the mix (like ones that tell me I'm being pillaged).


Pop-ups that appear over other pop-ups and can't be dismissed like the ones that show up on top of the little popups that say how much food/production a tile has when placing an outpost on the site of a previously pillaged outpost.


Basically, it would be nice to have a little more control over all the text boxes.

I tired of constantly having to turn off text boxes too!

I agree. I think that is the biggest problem in the ui that it uses much space for little information. Cleary it shouldnt be too tight but espacially the battlescreen is very anoying.


AOM wrote:

I've just spent some time playing with a focus on trying to explore the world. My overwhelming impression is that the game is designed to entrap the player in one place. To begin with, AIs surround the player and refuse to share open borders. If you try to slip past them early on, they hunt your units down and kill them. Trying to go over water is a non-starter as deep water research occurs so late on the science tree. All of this is compounded by two features of terrain.  The first is the back and forth nature of any movement over land that's caused by terrain features that block forward motion that are not really detectable until your troop actually encounters them (many areas where you'll have to backtrack aren't visually apparent). The second is the fact that any given island or continent is edged by tiles that won't allow embarkment or disembarkment. Again, these tiles are not clearly visually defined as too cliff-like to move onto or off of. Instead, many, if not most, look like beach tiles at sea level. These features make trying to explore the map, let alone circumnavigate by the Industrial era, an exercise in frustration. Exploring the map is one of my favorite parts of civ games. I'm disappointed this game is so hostile to exploration.

Yes and no. I think its somewhat realistic that you cant explore everything from the beginning. From when the cultures are chosen, i think traveling with some sort of embassator or explorer through foreign terretory would be great -- and realistic


Hjuloppheng wrote:

Hey, is there a way to see how much influence penalty you will get for creating a city over you limit?

The system behind that i didnt get as well. For what is it? Is it to nerv wide players, like in stellaris, or is it a hard cap(actually never tried to go over it)


kalaak wrote:

UI - Cities

1. Allow changing the name of outposts;

2. Allow characters from other languages, like korean/japanese/russian;

3. After changing my city name, the game still kept showing notifications with the previous (original) city name instead of the new one.


UI - Other

1. Add a minimap to the game. It may not be enabled by default, but we need an option so we can use it. The map is quite large, so it would be great to have it;

2. Add a clock to the top bar so we can see the time (system clock).


UI - Player badges and colors

1. Every player has a badge and a color attached to them, but it would be great to change the color and the badge if we so choose. I don't want to play using a static blue color forever. The badge looks great, but if we are choosing a new culture, it would be great to use their flag/badge or something instead of that horse badge.

Agree, and also the player badges would be nice(if not confusing)

Owlexander wrote:

While I was playing Civ V with the ‘enhanced user interface’ mod the other day, I thought a couple of its features could potentially ‘enhance’ Humankind’s cities build menu, if they were added as options.


One:  Its build menu was a vertical list, which I would really, really like to have as an option for Humankind.


Two:  It had a clicky to rush units and buildings on their icons.   This is a nice time saver I would love to see implemented in Humankind.

 

Here’s a screen shot of what the mod looks like.

Yes! Although the buyout option in humankind was working, but if you have saved up production and you want to build one unit in one round and buy one unit it invests the saved up production into the unit you buy. Hence you produce longer your second unit.


But to end it positive. I enjoyed playing it! The longterm i hope you keep improving the game and dont scare away reworking parts of the ui, gamesystems etc. If you look what HOI4 made with every update or Civ V or even Civ VI werent as complete game at launch as they are today and i think you have a better foundation then civ V or Civ 6 on which you can build new and improve old systems!


Cheers and sry for my blocky englich:)

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 1:32:26 PM

Sorry if I'm repeating others. I haven't read through this thread.

I finished the Beta once (over 14k fame).

My biases:

- I'm a board gamer. I like to know the rules of the game before I play, not be surprised by them.

- I'm not a role player. I like some flavor to a game, but I don't want it to obscure the mechanics of the game.

- I'm accustomed to CiV and Civ VI. I like a lot of what Humankind does differently, but it does bias my expectations in the absence of information.

- I strongly prefer turn-based over RTS.

- I'm more of an explorer/builder than warrior, but I like the battle system in Humankind.


There are too many UI elements that obscure what I'm trying to look at.

The tutorial has pop-ups that don't have an "understood" button to dismiss them. It looks like they're prompting me to try out some other button,

but too many times they popped up when I was trying to do something else. Please add an "understood" or "dismiss" button to ALL the tutorial popups!

(I did see there's a "turn off this and all future tutorials" button. I don't want to turn tutorials off. I just want to dismiss the one thing in my way.)


When I hit end turn, I don't want everything happening at once. There are times when I want to watch where enemy units move.
Having popups obscure this was frustrating. Present them (and let me dismiss them) before the AI moves, or after it is done.

Many times that I move multiple spaces at once, I see a things appear and disappear during movement. e.g. a deer.
Moving one hex at a time is tedious. I'd prefer that some indication of what I saw remain visible after the movement completes.
e.g. deer last seen here.

When selecting a spot for an outpost, the detailed popup window far too often obscured the summary flag and or neighboring spots I was trying to see or click on.

I'd prefer to see those details in a corner of the screen, like the terrain information window in the lower left corner.


The outpost suggestion flags were not always flagging the spots I would pick.

I found that I had to search around for spots that met my criteria (e.g. "maximum Food", "maximum Industry", "maximum total", "best balance of Food and Industry")
(This got REALLY tedious later in the game.)
I'd like to see these different criteria flagged at once, with different colors to differentiate them.
A way to quickly select which of these criteria I want to see flagged.

There were times (particularly when settling terra incognita) that I wanted to find a place for an outpost in each Territory.
(I snowballed so far ahead of the AI that I was settling the whole continent by myself.)
Sometimes it showed me flags in nearby Territories, but none in the Territory I was in (or mousing over).
I get that that's useful if you're looking for the best Territory to settle, but I was trying to settle all of them. (Over 10k Influence to burn.)
I'd like to see a way to force it to show flags on the best locations in a particular Territory.

It would be nice to have a way to sprout little FIMS columns from all the hexes in a Territory to really see the lay of the land's yields.
e.g. little green/orange/yellow/blue columns on each hex, the height of which would represent the yield in that hex.
Maybe a way to make all but a select type translucent so you could see the one you want to focus on.
(So you could see the Industry in a sea of Food or vice versa.)

Many times I wanted to mouse over one of the detailed information panels that popped up when I hovered over something else
because there were details that weren't spelled out in enough detail.
e.g. during random events, hovering over the civic icon shows the civic popup, but I can't then move over to hover over the bars to see the
explanation of what happens. I think some of these were spelled out either in events or civic adoption, but not both. Please make it always give me all the information
about the direct consequences of a choice.

For random event pop ups, it was frustrating not to be able to see the keyword terms (e..g. Bountiful/Fierce/...) for the different options spelled out at once.
Don't make me hover over terms one at a time to see the meaning. Flavor is nice, but it should not interfere with understanding the mechanics of the game.

When zooming in and out on the map, units obscured resources (and appeared and disappeared at the same point in zooming).
This was frustrating when I was trying to scan the map for particular resources.
Please add a way to select which elements (Resources, Armies, Outposts, Cities) appear at any given zoom level.

The lack of differentiation in color of Luxury and Strategic Resource Deposits was frustrating when I was looking for something in particular.
E.g. I'm looking for sources of Copper.

I did not see any way to identify what continent any given Territory belonged to.
This made it difficult to know when I should expect to achieve the deeds relating to conquering continents.

Other deeds need to be spelled out in more detail.
e.g. After sailing around and revealing a swath of the map left to right, I expected to achieve the circumnavigation deed (like in Civ VI), but didn't.
I did eventually get it, but I'm not sure what the actual criteria was. Was it a single ship sailing to all longitudes?
Was it a single ship finding its way back to a hex it had previously visited after going around the map?
I want to know the actual criteria for these deeds, so I can form a plan and achieve it; not have it appear at random when I accidentally trip over the trigger.

I'm not sure if this belongs in this thread or somewhere else. I found the Influence system pretty confusing in the early game.
It appears that the cost to construct an Outpost goes up with the number of previous Territories claimed and whether it neighbors a city, territory or neither.
I'm not sure if that's a penalty for distance or a discount for neighbors or what.
The first City was pretty cheap then it went up a lot. I can't really strategize if I don't understand the rules of the game. Please spell all this out!
I want to be able to understand and predict the cost progression, not be surprised by it.

The pop-up explaining the penalty for exceeding the city limit said the penalty was 30 per turn. It didn't say if that was total, per city, or what.
It didn't even hint that there was a higher penalty for each subsequent city over the limit.
It appears to be 30 for the first city, then 20 higher for each additional, summed up to a total of 30/80/150/240/350/... this needs to be clearer.

Where things are random, please be clear, somewhere, that they are random within some given range.

I find the Civic system pretty baffling. I have no idea whether new civics appeared at random, were triggered by my game play, or were programmed to appear at particular turns.
I want to know the rules of the game. If they're a deck of cards drawn at random, okay, just be clear about it.

For the City summary list (upper right corner), I really wanted more information listed: # Territories, Stability (current and target).

I want a way to see how far other Empires are in the tech tree. Maybe details of science output and how many techs and latest tech unlocked on lower difficulties
scaling back to some flavor of whether they're advanced or primitive compared to my empire on higher difficulties.

Many times I had trouble telling where on the map a given grievance took place.
(In part because the Territory names seem to disappear from the main map once they're attached to a City so I forget what they are.)
It appears I can't zoom in to get the full color detail with units and such within the crisis panel.
It was frustrating to have to leave the crisis dialog, look at the map, then navigate back to the crisis dialog.
Please make zooming in and out show the same detail during a crisis dialog as on the regular map display.
Maybe leave the attached Territory names more visible on the main map too.

It would also help to have the boundaries between Territories attached to a City remain more visible.
(Maybe only when hovering over its administrative center)

In areas of the map where my City Territory borders a neighbors Outpost, it is confusing to have the border render as two solid colors.
I would prefer to see dotted line on the Outpost side of the line.
Likewise, when an unclaimed Territory is surrounded by Cities, it is hard to spot that it is unclaimed.
It would help to have the white dotted line remain.

I initially found the grievance "Renounce" button confusing. I don't have the exact wording of the pop-up. Something like "Renounce to make demand".
I initially read that as an option to make a demand, but not break off trade while it was active.
"Decline to make demand" or "Forgive this offense" would be clearer.

Please retain the state of the UI buttons to show hexes, show yields, and highlight districts in the save file.
It was annoying to have to turn those back on after each load.

Trying to understand the benefits of the various infrastructure options was somewhat tedious.
I like that the terrain is so varied, but I can't (at least yet) keep it all straight and tell forest from rocky field at a glance.
It would be helpful if hovering over them in the City menu would spell out the FIMS improvement to be gained by building it now.
Surely an Emperor would have staff to go count the Forests for them.
If you want to bury it in flavor, "My liege, a Lumber Yard would produce 9 more Industry from the 6 Forests and 3 Woodlands in this City" or "My liege, I fear the 2 year expense of building a Lumber Yard now would only produce 2 Industry from the 2 Forests presently exploited in this city", but I'd rather just see the current potential improvement in FIMS numbers.
+9 Industry (/ 2 turns = improvement of 4.5/turn)
For bonus points, sort the Infrastructure items in the list by ROI or highlight the ones (within each family of similar items) that has the best ROI now.
Maybe have options to turn these aids off for those that want to do the math themselves for all 12 cities they're managing.

It is confusing to have right-click "escape" most things, but trigger immediate action if an Army or Unit is selected.
Especially when I've panned the map away from a unit that happens to still be selected.
Also confusing that right click is action when I haven't selected move, but left-click is action when I have selected move.

Thanks! I'm looking forward to the release in August!
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 2:16:05 PM
BobWilson wrote:
workswithdragons wrote:
Instead of "The Mauryans feel differently", just say "The Mauryans feel friendly".

Yes, I want to second this and say wonderful feedback, thank you for realizing this and bringing it to attention


Yes, and it would also be good to know what it was before. And digging deeper, you should be able to understand what caused their opinion to change.

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 3:35:20 PM

Hello,  The closed beta was my first open dev and enjoyed it greatly. One area that felt very opaque for me was the infrastructure buildings (granary, logging camp, etc). Building them didn't feel like I was doing anything because their tooltips would just describe what they did but not what their impact would be. After thinking about it my thought to solve this would be to add the current additional exploitation to the tool tip (Logging Camp:  +6 production from current exploitation) AND highlight the affected tiles in the cities territories.

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 3:40:24 PM

Issue: While Districts are quite clear in their effects (highlited in the map), Infrastructure can lead to analysis paralisis because it is quite hard to gauge their effects.

Solution: Add the infrastructure projected effects (how much FIMSI it'll grant) appear when the player hover over the building. The projected effect should take in account current districts and other infrastructures already built in the city.

-

Issue: It is hard to check trading resources for multiple empires in the diplomacy screen - you need to click "trade", check the resources, then click "relations", click to change the empire, then click "trade" again. It is a long process just to check which resources the other empires have avaiable to trade. Same problem happens if you want to check treaties or crisis with multiple empires.

Solution: Have the empire symbols be avaiable to be clicked in all diplomacy screens. Regardless of which screen (trade, treaties, crisis, war resolution) you are, you can click an empire's symbol to swap to that empire.


Issue: It is too easy to lose pops due to starvation. 

Solution: Please make the cities with negative food stand out so we can more easily notice that and fix it before the pop dies.

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 4:39:52 PM

Regarding UI :


The reworked constructions menu felt quite enjoyable, specifically the top part (construction queue), with smaller icons and subsections, making it easier to use and browse the constructions lists. Though I mainly used "click-and-drag" and "hide constructibles" in the list when I needed to find the item I was looking for, the related constructibles tabs at the top of the list are a nice addition, along with the filters options available since previous OpenDevs.


Regarding UX :

My main gripe was on performance issues, as others have also stated in this thread. It was a bit of a shame to not fully enjoy the gorgeous visuals, arts, graphics, due to these issues. I'm confident that will be delt with for release !

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 4:53:54 PM

I have hard time to see different districts even with the outlines turned on. Without the outlines it is sometimes hard to even see if there is a district on that tile, or not. I would like to have something like this image to pop up when holding down a button, or switch on/off. Would also be nice to see something like this when placing new districts. Outline colors are also too similar to my vision, would be nice to let user customize them.

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 5:23:25 PM

UI and experience


(I have two games under my belt: the first on nation difficulty, the second on empire, both are with the closed beta.)


1. Overlays, especially the diplomatic screen, leaks memory (bad garbage collection? bad class realization? bad object architecture?).


2. The game needs optimization overall. (I had the early endless space vibe...)


3. The map (and the whole graphics design) is beautiful. However only from a certain distance works great. Unfortunately you almost always see the map from far beyond that point. And that is when the map become a coherent yellow field with some textures on it. (Mind you i was using a laptop with a 15.6" display with "Good" graphics quality.)


4. In connection with the previous point the map focus changes the magnification of the map (zoom in). This is very irritating in spite of the map looks great in that zoom rate.

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 6:25:37 PM

Another UI change that would be very cool is if in the overview which player has how many stars it would show the symbols of their current era to see how much they are ahead or behind. That could look like this (or showing the era symbol on the right of their stars)


That would help so much especially in the later game when the number of stars don't always make it obvious in what era they are. Maybe they have the same number of stars as the one above or behind them but are in another era. It's a small change would would make the quality of life on this screen so much better. Being nomadic then means having no era symbol there.

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 6:31:44 PM

Even though UI improved very much since last opendev, I think it's still the biggest issue with the game.

Main problems:

a) Many texts are still missing or are plain wrong. Wide writing revision is necessary.

b) Many visual bugs, too many to describe here, but people already passed over them in this thread.

c) Notifications could be even more direct. Here an example from previous post:

CristataC wrote:
AOM wrote:
The pop-ups telling me an AI has changed their feelings towards me. These are not helpful, as the AIs are constantly changing their opinions, and there's not much I can or want to do about that. They make it so useful pop-ups are lost in the mix (like ones that tell me I'm being pillaged).


Jarke wrote:

As QoL I would be more than happy if hovering over diplomacy button You can see the name of an empire, something like this:

For me it is hard to remember all of the cultures and when they enter next era I lose track who is who and when I need to talk with for ex. Celts I just click one after another until i find this one specific civ.

I was just about to make a post about exactly this. Its difficult to remember what culture is what as they as 6 opponents are changing often. I would like the pop up to change in one of two ways:


1. When it say for example, "The Celts have reached the Medieval Era with the English" it could have both words Celts and English in the color the empire is using.

2. It could reference the actual Avatar name. "Vlad, of the English has reached the Medieval Era". Both the word Vlad, and English could be in his empire color as well.

I like specially the idea of coloring the names and using the "username" or "avatar name" consistently, because it can be difficult to discover who's who when everyone is changing cultures from time to time.

d) Pop ups that appear on screen in the beggining of turn are frustrating. They block my vision and frequently hinders me while I try to do something else, like moving my troops fast to react to AI movements.

e) The "complete movement" button should be the first to appear or be shown separatedly like in Endless Legend. Beyond this, there should be an option to accelerate unit movements on map as well.

f) Please, like many people asked here, make UI provide yield prediction on infrastructures as well. Terrain features are not that visible and I prefer not to waste my play time doing math and forcing my vision.

g) Train station destinations should lighten up like aerodromes do for planes for the sake of QoL.

Edit: h) This is probably not feasible for release, but please make a dedicated screen for trade routes please! Many bonuses take them into consideration but It's so painful to know what's happening in this regard. Thank you!

I'd like to say that I agree with everything this next post said as well:


smval wrote:

Sorry if I'm repeating others. I haven't read through this thread.

I finished the Beta once (over 14k fame).

My biases:

- I'm a board gamer. I like to know the rules of the game before I play, not be surprised by them.

- I'm not a role player. I like some flavor to a game, but I don't want it to obscure the mechanics of the game.

- I'm accustomed to CiV and Civ VI. I like a lot of what Humankind does differently, but it does bias my expectations in the absence of information.

- I strongly prefer turn-based over RTS.

- I'm more of an explorer/builder than warrior, but I like the battle system in Humankind.


There are too many UI elements that obscure what I'm trying to look at.

The tutorial has pop-ups that don't have an "understood" button to dismiss them. It looks like they're prompting me to try out some other button,

but too many times they popped up when I was trying to do something else. Please add an "understood" or "dismiss" button to ALL the tutorial popups!

(I did see there's a "turn off this and all future tutorials" button. I don't want to turn tutorials off. I just want to dismiss the one thing in my way.)


When I hit end turn, I don't want everything happening at once. There are times when I want to watch where enemy units move.
Having popups obscure this was frustrating. Present them (and let me dismiss them) before the AI moves, or after it is done.

Many times that I move multiple spaces at once, I see a things appear and disappear during movement. e.g. a deer.
Moving one hex at a time is tedious. I'd prefer that some indication of what I saw remain visible after the movement completes.
e.g. deer last seen here.

When selecting a spot for an outpost, the detailed popup window far too often obscured the summary flag and or neighboring spots I was trying to see or click on.

I'd prefer to see those details in a corner of the screen, like the terrain information window in the lower left corner.


The outpost suggestion flags were not always flagging the spots I would pick.

I found that I had to search around for spots that met my criteria (e.g. "maximum Food", "maximum Industry", "maximum total", "best balance of Food and Industry")
(This got REALLY tedious later in the game.)
I'd like to see these different criteria flagged at once, with different colors to differentiate them.
A way to quickly select which of these criteria I want to see flagged.

There were times (particularly when settling terra incognita) that I wanted to find a place for an outpost in each Territory.
(I snowballed so far ahead of the AI that I was settling the whole continent by myself.)
Sometimes it showed me flags in nearby Territories, but none in the Territory I was in (or mousing over).
I get that that's useful if you're looking for the best Territory to settle, but I was trying to settle all of them. (Over 10k Influence to burn.)
I'd like to see a way to force it to show flags on the best locations in a particular Territory.

It would be nice to have a way to sprout little FIMS columns from all the hexes in a Territory to really see the lay of the land's yields.
e.g. little green/orange/yellow/blue columns on each hex, the height of which would represent the yield in that hex.
Maybe a way to make all but a select type translucent so you could see the one you want to focus on.
(So you could see the Industry in a sea of Food or vice versa.)

Many times I wanted to mouse over one of the detailed information panels that popped up when I hovered over something else
because there were details that weren't spelled out in enough detail.
e.g. during random events, hovering over the civic icon shows the civic popup, but I can't then move over to hover over the bars to see the
explanation of what happens. I think some of these were spelled out either in events or civic adoption, but not both. Please make it always give me all the information
about the direct consequences of a choice.

For random event pop ups, it was frustrating not to be able to see the keyword terms (e..g. Bountiful/Fierce/...) for the different options spelled out at once.
Don't make me hover over terms one at a time to see the meaning. Flavor is nice, but it should not interfere with understanding the mechanics of the game.

When zooming in and out on the map, units obscured resources (and appeared and disappeared at the same point in zooming).
This was frustrating when I was trying to scan the map for particular resources.
Please add a way to select which elements (Resources, Armies, Outposts, Cities) appear at any given zoom level.

The lack of differentiation in color of Luxury and Strategic Resource Deposits was frustrating when I was looking for something in particular.
E.g. I'm looking for sources of Copper.

I did not see any way to identify what continent any given Territory belonged to.
This made it difficult to know when I should expect to achieve the deeds relating to conquering continents.

Other deeds need to be spelled out in more detail.
e.g. After sailing around and revealing a swath of the map left to right, I expected to achieve the circumnavigation deed (like in Civ VI), but didn't.
I did eventually get it, but I'm not sure what the actual criteria was. Was it a single ship sailing to all longitudes?
Was it a single ship finding its way back to a hex it had previously visited after going around the map?
I want to know the actual criteria for these deeds, so I can form a plan and achieve it; not have it appear at random when I accidentally trip over the trigger.

I'm not sure if this belongs in this thread or somewhere else. I found the Influence system pretty confusing in the early game.
It appears that the cost to construct an Outpost goes up with the number of previous Territories claimed and whether it neighbors a city, territory or neither.
I'm not sure if that's a penalty for distance or a discount for neighbors or what.
The first City was pretty cheap then it went up a lot. I can't really strategize if I don't understand the rules of the game. Please spell all this out!
I want to be able to understand and predict the cost progression, not be surprised by it.

The pop-up explaining the penalty for exceeding the city limit said the penalty was 30 per turn. It didn't say if that was total, per city, or what.
It didn't even hint that there was a higher penalty for each subsequent city over the limit.
It appears to be 30 for the first city, then 20 higher for each additional, summed up to a total of 30/80/150/240/350/... this needs to be clearer.

Where things are random, please be clear, somewhere, that they are random within some given range.

I find the Civic system pretty baffling. I have no idea whether new civics appeared at random, were triggered by my game play, or were programmed to appear at particular turns.
I want to know the rules of the game. If they're a deck of cards drawn at random, okay, just be clear about it.

For the City summary list (upper right corner), I really wanted more information listed: # Territories, Stability (current and target).

I want a way to see how far other Empires are in the tech tree. Maybe details of science output and how many techs and latest tech unlocked on lower difficulties
scaling back to some flavor of whether they're advanced or primitive compared to my empire on higher difficulties.

Many times I had trouble telling where on the map a given grievance took place.
(In part because the Territory names seem to disappear from the main map once they're attached to a City so I forget what they are.)
It appears I can't zoom in to get the full color detail with units and such within the crisis panel.
It was frustrating to have to leave the crisis dialog, look at the map, then navigate back to the crisis dialog.
Please make zooming in and out show the same detail during a crisis dialog as on the regular map display.
Maybe leave the attached Territory names more visible on the main map too.

It would also help to have the boundaries between Territories attached to a City remain more visible.
(Maybe only when hovering over its administrative center)

In areas of the map where my City Territory borders a neighbors Outpost, it is confusing to have the border render as two solid colors.
I would prefer to see dotted line on the Outpost side of the line.
Likewise, when an unclaimed Territory is surrounded by Cities, it is hard to spot that it is unclaimed.
It would help to have the white dotted line remain.

I initially found the grievance "Renounce" button confusing. I don't have the exact wording of the pop-up. Something like "Renounce to make demand".
I initially read that as an option to make a demand, but not break off trade while it was active.
"Decline to make demand" or "Forgive this offense" would be clearer.

Please retain the state of the UI buttons to show hexes, show yields, and highlight districts in the save file.
It was annoying to have to turn those back on after each load.

Trying to understand the benefits of the various infrastructure options was somewhat tedious.
I like that the terrain is so varied, but I can't (at least yet) keep it all straight and tell forest from rocky field at a glance.
It would be helpful if hovering over them in the City menu would spell out the FIMS improvement to be gained by building it now.
Surely an Emperor would have staff to go count the Forests for them.
If you want to bury it in flavor, "My liege, a Lumber Yard would produce 9 more Industry from the 6 Forests and 3 Woodlands in this City" or "My liege, I fear the 2 year expense of building a Lumber Yard now would only produce 2 Industry from the 2 Forests presently exploited in this city", but I'd rather just see the current potential improvement in FIMS numbers.
+9 Industry (/ 2 turns = improvement of 4.5/turn)
For bonus points, sort the Infrastructure items in the list by ROI or highlight the ones (within each family of similar items) that has the best ROI now.
Maybe have options to turn these aids off for those that want to do the math themselves for all 12 cities they're managing.

It is confusing to have right-click "escape" most things, but trigger immediate action if an Army or Unit is selected.
Especially when I've panned the map away from a unit that happens to still be selected.
Also confusing that right click is action when I haven't selected move, but left-click is action when I have selected move.

Thanks! I'm looking forward to the release in August!


Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 6:53:12 PM
akaSkipper wrote:
AOM wrote:

I've just spent some time playing with a focus on trying to explore the world. My overwhelming impression is that the game is designed to entrap the player in one place. To begin with, AIs surround the player and refuse to share open borders. If you try to slip past them early on, they hunt your units down and kill them. Trying to go over water is a non-starter as deep water research occurs so late on the science tree. All of this is compounded by two features of terrain.  The first is the back and forth nature of any movement over land that's caused by terrain features that block forward motion that are not really detectable until your troop actually encounters them (many areas where you'll have to backtrack aren't visually apparent). The second is the fact that any given island or continent is edged by tiles that won't allow embarkment or disembarkment. Again, these tiles are not clearly visually defined as too cliff-like to move onto or off of. Instead, many, if not most, look like beach tiles at sea level. These features make trying to explore the map, let alone circumnavigate by the Industrial era, an exercise in frustration. Exploring the map is one of my favorite parts of civ games. I'm disappointed this game is so hostile to exploration.

Yes and no. I think its somewhat realistic that you cant explore everything from the beginning. From when the cultures are chosen, i think traveling with some sort of embassator or explorer through foreign terretory would be great -- and realistic

I agree that there should be some challenge to exploring, so that when you circumnavigate or clear the last bit of fog in the world, it feels like an achievement. However, circumnavigation by the mid-Early Modern period should be reasonably feasible; corresponding to somewhere in the 1600s (given that the first circumnavigation voyage known to historians occurred from 1519 to 1522). In the game as it is currently, it is not reasonably feasible because the AIs box you in and won't negotiate open borders (at least they never do with me), deep ocean travel is far along the tech tree (and tech tree progress is not well matched to era progression), coastal shallows are broken up with large deep water gaps, and it is not visually apparent where a unit can or cannot embark and disembark. As I said, my impression was that my units were trapped, and trying to circumnavigate by the Industrial era was frustrating. The Industrial era is nowhere near the beginning, and it is well past the point when humans actually did circumnavigate. Given that exploration is one of the 4 Xs. I found it disappointing that exploration was so limited, frustrating, and tedious.

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4 years ago
Jun 22, 2021, 7:01:16 PM

I'm just going to add that when hovering over a wonder/district it would nice to be able to see what the base district does. I often found myself having to open up the wonder claiming screen just to see what the wonders I had put down actually did. Same with emblematic districts. I can always look in my city to see what a farmer's quarter does, but once I've moved on from a culture there doesn't seem to be a way to find out what the emblematic districts of my previous cultures do beyond what their yields currently are.

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