Elements of bad user experience from the previous UI are still present in the new one... Some of the new changes are actually a downgrade.

[Todie]

I'm quite sure that im not alone in missing some kind of notification of the expiration of various triggered timed modfiers such as devine sacrifices - when the cost-increase for re-use expire at the same time as the effect, the player needs a chance to get notified.

This could favourably be a message notification (that can be disabled like any other)
Alternatively it could be a queued event.

(i checked the message log - there is no note of this.)

 

[Ingor]

I'm quite sure that im not alone in missing some kind of notification of the expiration of various triggered timed modfiers such as devine sacrifices - when the cost-increase for re-use expire at the same time as the effect, the player needs a chance to get notified.

View attachment 689817

This could favourably be a message notification (that can be disabled like any other)
Alternatively it could be a queued event.

(i checked the message log - there is no note of this.)

Completely agree with you on the sacrifice popup needed, because of the way it's designed, it's way more efficient to re-use it 1 day before it fades, if you are in need of a lot of stability that is. And you have to remind yourself because the game can't tell you. Stupid.

 

[Rabid]

I'd suggest that the sacrifice button should just give a passive and constant PI reduction and be able to be toggled on and off at will. I never liked the "sacrifice twice almost exactly 5 years apart to get a bigger bonus" feature anyway.

 

[Dayvit78]

I've read through, so apologies if I'm repeating. Someone mentioned about alphabetically order, but I'm referring to the actual sorting.

Can Paradox fix SORTING?

You start with a list - let's say list of cities (holdings), list of levies. They are unsorted.
Fine one extra click.
What do I want to sort by? Almost always you want to sort from HIGHEST to LOWEST. What does Paradox do? Lowest to highest. So that's two clicks.
Start with highest first.

Second issue. They don't stay sorted. Shouldn't the default be highest to lowest, or at least remember what I did previously?
Let's say you want to raise a levy. Close them. Sort by strength. Raise top one. Now they all re-open and unsort. So you have to do it again. 3 clicks instead of 1 for each levy you want to raise.
Same is true for assigning holdings or most other lists.

Every time I re-open a game, I have to reset my culture tab, because I like it sorted highest to lowest pop and everything closed so I can see the maximum amount of info. But of course, it likes to be random order and open. I have to reset my family tab. I like to see great families (not list of people) and sorted by prestige. That's another two clicks every time I re-open a game.

Thank you.

 

[juanpacirca]

I'm quite sure that im not alone in missing some kind of notification of the expiration of various triggered timed modfiers such as devine sacrifices - when the cost-increase for re-use expire at the same time as the effect, the player needs a chance to get notified.

View attachment 689817

This could favourably be a message notification (that can be disabled like any other)
Alternatively it could be a queued event.

(i checked the message log - there is no note of this.)

I read a really long time ago (don't know if here or on Reddit) a very simple solution for this, which would also be helpful for other cases like waiting for a 15 y.o. to turn 16 so your ruler/heir can get married. It would be great if we could create our own notifications, like (using the example in the picture): "remind me in June 527 to check if I have enough PI to perform another sacrifice". This notification could appear in the queued events as you say or in the notification banner/pop-up.

 

[grandad1982]

I know I mentioned it in this thread already but the poor usage of the macrobuilder really surprises me. When you look at how well done it is in eu4 it seems so obvious that it could be used to really make territory management so much smoother. Even raising levies and conducting diplomacy (btw the diplo map mode for me as a colourblind person isn't great) could be added to great effect.

I was watching quill18 the other day and he wanted to move slaves to provinces to get a trade goods surplus and to do so in ones with buildings that reduced the number of slaves needed. Currently there is no easy way to do this but if you macro it and overlay trade good type as well as the number of slaves present/needed to get a surpluses (and maybe even how much more £££ you make), it would be so easy.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

I'd suggest that the sacrifice button should just give a passive and constant PI reduction and be able to be toggled on and off at will. I never liked the "sacrifice twice almost exactly 5 years apart to get a bigger bonus" feature anyway.

Wow, does it really work like that?
That's..... *sigh*.

 

[Rabid]

Wow, does it really work like that?
That's..... *sigh*.

Yes, if you want to get a ton of +stability you need to remember to make a fresh sacrifice every time before the previous one runs out, it refreshes the duration each time but stacks the bonus.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

This info has been intentionally removed until you unlock the espionage invention.

But you can still get the info from the ledger. And there are more issues with espionage:

I. Being able to send spies shouldn't require 4 inventions.
II. Spies are caught almost instantly.

• give info on all countries in diplomatic range.
• change the espionage invention to allow sending spies to faraway countries and reduce the risk of them being caught.

 

[Todie]

But you can still get the info from the ledger. And there are more issues with espionage:

The number of cohorts is available
In ledger - it should either not be there or also be in diplo view without spies.

Regardless it should be in diplo view WITH spies.

Money and manpower is properly hidden behind spies - not available in ledger.

The design or balance of espionage has little to do with UX and is IMO better discussed elsewhere.

 

[Hemothep]

The portrait of the owner of a holding is in a different format than any other character portrait. This means that the owner of a holding is not just shown with a colored corner to tell which family he belongs to, but a corner and the top side.

In the same regard: If you look at the holdings map mode, the color that is used for each family on the map is not the same color the family uses in their portraits.

 

[juanpacirca]

The portrait of the owner of a holding is in a different format than any other character portrait. This means that the owner of a holding is not just shown with a colored corner to tell which family he belongs to, but a corner and the top side.

View attachment 690484

In the same regard: If you look at the holdings map mode, the color that is used for each family on the map is not the same color the family uses in their portraits.

View attachment 690487View attachment 690488

The colored top side represents the head of the family, which are the only people with holdings, so the picture is ok.

 

[Dayvit78]

In the same regard: If you look at the holdings map mode, the color that is used for each family on the map is not the same color the family uses in their portraits.

I think this is because the family color is not exactly tied to the family. I don't know how it's assigned, but it sometimes changes color in the middle of the game, or when new families are added or deleted. I had a case where a new family was added and it had the same color as my ruling family. Closed the game and re-opened it and colors were fine again.

 

[Satrap von Karien]

Nobody has talked about the peace deals so far, I think it is necessary.
We are getting 5 different infos (too much for my taste) from one line in the peace deal, but no "eye" symbol that would take me to that province.
I miss that, it is in the game, everywhere, not here, inconsistent.
If you are trying to make peace with Egypt and Carthage at the same time, try to sort that out....
Selecting provinces and territories on the map, well you have to know how to do that. Clicking in an occupied province, selects the province. Clicking again deselects the territory. Clicking again selcts again the territorry. To deselct the province you need to find it in the list of - I don't know - 150 provinces...
If you select a province from the list it gets a cyan border on the map. Why not show that border by mouseover in the list?
Also sorting doesn't work at all. Maybe that is only for german...

Another thing. I think the calculation of war points is broken, or I just don't understand it.
Here in this example, I select the province Sinai for 24. Then I deselcet the territory Pharan and selct it again.
Sinai would then cost 26. Hmm.

The coloring of occupied but non-selectable (because not bordering) provinces and my own territory is also not very wisely chosen.
I almost can't tell which is which. It is all red.

This peace deal dialog is not mature yet. Please fix it along the way.

 

[Hemothep]

I realy like the new sorting options when filling out a job, but there's a problem: It doesn't stay that way.
If I sort by loyalty and fill the job, the next time I fill a similar job it has loyalty marked, so it remembered what I did last time, but the list is not sorted by loyalty. I have to click it again, sorting it from low to high, and then a second time to get the list back in the order I had, when I filled the last job. Two extra clicks each time I fill out a job, that could be completely removed if the list just stayed the way it was.

 

[nikkythegreat]

Another thing. I think the calculation of war points is broken, or I just don't understand it.
Here in this example, I select the province Sinai for 24. Then I deselcet the territory Pharan and selct it again.
Sinai would then cost 26. Hmm.

That's because provinces cost less than if you add the territories one by one.

This is to encourage ai and players to take entire provinces instead of a hodge podge of random territories.

 

[Satrap von Karien]

That's because provinces cost less than if you add the territories one by one.

This is to encourage ai and players to take entire provinces instead of a hodge podge of random territories.

Ok then. But if I take the province as a whole, it should not matter how. It should always cost the same, not more. It seems rather confusing that way.

 

[Hemothep]

Just when I thought 2.0.2 improved the select Character window: The Placement of the number of jobs of the family and how many they want right above the corruption value means it takes three traits of the character to completely obscure it. The symbol for a character of a discontent familiy gets obscured it there is only one trait.

 

[Emre Yigit]

Just when I thought 2.0.2 improved the select Character window: The Placement of the number of jobs of the family and how many they want right above the corruption value means it takes three traits of the character to completely obscure it. The symbol for a character of a discontent familiy gets obscured it there is only one trait.

View attachment 690864

Agree. At one point I thought I had run out of characters (given that family names don't always mean the same family). Turned out their requirements were artfully hidden.

 

[Ingor]

Nobody has talked about the peace deals so far, I think it is necessary.

I have to agree wholheartedly, this peace deal UI has an insanely bad design, and to think that it survived even the 2.0 rework points to something that is becoming more and more obvious to me : the IR devs don't play the game.

My latest finds about all this UI nonsense in this week patch : I HOPED that the macrobuilder additions, teased in the changelog, would fix an already subpar tool, compared to EU4. How wrong was I.

Let's take what might be the 2 most important buildings in this update : the great temple and grand theater buildings, which help you convert and assimilate pops into your main culture / religion. You want to build these buildings in places where, ideally, there are a lot of non-integrated / non-main religion pops. So the 3 informations you need the most would be :
1) number of pops in city
2) % of pops that belong to integrated culture / main religion
3) if it's the provincial capital or not, because that's the place that's going to host migration and slave influx, mostly

What do you get ?

For the grand theater :

Provincial loyalty effect, pop assimilation speed, integrated pop happiness.

For the great temple :

Provincial loyalty effect, pop convertion speed, state religion happiness.

So the only little piece of BARELY USEFUL information the devs managed to give us on the macrobuilder is the impact on provincial loyalty. The other stuff is meaningless. That's all and good, but that's not at all what you want to see on this macrobuilder.

Consequently, when you want to build these very important buildings in the correct place, and this choice matters a lot early game now because of all the build cost nerfs we got in this week's update, what can you do ?

You have to. manually. click. each. city. and then move your mouse to the overview of the integrated pops / state religion in province to ponder your choice.

That is bad design. That couldn't happen if the devs played the game. I rest my case for today, writing these posts is so sad, because I really want to enjoy the game, and I want it to succeed, but...