I really like the direction age of wonders has taken with planetfall. More meaningful, yet quicker, tactical combat. Good choices regarding where to streamline for simplicity, and where to add variety and player choice. Game is beautiful to look at. Fantastic customization options. Huge worlds. Sensible separation of tech trees. Finally using the same algorithm for auto-combat even if I start the combat as manual and then switch to auto. It is everything I could have wanted from an age of wonders game.
Except the lack of keybindings and several user interface oddities prevent me from getting into a flow of game play. There are so many nagging flaws with the user interface I can’t even go a single turn without breaking my immersion. I am going to try to list them all here, but if the devs want to figure this out for themselves, all they have to do is try to play the game with keyboard only. I am going to list the problems in order of how annoying I find them, with most annoying first.
(1) Zooming between the overworld and strategic map loses unit focus. I often want my unit to move to an adjacent area, but first want to zoom out and see what I am getting into on the military strategic map. But I can’t move my unit because it has lost selection as soon as I zoomed out, and what’s worse, does not even get the focus back when I zoom back in.
(2) Setting production to Generate Energy or Generate Research still nags me with an event the next turn. It even says infinite on the icon in the production queue so this has to be a bug. Once I explicitly set a city to one of the Generate actions it should keep doing that until I say otherwise, or at the very least, not remind me unless new production options become available. Right now I have to queue one of these 6 times just to get away from the nagging for 6 turns.
(3) Whenever there is a scroll bar and I double click on something, the scroll bar resets. The scroll bar should not be moving unless I move it. I should be able to add a bunch of the same unit to the production queue without having to keep scrolling down each time. Same goes for double clicking a technology in the research screen.
(4) For all popups with yes/no questions. Enter should be yes, ESC should be no. Again, just try playing this without the mouse for a while and you will see what I mean.
(5) When selecting operations, they should move from the left to the right. Having a bunch of operations on the left that I have already queued up is just noise. (same problem with scroll bar jumping around too)
(6) Need more tooltips everywhere. One particular place I remember is the left and right arrows for previous and next city. The tooltips should indication which key does this.
(7) For a new hero, “request another hero” is misleading, it should just say “decline hero” or something like that.
(8) When arriving at a new sector marker, should be able to change the highlighted selection with the arrow keys.
(9) AI use of dimensional dsync is broken. AI should never use this on the opponent’s last unit, as this can only end in stalemate.
(10) Arrows for previous/next city go away if the city is under construction, so even if I am using the mouse I am foiled!
Please give this serious consideration, it is so painful to have a game that knocks it out of the park in terms of strategy, tactics, pacing, visuals, and general good direction in terms of design decisions, only to have that beauty interrupted EVERY SINGLE TURN by user interface annoyances.
Try using the keyboard as much as you can, it will even drive you nuts.
Except the lack of keybindings and several user interface oddities prevent me from getting into a flow of game play. There are so many nagging flaws with the user interface I can’t even go a single turn without breaking my immersion. I am going to try to list them all here, but if the devs want to figure this out for themselves, all they have to do is try to play the game with keyboard only. I am going to list the problems in order of how annoying I find them, with most annoying first.
(1) Zooming between the overworld and strategic map loses unit focus. I often want my unit to move to an adjacent area, but first want to zoom out and see what I am getting into on the military strategic map. But I can’t move my unit because it has lost selection as soon as I zoomed out, and what’s worse, does not even get the focus back when I zoom back in.
(2) Setting production to Generate Energy or Generate Research still nags me with an event the next turn. It even says infinite on the icon in the production queue so this has to be a bug. Once I explicitly set a city to one of the Generate actions it should keep doing that until I say otherwise, or at the very least, not remind me unless new production options become available. Right now I have to queue one of these 6 times just to get away from the nagging for 6 turns.
(3) Whenever there is a scroll bar and I double click on something, the scroll bar resets. The scroll bar should not be moving unless I move it. I should be able to add a bunch of the same unit to the production queue without having to keep scrolling down each time. Same goes for double clicking a technology in the research screen.
(4) For all popups with yes/no questions. Enter should be yes, ESC should be no. Again, just try playing this without the mouse for a while and you will see what I mean.
(5) When selecting operations, they should move from the left to the right. Having a bunch of operations on the left that I have already queued up is just noise. (same problem with scroll bar jumping around too)
(6) Need more tooltips everywhere. One particular place I remember is the left and right arrows for previous and next city. The tooltips should indication which key does this.
(7) For a new hero, “request another hero” is misleading, it should just say “decline hero” or something like that.
(8) When arriving at a new sector marker, should be able to change the highlighted selection with the arrow keys.
(9) AI use of dimensional dsync is broken. AI should never use this on the opponent’s last unit, as this can only end in stalemate.
(10) Arrows for previous/next city go away if the city is under construction, so even if I am using the mouse I am foiled!
Please give this serious consideration, it is so painful to have a game that knocks it out of the park in terms of strategy, tactics, pacing, visuals, and general good direction in terms of design decisions, only to have that beauty interrupted EVERY SINGLE TURN by user interface annoyances.
Try using the keyboard as much as you can, it will even drive you nuts.
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