PI games are known for their depth and complexity, and the player only gets the most out of the games when she can effectively absorb and respond to the large amount of information in the game. Unfortunately, the user interface has long been a weak point in PI design that this often become a daunting task. I'd like to start a thread for suggestions on interface improvements that's applicable to all present and future PI games.
(I'm starting the thread here even though any specific game. Mods please move the thread to another forum if appropriate.)
Many of the features I'd propose are more or less standard in any modern games but are still missing in PI despite numerous requests. Starting from the most basic...
So chip in your interface improvement ideas and let's hope they're listening!
(I'm starting the thread here even though any specific game. Mods please move the thread to another forum if appropriate.)
Many of the features I'd propose are more or less standard in any modern games but are still missing in PI despite numerous requests. Starting from the most basic...
- Ctrl-# hotkey groupings:
- All hotkey groups should be saved in the savefile.
- Allow more of these groups, such as Ctrl-F# or using Alt/Shift combinations.
- Allow Ctrl-# to bind not only to units, but also locations (or even characters if applicable).
- Buttons and hotkeys:
- There should be hotkeys for as many buttons/actions as possible.
- Most if not all hotkeys should be configurable.
- All hotkeys should be displayed either on a button's label or a button's tooltip, and reflecting the customized key binding if applicable.
- All of the above should be possible without the need of editing/modding any game file.
- System functions and configuration:
- Quicksave and quickload functions.
- Load games without needing to quit (surrender) out of an ongoing game.
- More game/video/sound/system options should be accessible from the ingame menus, without needing to manually edit the setting files.
- Map and map views
- Consolidate and map view modes. For example, in HOI, weather and terrain view, and economy and victory point view should be combined, as these are factors that affect the same kind of decisions. A way of achieving this is to iconize one set of information and overlay it on top of another, e.g. terrain view with weather icons, economy view with VP icons.
- Streamline the interface. Some map views, such as revolt risk, could be considered less important, and thus given a smaller button, or lack of a default hotkey, or accessed from a drop-down menu instead of a button for example.
- The terrain view seems to require the most developement resource, but it is under-utilized because it does not provide enough information, whereas the political/realm view is what players spend most of the time in. Improve this by encorporating political view information with terrain view. For example, use thicker, colour-coded country borders.
- Map views that show relations, such as diplo view or trade view, can be more informative if the relationship is shown not only by colour-coding but also directional lines.
- As a general guideline, each map view should providing maximum pertinent information but not to the point of visual clutter.
- Panels and screens (as in "diplomatic screen", "government panel")
- EU3 generation games tend to use numerous smaller panels that float on top of the map. These panels nevertheless are usually large enough that much of the map is obscured an inaccessible. It'd be better to consolidate the many small panels to larger, comprehensive screen. For example, in Rome, senate/court, nation, and royal family panels (all related to state and office appointments) can combined into one, as do laws, mission/decision, religion, national idea (all related to governmental acts).
- Alternatively, the small panels should be made even smaller by trimming unecessary decorations. The panels should be able to move, fix, float or dock anywhere on the screen and do not impede other activities.
- Log window
- Either separate the message and timestamp into different columns, or better indent multi-line messages: make multi-line messages more easily distinguishable.
- Using icons, flags and colour-coding, make messages more readable at a glance. For example, each message can be headed with a "message type" icon that distinguish between internal, diplomatic, military messages, etc. Country names could be preceded by the (significuntly shrunk) country flag or colourcoded to the country's colour.
- And to suit everybody's taste, the degree of iconization/flag/text/colour-coding in log window should be customizable.
- Pop-ups and notification
- The log/map/popup/popup&pause notification option should be changed so that you may have pause without popup, popup without log and so on.
- The "incoming diplo message" icon (those that float on the bottom-left when the AI makes you a diplo offer) should be much better exploited. Most simply, it could be another level of notification that replaces popups. It's useful for non-urgent events that nevertheless require timely response. Something like this is how most strategy games deal with notifications nowadays (Total War, GalCiv, etc.) and it's very effective and elegant.
- The notification setting screen should be better organized. A tree-structure would work very well here.
- There should be option to further distinguish amongst subject of notifications. For example, for the same event of DoW, there could be different notification settings for 3rd country to 3rd country, between neighbour and 3rd country, between 3rd country and ally, between 3rd country and enemy, between player and 3rd country, between any country and a bookmarked country (see below).
- In addition, some country/army/character can be "bookmarked" to give notification that would otherwise be ignored. For example, a bookmarked army may be set to notify on arriving at destination; a bookmarked character may notify on marriage.
- Map messages, the messages that float on the map, should be less verbose but last longer onscreen. They should also be iconized to provide better visual cue.
- Alternatively, some map messages can be shown by visual effects. For example, a province may sparkle briefly upon completion of a construction.
- There should also be an additional level of notification: visual signal on the minimap.
- Bug fix? Some events (as in scripted/historical events) in EU3 and EUR are not logged/paused/notified until you choose an action. It should be changed so that the log/pause/notification is immediate.
- Units and movement
- The "show movement" button in HOI2 is GREAT! It should be implemented in all games.
- Unit strength and moral should be better shown onscreen without the need to click or hover over the unit. A very small morale/strength bar can go a long way.
- Similarly, multiple units in the same province should be displayed separately (as in old Medieval&Shogun: Total War, Crown of Glory, etc.) This would be a great improvement not only in visually representing the units in a province, but also very handy in commanding and reorganizing multiple units.
- Expanding on the above: to make the many displayed unit and their movement lines not completely cover up the whole screen, the movement lines should be much thinner...
- ...and better yet, when multiple units share the same orders, their lines can be merged...
- ...and even better yet, the thickness of the movement lines can vary depending on the number of units and/or the units' combined strength. This would allow for actual visual representation of force convergeance onscreen! Sweet!
- Again improving on multi-units-per-province display, the units can become stacked/unstacked depending on the zoom level, somewhat similar to Sins of a Solar Empire.
- And if necessary, units can be iconized when zoomed out very far, as in GalCiv, Sins of a Solar Empire. (But don't think it's that necessary considering PI's relatively low-end graphics. Of course this should be configurable.)
- With one or more unit selected, when you move your mouse over any destination, there should be a tooltip (either fixed or following the cursor) that display the ETA to reach that destination. This would greatly facilitate strategic decision making. It's too much of a guessing game now (except for HOI).
- Now that we have a 3D engine to work with, don't be so stingy on the animation! A moving army and a routing army should have different anims, and there should also be different anims for troops reorganizing, suffering serious attrition, entrenching, out of supply, winning/losing a battle, as well as brief anims upon arrival at destination, win/lose a battle, load/unload from ship, so on and so forth. No, this is not just for eye candy (I could care less for that), but they all provide better visual cue that allow you to understand the situation at a glance without constant clicking and reading.
- Alternatively, very small but clear icons would do.
- A better way to order sea/air transport. In all PI games now, you are required to manually put the transport to sea, manually load the troops, manually move to the destination and manually unload the troops. There should be some way of attaching sea/air transports to land units, so that the transport automatically move to the closest port/airfield, and automatically load/transport/unload troops when the army is ordered to cross an ocean.
- Expanding on the above: ideally, when the transport is not enough to transport all attached troops, it would automatically make multiple trips. The whole operation can be treated as one uninterruptable (sub-)mission to ease the design.
- Further expanding this, when there are possible land, sea and air paths to the destination, the game should automatically calculate and choose the most efficient route, taking in to account the need of multiple trips.
- ...and/or, the player can Ctrl or Alt click the destination to force land/sea route. Either that or use HOI-style drop down menu.
- Ledger
- Most if not all of the information in the ledger should also be accessible elsewhere, such as family prestige in Rome. Ledger should be a tool for overviewing and analyzing massive data, but never necessary to access any specific information.
- On the other hand, the ledger should also be more functional. For example, in Rome:VV you can build province structures directly from the ledger; that's a good start. You should also be able to disband troops, assign supply priority, cancel traderoutes and so on. Of course the ledger should also let you zoom to any specific country/character/province/army instantly from any page.
- Misc, others, etc. and the rest
- Port icons tend to be rather small in all PI games. Make them bigger and easier to click on.
- Quick list (as in EUR): there should be some way to manually or semi-automatically sort the list.
- ...Better yet, the quick list should be made into tree-structure, allowing manual grouping of items.
- The minimap should be a bit more useful by providing basic info like country-colourcoding.
So chip in your interface improvement ideas and let's hope they're listening!
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