Interface wishlist for next RTW release

This is a (long) wishlist for Interface Enhancements only to RTW. I hope to get comments on it, and more suggestions from other players. My rules in coming up with the list are:

1. Feature does not change the game, just makes playing it easier and more enjoyable.
2. Feature must be "doable".

Ok here goes.

Tabbed Window Improvements:

Make the little build and recruit icons in the cities window sortable. Purpose is to quickly spot the towns that are not building/recruiting.

Add tax rate icon to window (e.g as a $, $$, and $$$ signs). Makes it easy to see if you are under or over-taxing.

In settlement income column, make a toggle between income generated vs income-expense per population as it is now.

In army window, list cost of an army in the field .

In army and character window, show remaining movement points. Makes it easier to remember which characters have been moved in the present turn.

Build queue improvements:

Allow adding the next core-building to the queue, even if not available yet. The queue would pause until the settlement level is reached and then it is added. Then when the core-building is added, allow adding buildings dependent on it. Purpose is to make it easier to expand a town without having to think much about it. To avoid confusion for novice players, do not present the unavaialbable buldings in the build queue. Rather have the player add them by right-clicking (or atl-clicking or whatever) on the tech tree window.

Campaign Map

Make player's character animation speed adjustable. Now it is either very slooow or too fast if you hit space bar. Make an option for a 1.5X, 2X or 3X speed.

Allow player to pause a character's movement by hitting the tab key. Now you can only abort it with delete. Pause allows player to examine something the character saw, but then hit tab again to continue motion if it was of no interest (would be useful on 2X speed above)

Name toggling on-off should rotate from ALL -> Generals Only -> Armies only -> Agents only -> None -> All . To avoid confusing novices, this can be added for shift-ctr-N , keeping ctrl-N for current system.

City info toggling should rotate from All Info -> City names only (without population icons etc..) -> None -> All. useful when positioning troops around own city, but not wanting to hide names for screenshots. Make it shift-ctrl-T (keeping ctrl-T for current system).

Ferrying troops simplifications:
Ferrying troops is one of the more tedious aspects of the game.

Player should be able to ferry a troop by selecting an army and then clicking on any ship (even away at sea). Ship would then move towards army and and army moves to coast and boards. Saves clicks.

On narrow straits that are "bridged" by a single ship (e.g Messana, Hellespont, Gibraltar) allow player to simply walk an army over the bridge ship. Now you have to embark and then disembark.

On wider straits that require several ships to bridge (e.g Adriatic beween Apulia and Greece). Player should designate a "ferry" ship (select ship, alt-click on one coast terminus and then the other side). Troops can then use that ferry by simply dragging to the first terminus and then the next one. The ferry would stay running as long as the ship is not blocked or engaged by enemey fleets.

Allow farther travel by army on campaign map (dragging a character now will max out after several turns. Eg try moving an army from Rome to Athens overland . You can't!. ) If this a problem for the pathfinding mechanisms (as possible routes grow exponentially with distance), then allow player to select "waypoints" for route. This simplifies the algorithm for the computer (and allows player to select route). Waypoints should also be allowed to include "ferry terminals" (see above).

On campaign map, allow a battle-view survey of any tile. similar to how you can zoom in on one of your cities and watch the citizens roam. Similarly, in any tile that it visible to player, player should be able to view it in battle mode. If enemy is visible there, also show known units (skip those with question marks in the dialog). Allows player to really pick their battle field, or check out areas they rarely fight in.

Automatic reinforcements . Currently, you can alt-click a gather point for new units produced in a city. I suggest player is allowed to alt-click a general and then any unit produced will simply head over to reinforce that general. If the general is far, player should use waypoints in the map.


Automatic retraining: Choose army, alt-click city where it can retrain, and the army will simply walk there , retrain , and return next turn to initial location. significantly simplifies retraining!

Battle map suggestions:
Bring back the fatigue indicator on the unit cards.
When pressing space bar to show unit destinations, selected units should be indicated with solid triangles, unselected ones with triangle outlines. This allows player to select a unit and see where it fits in the future line, and what gap happens if it is moved elsewhere.


Replay and recording the game:
A great aspect of RTW is the ability to tell a campaign story. Screenshots help, but more is needed!

Bring back campaign battle replay
Option to save screenshots in JPEG mode. Using a screen capture tool is not so fun.
Option to automatically assign meaningful names to shots (e.g year taken/campaign vs battle / faction playing e.g gauls_265W_battle_Alesia_1 or gauls_265S_campaign_1
Simple text logs of all battle results, battle honors gained, happenings with family etc. (basically log of all the messages that drop down from the sky on the left of the screen). Allows player dping a writeup to quickly reconstruct history of faction (e.g would be nice to knwo when your first uber-strong-cavalry unit was recruited).

For every character, have a "Biography" Window that lists : Battles fought (when and with result), settlements caputred, governorships (with dates and maybe list of all buildings built by them), dates of senate offices gained.

Game play option changes:

Option to set auto-tax in individual cities (now it is a global feature. You can auto-manage [units and buildings and tax] a town, but cannot just auto-tax it [and manage units and buildings manually. Note that checking auto-manage and unchecking the unit and build boxes does not do the trick]

Option to have set auto-resolve difficulty. Right now, it is linked to campaign difficulty, and on VH campaign the human player is at a severe disadvantage when autoresolving. Add a pref to set it independently.

Battle Only Mode: you do NOTHING on campaign map, and the AI runs your faction. But you get to personally direct the battles. (right now you can play a campaign and skip battles by autoresolve. no reason the reverese should not be available). This is for those of us who hate management. It would also be nice to see how a human-assisted AI fares against the others.


Option to "export" a campaign battle as a custom battle. Allows different players to try their hands at your battles. (should be a button on the battle preview screen). This battle shoud be playable by network.

Option to "import" results of previously exported battle played on a network or as a separate game. Allows rudimentary campaign play. Should be button on battle preview screen..

Well that is a long list. I hope enough others support it so that CA takes note.

There are some very good ideas in there, and I've always felt the TW interface has been by far the weakest aspect of the series since STW. This is particularly true of the campaign map where the player has to hunt round for units which have not moved, and also, go through very tedious processes to shift armies by sea. Several of the very subtle strategy elements of the campaign game I miss out on altogether, as I simply can't be bothered to mess round with retinues and so on, after labouring with such a user-hostile interface.

One particular change I'd like to see is simply to copy the process of movement in Sid Meier's Civilisation. Each unit flashes in turn and can then be moved, or placed on sentry duty (so that it doesn't flash till awoken by the player), or skipped to be moved later in the turn. A 'unit' in the TW sense could be any single newly built unit, or any stack. These improvements would be especially beneficial the further the game goes on. Once the player has more than 10 cities or so it becomes very difficult to keep track of all the newly created units and agents, and having the interface prompt the player for each and every stack, fleet or agent not placed on guard duty would ensure that no units are overlooked by the player.

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Battle Only Mode: you do NOTHING on campaign map, and the AI runs your faction. But you get to personally direct the battles. (right now you can play a campaign and skip battles by autoresolve. no reason the reverese should not be available). This is for those of us who hate management. It would also be nice to see how a human-assisted AI fares against the others.

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That would have the potential to be very interesting....

how about this simple but useful feature: some sort of sorting function for unit cards on the campaign map! no more jumbled up unit cards!

Oh you forgot about implementing a strategy cam on the battlemap, this is afterall a strategy game.

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Originally Posted by sapi

That would have the potential to be very interesting....

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...and very Master of Orion 3.

Very good ideas.

I specifically liked the following:

- the Ferry idea. I'd love to have a certain fleet I could just designate as one to solely transport units from one shore to the other, it would save a lot of time.

- the Battle Tile Review idea. Just about every battle I enter, if it's not in an are which the campaign map makes to be a "mountain side" or "river" then I don't really know the realities of what is in store for me. I'd rather have an idea of the land I'm going to be defending/attacking with my forces to get an idea of if I want to give battle on that day, in that battlefield.

- the Biography - that's simply great. I love the very simple role-playing aspect you have, and it would be excellent to capitalize on this. That feature could be expanded upon greatly, but even implimenting the idea you have there would be such a more enjoyable way of governing your dominion.

- the import and export battles idea. This also would be such a sweet idea. I'm out of good words. ~:handball:

Yes, the Fatigue not being shown on the unit cars if annoying - it needs to be brought back. So does the campaign map replays... so does marrying off daughters to allies to solidify your alliance. Alliances mean nothing. This might help combat that.

I haven't seen any comments by CA yet on any of the ideas psoted recently. Wtf?

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...and very Master of Orion 3.

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Never played that game, i wasn't actually saying i liked the idea myself, but that other people might.

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Yes, the Fatigue not being shown on the unit cars if annoying - it needs to be brought back. So does the campaign map replays... so does marrying off daughters to allies to solidify your alliance. Alliances mean nothing. This might help combat that.

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And so does the unit ablities being shown on the card..."shoots poorly in bad weather...charges without orders" etc.

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- the Battle Tile Review idea. Just about every battle I enter, if it's not in an are which the campaign map makes to be a "mountain side" or "river" then I don't really know the realities of what is in store for me. I'd rather have an idea of the land I'm going to be defending/attacking with my forces to get an idea of if I want to give battle on that day, in that battlefield.

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Yes, this would be very useful, especially if it included the chances of rain and other battle changing factors, which could help in your deployment.

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I haven't seen any comments by CA yet on any of the ideas psoted recently. Wtf?

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Maybe they're too busy with the expansion...let's hope they platest properly this time. I've seen others comment on this too - is it the same over at the .com? (i never visit)

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...and very Master of Orion 3.

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Nah. You can still micromanage EVERYTHING in MOO3; it's just that there's sooooo much to micro, it's far less annoying to let the AI deal with turn-to-turn running of your worlds.

And it isn't as though the player just twiddles his thumbs, either. Macromanagement is still management :)

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Originally Posted by afrit

Battle Only Mode: you do NOTHING on campaign map, and the AI runs your faction. But you get to personally direct the battles. (right now you can play a campaign and skip battles by autoresolve. no reason the reverese should not be available). This is for those of us who hate management. It would also be nice to see how a human-assisted AI fares against the others.

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Originally Posted by sapi

That would have the potential to be very interesting....

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I second that!

I would like an 'advance' command on the battle map button area, so that units ordered to 'advance' will just walk directly forward without you having to direct them. In that way you can move your whole line forward without having to click/drag (time wasting and you may angle it wrongly with the result that your units break line and become staggered and even face their flanks to the enemy as they move to their new position which may or may not be directly in front of their current position), you can ensure your line constantly has weapons facing the enemy instead of facing their flanks to the enemy during movement when you completely did not intend that, and deployments that have flank guards, for example, can preserve their formation without clicking forward of the selected unit with the risk that it will end up angled wrongly. Charges will still be manually ordered, of course, but this reduces the need to micromanage before the battle actually opens.

Is that technologically possible?

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Originally Posted by pezhetairoi

I would like an 'advance' command on the battle map button area, so that units ordered to 'advance' will just walk directly forward without you having to direct them. In that way you can move your whole line forward without having to click/drag (time wasting and you may angle it wrongly with the result that your units break line and become staggered and even face their flanks to the enemy as they move to their new position which may or may not be directly in front of their current position), you can ensure your line constantly has weapons facing the enemy instead of facing their flanks to the enemy during movement when you completely did not intend that, and deployments that have flank guards, for example, can preserve their formation without clicking forward of the selected unit with the risk that it will end up angled wrongly. Charges will still be manually ordered, of course, but this reduces the need to micromanage before the battle actually opens.
counts as 'interface', but there you are.

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Yeah, that's what I want too. Forward charge without specifying targets!! Under current system, if enemy unit is not directly in front of your unit(say half and half of two enemy units are confronting your one unit) you will eventually risk breaking your line by ordering a chage.

THe whole "Sound the general advance" option seems like the most obvious thing. I have no clue why it hasn't been implimented.

So many times, all of us have looked at our perfectly formed lines and thought "now if I could only tell them to all go straight forward without messing that up, engaging the enemy where they find them"

No dice.

That's a great idea and it might even help the ai!

One more battlemap enhancement -when playing with minimal UI, add the battlespeed indicator as a button. Or better yet, bring back the speed slider whatever UI you are using, to add more variable speed scaling than x2 & x3.

Oh, and make the top part of the screen 'actionable' (ooh, a new word!) when using the minimal UI -at the moment, you can't select units or terrain/enemies in the top section next to the buttons. Not a major gripe, but it can get annoying in the heat of battle.

i would like to see Atrittion in it