Interface question

[heliodorus04]

I'm not a super-attentive person when it comes to non-battle stuff in this game.

My biggest frustration with this game right now is that I have to spend more time baby-sitting the diplomacy and assassin/spy part of the game than I do with my towns and armies combined. I really resent that - why can't the non-combat "units" take less micro-management? Did I mention I really resent that?

That being said, I'm not the brightest person - maybe I'm missing something - I hope I am.

I can't find any way to reliably click through all my non-combat idiots. I always have to search them out on the map, in the towns they hide in, and so on. When I click the arrows, it doesn't seem to reliably take me to the priest I want to get to Byzantium, or the merchant I want to get to Katmandu, etc. etc. It goes back to cities where I have generals who I want to do nothing - over and over again - never seeming to progress to the next princess, diplomat, etc...

Am I dumber than I imagined, or am I missing something?

[El Diablo]

When chasing up all the spys, merchants etc I use the "list scroll" feature and start at the top work my way down. But yeah it can be frustrating/time-consuming.

My personal "fav" is when you click where you want them (the agent/army) to go and they take a 180° turn when some thing is in the way and "replot" the best way to get there. Especially around mountains etc. So next turn is used up getting them back to where you started.

[FactionHeir]

Well, firstly cool down.

Right, you should know which units you have been using/were planning to use during a turn as you likely used them the turn before or remember where you trained something last turn. So that should already help greatly in figuring out where to find the specific agent. Failing that, you can right click the agents tab and get a list of all your agents and their location, skill etc. That can be quite useful too, although its not really sorted. Actually it is, but in the order you trained your agents.

[Musashi]

Click your faction emblem on the Strategy screen UI, and in the screen that comes up click "lists scroll"

On the screen that brings up, click the "agents" tab.

You are now looking at a list of all your agents and their locations. If you click on one of them and then click the magnifying glass icon in the corner of that screen it will center your view on them in the strategy map.

The settlements tab is also useful for seeing at a glance which of your settlements are constructing buildings/doring repairs and training/retraining units. That way you can quickly check the ones that aren't to see if they should be ;)

[Zenicetus]

When chasing up all the spys, merchants etc I use the "list scroll" feature and start at the top work my way down. But yeah it can be frustrating/time-consuming.

A quicker shortcut:

Right click on the "agents" text tab above the army display window, at the bottom of the main campaign screen.

My personal "fav" is when you click where you want them (the agent/army) to go and they take a 180° turn when some thing is in the way and "replot" the best way to get there. Especially around mountains etc. So next turn is used up getting them back to where you started.

For anything but a short distance move, I always click-drag out the path before committing to see where it goes. That avoids surprises, and sometimes you'll want an alternative route through a safer area. Each color change in the dragged path is a turn.

On the OP's larger point about micro.... yeah, I'm not crazy about the added micromanagement in M2TW compared to RTW due to more agent types, and also more aggressive use of spies by the AI, and somewhat nerfed assassins. I'm spending much more time between turns and battles now.

One thing that would really help (and I don't know why this type of game so often lacks it), would be a window you could call up, showing all armies or agents that still had movement points or unused actions in a turn. I can hold a certain amount of this in my head, but when the empire gets larger, I spend way too much time clicking around to see who can still move and who can't, which agents still have available actions, etc. This should be very simple programming.

[Rothe]

Some sort of agent flags would be nice. Something that you could call up from the menu that shows the agents on the map clearly and maybe on the overview map too (the small "radar" map). The flagging could be something that blinks, or just something else that catches your attention.

[Shahed]

I would like that you are able to box draw around a whole bunch of different items on the camp map and give a cmobined instruction (like you can do on the battle map).