[1.2] List of Improvements/Bugs I have compiled

Ok, so I don't get much time to play so I have only just managed to rack out one and a half games in the last week that I have had some holidays, but I kept a list of things I thought needed attention. I had a quick skim of the forum and see a few bug reports, some which I have on my list and I have elected to take some of them out that have already been eloquently specified there, but my time is short and if I spend all my life reading forums I won't get time to actually type out the post I have to make so unfortunately here is a wall of text, some of which may already be known...

Typos/Confusion:

1. When you kick someone out of your borders, it says "We will withdrawal". (There is another odd typo like this I am trying to find again too)
2. Mint Of (whatever). Says in one part of the description it give 3 gildar, in another it says 5. Which is it?
3. Monuments are both a wild improvement and a city improvement. Name one of them something different, probably the wild improvement. Monolith or Obelisk spring to mind as good alternatives.

Bugs:

1. When holding down Ctrl to select specific parts of your army, the mouse appears fairly unresponsive and resists being moved (as if it is fighting with you). Might just be on my computer, but it's like it is trying to stay where it is. Incredibly annoying.
2. When casting Cloud Walk from inside a city, the spell fails.
3. Loading screen is inaccurate. I have an old Core 2 Quad coupled with an SSD. When I load a game after playing for a bit, the bar is filled and the loading screen sits there for a good 20-30 seconds thinking about getting on with it - perhaps it's measuring the wrong thing here?
4. Game animation seems to slow down over time the longer you play a map. By the end of my last game I had the animation cranked up to 5x, and it seemed like 2x.
5. Terrain slope can make it difficult to click on the correct tile, especially at higher zoom levels. I have, on a few occasions, clicked to perform a ranged attack on an enemy, only to have my mounted archers ride up and stand in the square in front of him. Seems that intervening terrain that partially obscures the tile you are clicking on counts as clicking on the tile the terrain is attached to. Also seems to happen on overhead map, particularly on hills that slope away from you.

Faction Workshop/Sovereign Improvements:

1. Ability to view already-created races, and to edit and delete them. (I have had considerable trouble trying to 'overwrite' a faction I created earlier, and I shouldn't have had to find it in My Documents to delete it - and all I really needed was to change two things and play again. Instead, I spent about 45 minutes trying to create a new faction called the same thing, and failing, when simply being able to select the old one and edit it would have taken literally thirty seconds.)
2. Crests should be viewed as a selection from a displayed set of tiles, instead of "clicking through them one at a time".
3. Users should be able to modify the crest - choose the device and it's colour on them, and the type/colour of the backgrounds.
4. Stances and animation packs are completely unhelpful in description. At the very least should specifiy what weapons/armour they support, as many obviously do not support bows.

Tool-tip/Help Improvements:

1. When choosing your new upgrade city type (Fort/Conclave/Town) the potential available improvements should be accessible there (I don't know what they are, I forgot to bring my crystal ball). A vague description isn't helpful, and planning out those "1 Per World", "1 per Faction" and further City Growth improvements requires a little knowledge beforehand for those new to playing.
2. In addition to the previous, being able to see what the upgrading city is like would be helpful - if you have a large territory you have just conquered, you may not know the towns by name yet, and there isn't any way I could see to take a quick peek at it, and you can't even see it with a giant window in front of it.
3. Furthermore, perhaps most of the "City Growth" and "You've Captured The Testicles Of Boom-Shakalaka" events which immediately demand you to assign something to a city or make a decision regarding it's growth should be an alert which you expand, read, minimise and come back to. It seems that the obvious goal of making a menu-less interface with few buttons has cramped the style of presenting different  information types in the queue systems as screen real-estate is a premium. Perhaps the "Govern" window could be overhauled to be a little bigger, have more options, and could present a queue for this type of thing. The "You've Captured The Head Of Mairzy Doats" items should go into a pool here until you can select an appropriate city for them.

Gameplay Improvements:

1. Should be an option to upgrade your experienced unit of troops numbers when you research a higher troop compliment tech. For example, my 4 Archers are going really well, when I discover the tech to field 5 Archers in a unit, I'd like to be able to upgrade that unit instead of potentially having them rot as garrison somewhere and train up some rookies. Simply put, for perhaps double the production cost of one individual member I could re-enter that unit into the build queue of their current city with a new "Recruit" command and have it train up another member (or members) to the same high standard - in game terms bringing it up to the new maximum (or chosen) troop number.
2. Similarly, if I edit the unit in the Design area (adding extra equipment, changing weapons) I should have the opportunity to "Re-Equip" that unit (which changes it to reflect the new base template) without having to destroy the unit. Costs should be as per any differing equipment, with no refunds from existing unused gear.
3. Hotkey assignments should be accessible from the trade/shop/equip screen. I'd rather not have to mess around with that in battle.
4. When I dismiss troops, I am cryptically told that X troops deserted to Somewhereville. What does this mean? Does it mean the population was increased there? If not, I don't need to know about it - I'd like to only know if they ran away because I pinched their wages.
5. In addition to the current city lists, a list of garrisons and their upkeep would be very handy. Nice to be able to easily browse your standing army and give the old outdated garrisons the sack if you don't need them anymore. Non-stationed units would be at the bottom of this list, and if they are currently en route to a city it should say so there. (It would be even more handy if you could easily 'pool' certain members and re-distribute them to other towns on one screen, but that's getting pretty tricky.)
6. An Engineer unit added to the base game that can build roads, bridges and cut down forests. Generally a unit of dudes that does the shovelwork for you where you think the auto-AI in that regard has fallen short. In combat it fields a Mangonel or Ballista, but only when defending a Town/City or Outpost. Make it about the same power as City Archers, but lower Init/high attack or something to balance.
7. Pioneers that create an Outpost should have their "population" added back to the linked town. It should remain transferable - if someone takes over the Outpost, that population should be deducted, and added onto the new owner. After all, the population doesn't go anywhere else - they remain as staff in the area.
8. Expansion of the current available mounts; Dire Wolves, Bears, Skaths/Spiders (see next point), any four legged critter in the game. I've seen an enemy Hero riding a Giant Spider, and I wanted one for the coolness factor for my Sovereign. I sincerely hope that quite a number of new mounts and gear comes along soon, I played one and a half games and the whole "doin' up your heroes/units" thing was pretty bland. You can't tell me that it wouldn't be awesome to field a unit of Spider Riders, or Bear Cavalry, and I want my big bad hero to go into battle on a Fell Dragon or something - now that would be rad.
9. Mire Skath and Giant Spider, etc as wild improvements to be mounts. I was supposed to get a Mire Skath for a quest, but as a wild improvement tile? (I assume there could be one, but I haven't seen it). In fact, there should be a whole set of "Rare" tiles with wild improvements that have funky stuff that we don't otherwise get, placed in the Town Shop in extremely limited quantities (e.g. One or two), in the same way Ogres and Trolls are.
10. Make borders a little easier to recognise the differences between the colours. Ideally use a tracer of the secondary colour in there (a small dash of the secondary colour every so often, and maybe even a tooltip that states whose influence it is when you hover over that land. It should take the form of Name/Relationship/Treaties, such as: "Paridien Territory: Hostile, At War" or "Gilden Territory: Warm, Non-Agg Pact" or "Kraxus Territory: Close, Neutral"
11. Placing cities is a little hit and miss. Can we get an overlay of what areas it will remove the seeded ground from? I've wanted to place two cities fairly close and snake them away from one another so as not to encroach, while taking advantage of two juicy areas. You don't know what will disappear after you place a city - until you've placed it.
12. Ability to lock a city into "Research", "Financial", "Growth" and "Military" pursuits. I have a screen full of "Zzz" flashing at me. There are certain improvements I do not want in all my cities (wasting Crystal on those Guardian statues, or building towers of Witches or whatever for example) I should be able to say to the game "Ok, I want to lock this city into producing 15% more Guildar from now on until there is a change in my available build queue." or "I want you to hump like rabbits an bump up your growth by +25% because you're taking too damn long". The keys here are having those four options (or more if any others come up), the ability to put conditions on when the city should stop and prompt you to go back to check it out, and the ability to cancel it at any given time.

UI Improvements:

1. All "rate changes" should calculate on the one tooltip for the Tax Rate. The ones it shows you in the build system for when you build an improvement are great, but trying to hover the mouse over the little arrows on the tax rate back and forth and waiting for tooltips is annoying. Can it's proper tooltip show you both of the calculated values (in both directions?)
2. The build queue on the strategic interface is a great way of quickly seeing a snapshot and plugging a quick "rush" order, but it's pants for really planning out an handful of buildings and units. You can't drag to re-order from one 'page' to another, and the icons are too small to make out when you are dragging. An expanded window should be available that mimics the Build menu that allows you to see each item you're building, the resource cost, what it can upgrade to, and the ability to easily drag things around is important for those micro managers out there.
3. When I hit the turn button, it would be nice to have a clear delineation to tell me when I can start doing things again. An hourglass is not sufficient - perhaps applying a ripple effect filter over the UI and the very edges of the screen (as if you were looking in a scrying pool) and returning to normal when you are set to go would be better. I've had the hourglass flick back to a sword and here is me furiously clicking away only to figure out the AI hasn't finished yet!
4. The tooltip (above the minimap) for any terrain should show what wild improvement is present, and the level of improvement placed upon it.
5. Provision to "pin" an army together. Sometimes one of my great armies visit a city and I have to click select them all correctly to get them out again (or I find out to my horror later I've taken a garrisoned unit(s) for a little walk and left an important city undefended).
6. Provision to reorder my army. Firstly, I'm obsessive compulsive and I like things pretty. Secondly, it somehow is linked to the way your army is set up on the battlefield. Extra points for being able to set up your standing deployment on the battlefield as well. Having several units running laps between tiles or dancing around on different tiles for a turn or two is something I shouldn't have to do.
7. Allow multiple stand-up/death animations to be played at the same time without forcing anyone to wait. A half-second pause is enough so that we can see they are getting up one after the other. I dislike casting Titan's Breath and then sitting around watching an entire army play Simon Says for a bit. Those animations could play a fraction quicker as well - when I speed up the animations so they are tolerable, everything else is freakishly fast.
8. Add an option to have "Open" and "Closed" borders to each opponent. Call it a "Precautionary Measures" option or something. If I'm getting kicked out every time I set foot on someone else's territory, I want to do the same to them instead of them wandering into my lands for a few turns and rudely plonking down an outpost when I missed them. The sequence should be to check for neutrals and auto-kick them at the start of my turn (obviously with no diplomatic repercussions).
9. Ability to select and inspect opponents on the tactical battlefield. "What does that creature's special ability do?" "I dunno boss. Seems pretty harmless while we are shooting it, when it gets here I'll ....ARGHFRGLARGL" isn't what I expect in combat. One loading tip says to be careful of animals with the Maul ability, but I haven't yet been forewarned of it in any way. Someone pointed out how to do this.
10. Spellbook could be divided up a little better. As a suggestion, I would have spells sub-sorted with an "inner bookmark" that filters spells as to if they are offensive spells or not. My city spells list was huge last game.
11. Backward spellcasting. In the city details screen, selecting an empty Essence icon should list the spells I can cast there instead of me having to go out to the strategic map and click spellcasting, find the relevant spell and cast it. Apologies if this actually is the case, I didn't remember to try it. Same goes for units.
12. Cannot actually see the population of my town, nor what uses it. Edit: Specifically in the Unit Train window. Pioneers I guess?
13. Scions ability and the Unit Design do not go well. A Scion is badly represented here. I can re-equip him but there isn't a perk, button or tooltip that says "This guy is only allowed to be on his Jack Jones, and you're paying 100 Influence basically for a rookie hero". It's a good idea to have his starting equipment editable in the Unit Design tool, but there should be a clear perk to select when you want to turn a "unit" into a "Scion".
14. Ability to turn of specific particle effects, such as "Those on units", "Those on my units", "Those on enemies", "Those on improvements", etc. I had a few FPS/screen jerkiness issues when a heavily enchanted unit was active, but never anywhere else.
15. Pop up "snapshot window" for save games. Imagine my happy surprise when a tooltip came up for my saved game, only for me to realise that the information contained in it wasn't really helpful. Perhaps a development for it in the future would be to have a scrying pool in the centre of the screen (There already is a screen model for it!), with the saved game list on one side. Selecting or hovering over each saved game would show a cloth map of the world you can see in the scrying pool, and a window roughly the same size as the saved game list would contain the important information, such as the last few techs learned, the enemies you face, you capital and sovereign name, etc.

AI Improvements:

1. The AI sometimes builds cities actually on wild improvements. It means it is unable to actually be improved.
2. If the AI cannot get to a specific place because you keep kicking them out of your borders, they keep insisting on trying. They refuse to give up. Perhaps have a clause in their AI that tells them that if they can't get to a certain place because they have to go across someone's borders, and they get kicked out, to assess that intervening area as impassable until such time as a gap appears?

Serious attention should be paid to some of the mods out there; for example:

1. The River Bridge mod (that sadly does not work for me, but I desperately wish that it did.)
2. The Snaking mod (allows you to build piers and logging camps when you reach them - would be invaluable but sadly, again it doesn't work for me)
3. The Larger Maps mod (thought this was quite odd that it wasn't there to begin with).
4. The Large UI mod (which actually fixed some of the shortfalls I have pointed out - the only mod I have successfully got to work.)

Stardock should collaborate with those mod-makers to incorporate their mods into the base game. I saw these mods and instantly knew the game is begging for these improvements. Edit to add: I have since got them to work, and I cannot tell you how amazing they have been.

... Ok, that's pretty much it. Some of these are simply coming from the frustration of playing the game when it seems clunky, others are simply improvements that I can see that will make the game more accessible. In some other cases, Stardock have fallen afoul of the Assumption Demon and forgotten that the new players don't know how to identify things by sight or don't remember the "complete list" in their head (but the devs do and can't see the issue because they have never been in that fog-of-war). In any case, if Frogboy prints this out and pops it on the kitchen fridge for people to work from, the game can only benefit. This post took me two and a half hours to put together so I hope someone takes notice. It's one thirty in the morning and now I'll be dreaming of casting Fire Wave on wolves for the night.

- McTaff

P.S. Stardock employees, please feel free to ask for clarification if something doesn't make sense. And yes, the bugs might be limited to me, I know. It'd be nice if anyone else can chime in and say if they have experienced the same thing as me.

* Edited to add Bugs (4) and UI (14)

* Edited to add Bugs (5) and UI (15)

* Edited to add AI (1) and (2), and amended Gameplay (12). 07/02/2013

* Edit to add: (Additional mini-rant) I spent some time (read around 50 game seasons) trying to clear out a wilderness area - it was a swampy mess that was difficult to move through, despite my high number of moves. The instructions ere to clear out each scarred tile. Did that. No "conversion". I've stationed pioneers in the wilderness and done laps with my army, stopping on each tile with any improvement, but nothing is happening. Obviously a bug of some sort - but while minor it has been incredibly frustrating. 09/02/2013

* Edit to add Gameplay (10), (11) and (12), and added Tooltip/Help (3).  11/02/2013