Interface Bugs and Suggestions

Wow, it's been a long time since I've been around these parts!  Some of you may remember me as a particularly vocal critic of the first Elemental game.  Fortunately, Fallen Enchantress is quite simply a fantastic 4x and the first fantasy TBS since Age of Wonders and Dominion that has me playing well past a responsible bed time.  Truly a worthy successor to the venerable Master of Magic and that is not praise I would give lightly.

As great as it is, there are still a few niggling problems that manage to annoy the everloving hell out of me every single turn.  Most of these are minor interface tweaks and should be quick fixes.  It is entirely possible that I am just a big, dumb dummy and am missing something obvious, but my friends came to the same conclusions, so if it is something we're missing I'd say it still qualifies as an interface problem because it isn't intuitive and the instructions are not clear or easy to find in the reference materials.

1)  Combining armies.  Currently when I need to combine two stacks I have to move one stack to an adjacent tile, then move the second army to that tile for the game to register that they should combine.

2) No tool tips for racial abilities in the faction creation screen.  This info is not even available anywhere in the Heirgamaenenonomnomnom that I could find.  I had to start a game with every race, write down the bloodline ability on a piece of scratch paper, abandon the game, and start over.  For every bloodline.

3) Spellbook navigation.  This is a difficult one.  I love having a book with pages to flip.  Its awesome and reminds me of MoM.  I don't like having 10 pages of spells.  The tabs are helpful but there aren't enough of them, and each tab ends up with a bunch of sub categories.  Its a pain in the balls.  One of those things that is enchanting for the first game but by the second you want something more functional.

I have a brilliant solution for ya!  In my humble opinion .  Instead of tabs along the sides, how about a row of filter boxes along the side where the tabs are that control what spells are displayed?  This would greatly speed up browsing while still keeping that book format.  Should be a filter box for every 'school' of magic + researched and unresearched + tactical and strategic + spell types (damage, travel, enchant, etc).  Check boxes to change what is displayed on the current page instead of flipping the page.  If the number of boxes makes the side look cluttered, you could have smaller filter boxes along the top, or one along the side for magic school, tactical, strategic, and researched/unresearched, and one row along the top of book for spell type.  Might look cleaner that way.

But Hair, you scream, there aren't enough spells to require so many subdivisions!  That's true, right now.  But one of the best features of this game is just how modular and moddable it is!  Not even taking into account the inevitable expansion(s) (cross fingers), this community is sure to inject hundreds of new spells.  Tabs are inefficient even with the current number of spells!  It will get progressively more obnoxious as more spells are added!

At the VERY LEAST, we need to be able to choose to disable the detail spell info that takes up an entire page.  One of those things that is great for the first game, but by the second I just wanted that second page to show more spells with just their cost, title, and icon.  Currently, only seven spells can be shown at a time on a page and that sucks.  If it were my call I would make them smaller and show ten on a page at minimum, and give an option to disable the detailed info on selected spell page that takes up so much space.

Even more intuitive would be showing both pages as a list until a spell is selected, at which point the second page would show the detailed info for that spell like it does all the time now.  Right click to deselect and go back to the two page list.

Sorry if this seems like a lot of words on a relatively unimportant issue, but I used to do UI design professionally so I get off on this stuff.  There's a reason that almost every modern e-mail client employs filters like this.  Its smart design.

4) Terrain Yields seem to randomly disappear at times and only reappear after quitting the game and restarting it.  Toggling the show terrain yields box in advanced options on and off does not fix it, nor does loading a save, or any combination of those things.  Only after full restart will they be displayed again.

Wow, it's been a long time since I've been around these parts!  Some of you may remember me as a particularly vocal critic of the first Elemental game.  Fortunately, Fallen Enchantress is quite simply a fantastic 4x and the first fantasy TBS since Age of Wonders and Dominion that has me playing well past a responsible bed time.  Truly a worthy successor to the venerable Master of Magic and that is not praise I would give lightly.

As great as it is, there are still a few niggling problems that manage to annoy the everloving hell out of me every single turn.  Most of these are minor interface tweaks and should be quick fixes.  It is entirely possible that I am just a big, dumb dummy and am missing something obvious, but my friends came to the same conclusions, so if it is something we're missing I'd say it still qualifies as an interface problem because it isn't intuitive and the instructions are not clear or easy to find in the reference materials.

1)  Combining armies.  Currently when I need to combine two stacks I have to move one stack to an adjacent tile, then move the second army to that tile for the game to register that they should combine.

2) No tool tips for racial abilities in the faction creation screen.  This info is not even available anywhere in the Heirgamaenenonomnomnom that I could find.  I had to start a game with every race, write down the bloodline ability on a piece of scratch paper, abandon the game, and start over.  For every bloodline.

3) Spellbook navigation.  This is a difficult one.  I love having a book with pages to flip.  Its awesome and reminds me of MoM.  I don't like having 10 pages of spells.  The tabs are helpful but there aren't enough of them, and each tab ends up with a bunch of sub categories.  Its a pain in the balls.  One of those things that is enchanting for the first game but by the second you want something more functional.

I have a brilliant solution for ya!  In my humble opinion .  Instead of tabs along the sides, how about a row of filter boxes along the side where the tabs are that control what spells are displayed?  This would greatly speed up browsing while still keeping that book format.  Should be a filter box for every 'school' of magic + researched and unresearched + tactical and strategic + spell types (damage, travel, enchant, etc).  Check boxes to change what is displayed on the current page instead of flipping the page.  If the number of boxes makes the side look cluttered, you could have smaller filter boxes along the top, or one along the side for magic school, tactical, strategic, and researched/unresearched, and one row along the top of book for spell type.  Might look cleaner that way.

But Hair, you scream, there aren't enough spells to require so many subdivisions!  That's true, right now.  But one of the best features of this game is just how modular and moddable it is!  Not even taking into account the inevitable expansion(s) (cross fingers), this community is sure to inject hundreds of new spells.  Tabs are inefficient even with the current number of spells!  It will get progressively more obnoxious as more spells are added!

At the VERY LEAST, we need to be able to choose to disable the detail spell info that takes up an entire page.  One of those things that is great for the first game, but by the second I just wanted that second page to show more spells with just their cost, title, and icon.  Currently, only seven spells can be shown at a time on a page and that sucks.  If it were my call I would make them smaller and show ten on a page at minimum, and give an option to disable the detailed info on selected spell page that takes up so much space.

Even more intuitive would be showing both pages as a list until a spell is selected, at which point the second page would show the detailed info for that spell like it does all the time now.  Right click to deselect and go back to the two page list.

Sorry if this seems like a lot of words on a relatively unimportant issue, but I used to do UI design professionally so I get off on this stuff.  There's a reason that almost every modern e-mail client employs filters like this.  Its smart design.

4) Terrain Yields seem to randomly disappear at times and only reappear after quitting the game and restarting it.  Toggling the show terrain yields box in advanced options on and off does not fix it, nor does loading a save, or any combination of those things.  Only after full restart will they be displayed again.

5) Building an outpost needs to indicate which city it will attach to.  I shouldn't have to count squares.  Especially with an outpost that is between three or more cities.

7) Items

Always frustrates me that I can't have my useless scout run back to town carrying all of the bear and wolf asses my heroes generate.  Have to take many turns to send a hero back just to haul a bunch of junk.  Let me give equipment to soldiers even if they can't wear it.

Also would be nice to be able to store things in a town.  I think in a huge bustling city the sovereign of the empire might be able to find a barrel to store things in.

There are others that are escaping me at the moment but I iwll add to the list as they come back to me.

Fantastic game guys!