I came to this game with 1.9. I think it's a wonderful game and I look forward to playing it for years to come. But I often find the UI pretty frustrating. Here is a long list of improvements that I would like to see to the UI, in rough order of how much they affect gameplay. I expect with at least a handful of these, the answer will be "there is an option or a panel for that you didn't know about." My response would be, if I didn't know about that after playing for 100+ hours and really looking around for it, it's still bad UI design – even if people have learned to tolerate this with Paradox games.
- The Construction Interaction panel doesn't show which states have a shortage – you have to sort by predicted profits to approximate this function. In the course of writing this, I've discovered for the first time that the Local Prices panel of the Market interface does show shortages. Why not have a full-screen panel that combines all the information on the Construction Interaction panel AND the Market: Local Prices panel, instead of dividing them into two unconnected half-screen panels?
- Changing production methods could also benefit from a new UI. You should be able to bring up a flowchart which shows a building in the centre; above it, the buildings that input to it; and below it, the buildings it outputs to. Costs and shortages would also visible. (Like a more dynamic version of the Applications panel of the Market interface.) That way, if you're changing, say, the Kyushu construction sector to arc welding, on the same screen you could change Kyushu power plants to coal-fired to provide extra power, without clicking around so much.
- Construction Interaction lets you sort by jobseekers and unemployed, but it doesn't let you filter by whether there are enough qualifications in each state to staff the specific building that you're expanding – this is in a tooltip, which makes it really time-consuming when you have a lot of states. (Looking on Reddit, some people argue you can just ignore the "Not enough qualifications" warning in any case – well, that suggests there should be more information on this panel about the population conditions provoking the warning, so you can judge for yourself.)
- Also, if you misclick on the Construction Interaction panel, there's no way to undo without bringing up the Construction Panel.
- Tooltip options could be more granular. Overall I prefer the Mouse Tendency tooltip mode, but the downside is, it starts flinging tooltips at you every time you move the mouse. I wish the my short tooltip pop-up time could be just tooltips that actually contain information, rather than for tutorial-type tooltips: I don't need a tooltip to pop up every time my mouse passes across the Regional Actions button informing me that Regional Actions allows me to "interact with strategic regions".
- Another thing that could benefit from an innovative UI – and this one is probably too ambitious to hope for – is the GDP graph. Often I see a little dip and I have no idea why it happened. The GDP graph could be expandable into a full-screen view that's annotated with decisions and events – e.g. here's where you changed the PMs of all your iron mines, here's where you annexed your subject. This would make your economy so much more transparent.
- Also in this category: bookmarking diplomatic plays. A big part of this game is contemplating plays that aren't possible now but might be possible later. Currently, when you click on an ineligible country, nothing happens. What if it let you bookmark that play so you got an alert as soon as it opened up, and you didn't have to keep checking?
- Like, I'm sure, every player, I'm constantly consulting the tooltip for how much I'm spending on each different government construction goods, which is nested inconveniently inside another tooltip. Why not let us pin this in the sidebar? Even better, why not have a panel that breaks down the costs of all government construction goods, government expenses, and military expenses, so I know whether I need to be making more paper or munitions or whatever, without just relying on the "expensive government goods" alerts.
- Why is there not a States Registry/ledger similar to the Building Registry? In the course of writing this, I've discovered that there's a states list in the outliner, but this isn't sortable or interactable.
- If I see in the Authority tooltip that I'm spending authority on a decree I don't need any more, why can't I cancel it directly from there, instead of needing it to go into the Issue Decree panel separately? Maybe the Authority tooltip should be a proper panel.
- And the Issue Decree panel just shows a list of states with no other information. Why not show sortable numbers relevant to the decree I'm considering? Infrastructure deficit for Road Maintenance, current resource sector output for Encourage Resource Industry etc.
- Same with the Declare Interest panel. Since interests count towards trade advantage, why not let me sort by the amount of trade I'm doing with that region when I allocate my spare interests?
- When I'm adding war goals in the course of negotiating to support someone else's diplomatic play, why aren't eligible war goal states highlighted and clickable on the world map, the way they are for all the other types of panel that look like this?
- On the Goods panel of the Market interface, you can sort by Market Price and Balance, but why not add a new statistic showing the total amount of lost productivity in my country caused by the elevated price of a good? Fundamentally that's what you want to know when you're deciding which supply constraint you need to ease next.
- And when I bring up the tooltip that shows where I'm exporting a good to, why isn't this 1. sorted by number of exports and 2. showing the name of the countries so I don't have to hover if I don't recognise the flag?
- It would be nice to have a special exports leaderboard, so I can see at a glance that I'm number 1 in coffee (and nobody else is even close), number 4 in sulfur (but I'm snapping at Italy's heels) etc.
- Why doesn't the Infamy number have a tooltip showing what I did to get that infamy?
- On the Laws Panel of the Politics screen, why not have each Law button show which alternative laws are currently available, instead of just showing the number of available alternatives so I have to click through every time? And as others have pointed out, once you do click through to the individual law's screen, there would easily be room to show the full details of each one, instead of making us check a tooltip.
- When another country proposes a treaty, if I close the treaty to check something or save my game, I can't work out how to get back to it. Maybe there's some way I've missed, but why not just keep the treaty at the top until I've actually declined it?
- And when negotiating a treaty, why doesn't the Add Law Commitment screen show which laws the other country is interested in without making you click to expand every single law?
- In the various Diplomatic Plays panels, if some state is involved that I've never heard of, I have to hover until the tooltip comes up, then click Go To Details, then click Zoom to Nenetsia (or wherever). Why not let us click to zoom straight there to see where it is?
- Locked Map Mode doesn't actually lock the map mode – it still changes as soon as I click on anything else. Maybe there's a trick to this I don't know, but it's really unintuitive. (Also, the States map mode is weirdly ugly compared to how good all the others look!)
- If my navy is actively raiding convoys or fighting another navy, why is there no indication on the map that anything is happening?
- Why doesn't the Form a Power Bloc panel show me a list of the potential countries that I have enough leverage over to invite if I do decide to form one, so I know before I make the decision?
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