The battle screen is bad

[pheonicia]

There's a lot of problems here, not least of which is that this screen is ugly, but let's list the big issues out.

1.The morale and discipline numbers are tiny and have no visual indicator/icon as to what they actually are
2. The dice roll is tiny and squirreled away at the top of the screen for no reason
3. The Teutons leader name is so long it causes his portrait to overlap with the left flank
4. Why are the leader portraits even on this screen? It provides no useful information and doesn't have any indication of their actual stats
5. There's no indication as to the terrain the battle is taking place in
6. There's no indication as to what side is "attacking" vs "defending"
7. Again, it's ugly
8. There's no location name


Please make this better.

 

[Signthe]

I like the generalheh layout, but I agree with point 3 and 7.

The portraits need some work.

 

[McEwanMaster]

I'm not bothered about the visual aesthetics or individual UI elements, they're very obviously WIP. Though your point about who's Attacker vs Defender is good!

What I thought was odd was the orientation of the battle simulation, with the flanks being placed vertically rather than horizontally. It just makes it harder for the mind to immediately correlate the flanks as laid out in your army setup with what's happening on the battlefield UI.

 

[Traum77]

The ugliness doesn't bother me, but most of your other points are pretty valid. The attacker/defender and terrain info seems particularly important. Morale you can tell by the bar, but it's not immediately clear that the number beside it is attached to that figure.

My annoyance is that the entire thing is horizontal rather than vertical. I know it helps even out which is the left and right flanks of each side, but as a player I'd prefer it if I could, at a glance, determine how my left and right are doing by looking to my left and right sides of the window. This will just take an extra half-second of re-orientation every battle, which could be annoying in a larger war with multiple battles ongoing.

EDIT: Lol, McEwanMaster makes the exact same point as me at the exact same time. Well said.

 

[MasterPaw]

I disagree with 4, knowing which leader leads is important for it's stats, especially if several armies fight there but only one general leads

 

[ero_sk]

I think that, in addition to others' points, the sides of the battle should be vertically rather than horizontally aligned. It will make it easier to interpret flanks, etc. For example, "us" at the bottom and the enemy at the top, as if we were facing them on the battlefield.

 

[pheonicia]

I disagree with 4, knowing which leader leads is important for it's stats, especially if several armies fight there but only one general leads

If we had the general's stats instead of the portrait then we wouldn't need the portrait to know which general was leading.

Also you could just keep the name but remove the portrait, not like their faces are going to be that helpful anyways.

 

[SuperLexxe]

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It seems that the vertical alignment is very much an influence from CK3 and VIKI3. Not only is it a terrible thing to try and emulate those two games' interfaces, considering how bad they are, but also that the EU5 army flank doesn't fit into that mold.

---

 

[MegaVHS]

it's clearly a WIP UI, but it's great that they shown it now so people can give feedback on how to improve it.

 

[Revshawn]

Obv a work in progress.

 

[Marcxs272828]

Agree with everything except 4. I really like the idea of being able to see each leader's portrait while the battle is going on, it's more immersive and "cool" this way imo, specially in hypothetical battles between the rulers of major powers (like, say, the king of France meeting the Holy Roman Emperor in battle). Plus, it wouldn't make much sense to have generals and admirals as 3d characters and yet being unable to see their models while they are doing the main thing they're for: fighting.

But I agree the current layout needs more work so that it looks less cluttered.

 

[Oglesby]

View attachment 1291869

There's a lot of problems here, not least of which is that this screen is ugly, but let's list the big issues out.

1.The morale and discipline numbers are tiny and have no visual indicator/icon as to what they actually are
2. The dice roll is tiny and squirreled away at the top of the screen for no reason
3. The Teutons leader name is so long it causes his portrait to overlap with the left flank
4. Why are the leader portraits even on this screen? It provides no useful information and doesn't have any indication of their actual stats
5. There's no indication as to the terrain the battle is taking place in
6. There's no indication as to what side is "attacking" vs "defending"
7. Again, it's ugly
8. There's no location name


Please make this better.

1. agree
2. agree
3. I would lock the position of the leader portraits. The need to be moved up a little to not hide the crest and affiliation and need to be left / right justified respectively.
4. Because they invested too much time and money into the modeling that they need to use it everywhere to justify it.
5. I wonder if the background changes to indicate the terrain
6. left is attacking, right is defending. Always.
7. Agree
8. good point I missed that.

I would do this

1. Move the flag and army size into the box in the area above the reserves
2. As the chits are in the location in the formation that they represent I would remove the icon from inside the box.
3. remove the 'engaged' number from the reserves as I believe they move to a front location before/while engaging.
4. Rotate the whole thing 90 degrees
5. At a duration listed on the battle somewhere.

 

[Oglesby]

"WIP" shows up on every gameplay teaser trailer in the industry.

I think the issue with WIP is when they use it on things that they feel are complete. (Everything is WiP until it is released).

 

[Nostalgium]

Fits very snuggly on my mobile screen though.

 

[cumaethor]

Maybe even name of the army could be added in the battle screen. In this case "3rd Army". As I don't think I will remember the names of my generals.

 

[ekinda]

Agree with all the points.

A good UI is critical to have, as we have seen from the Civ VII launch. Also don't believe that there will be any major changes if we don't give feedback, even if the devs say something is WIP. WIP probably means they might do small tweaks, not a redesign.

 

[ekinda]

Also the small boxes with X in it: don't those represent left/right flank, center etc? We already have that information from the location of the big boxes?

 

[TomoYachi]

The UI has improved drastically but almost every dev diary another part looks shit, i hope they take in all the feedback on this as no matter how good the gameplay is, the ui could make the experience clunky and unattractive

 

[ekinda]

Though we'll find out about the exact date tomorrow, the game is still more than a couple months away from release, and the UI is literally one of the easiest and quickest things to rework. Moreover, when the youtubers release their gameplay videos of the game following its announcement, I'm sure we'll have constant, quality feedback on this forum about the game's interface, as we'll finally be able to see the UI of literally every single aspect of EU5. I don't get why people are so pessimistic about the UI, the devs have shown great improvements in the past. I mean, just take a look and compare how the UI for the Estates looked like in Tinto Talks #5 when they were first presented vs how it looks now, as shown in Tinto Talks #55. It's like night and day.

View attachment 1292106 View attachment 1292107

To be honest that's not much of an improvement IMO. The previous one was not very good either but at least it has some color coding. The right one has too much information and too little structure. For example, I really dislike two decimal points -clearly unnecessary here. The face circle thing is horrendous.

 

[JacceDON]

I'm really not sure where this impression is coming from. I can't think of a game that made their title announcement/press release in the very last stages of actual development, where everything was already in place and final. The title announcement is only the first step of the usual marketing campaign that is common in the game industry at large, and it has very little to do with the actual development process other than careful timing to maximize interest as the game is polished to its 1.0 state. "WIP" shows up on every gameplay teaser trailer in the industry.

Though we'll find out about the exact date tomorrow, the game is still more than a couple months away from release, and the UI is literally one of the easiest and quickest things to rework. Moreover, when the youtubers release their gameplay videos of the game following its announcement, I'm sure we'll have constant, quality feedback on this forum about the game's interface, as we'll finally be able to see the UI of literally every single aspect of EU5. I don't get why people are so pessimistic about the UI, the devs have shown great improvements in the past. I mean, just take a look and compare how the UI for the Estates looked like in Tinto Talks #5 when they were first presented vs how it looks now, as shown in Tinto Talks #55. It's like night and day.

View attachment 1292106 View attachment 1292107

I just don't have any confidence in the team being able to properly fix and polish everything before launch. I haven't been lying when I said that I expected the game to come out in Q2 2026, game development takes time and this announcement (along with the shortened time from announcement to release that has been alluded to) felt premature from the day it was teased.