After playing the Beta for a bit now I think there are a few ways the UI could be improved to give better feed back to the player. As well as make it simpler to do curtain things in the game.

City Display

1) The circle bar around the city the indicates the current population is nice. It is however hard to tell if the city have enough population to reach the next level or how close it is to cap. When you have the city selected there is a bar on the lower right tab that displays this same info with a house icon representing the current population cap. Well it would be nice if something similar was on the circle bar around the city icon. Perhaps just a solid white line to show where the cap is would be nice.

2) On the bar that displays the current population with the house icon it would be nice if there was a display of how many turns until the city reached level cap or population cap which ever was lower. This is handy for planning when you need to build the next house rather then wasting the resources too soon on extra housing that will sit empty. I'm constantly doing the math manually to see if I have enough turns before it's at cap to build something else or if I need to start the next house.

3) When you have a city selected the action bar shows icons for build and train. It would be nice if these would show the current item in the works if any. I often times have to check the training tab and the building tab to make sure stuff is under production. I noticed they already change to have some red coloring when you can't build anything but it would be nice to show when they are building and what that is without having to go to the individual tabs.

4) This could just be personal preference but I like putting stuff on the map rather then hiding it away in spreadsheet and charts. That being said I think it would be nice if over the city centers it would display the income from the city. For example say a +7 Gold and of course to save space/room it would be an icon of gold rather then the word. This for all the resources the city is producing so you can see at a glance what cities are heavily producing what goods. And of course it would be a net income so if the city was costing something it would be - amount. Maybe the gold icon would have a red outline to further draw attention to this.

5) It would be nice if on the city icons located in on the left side of the map there was some indication that the city queue was empty and able to build something. This way you don't have to check each city manually when you finally get 50+ gold saved up and are ready to build something but have 9 cities to check heh. Perhaps a house icon for buildings and a sword for units. That way you know which ones have empty queues.

Build Menu

1) The build menu is a bit disorganized and a hassle to use. The icons all kind blend together and look very similar especially when your first learning the to play. I think it would be nice if there was an option to sort the build options by what they produce, either rows or columns so that you could quickly find the type of buildings your interested in. Perhaps an icon of what they produce at the front of the row. So you'd see a Gold icon then all the gold production buildings. Then the next row a Materials icon with those buildings and so on.

2) Buildings that you can't build are greyed out but this doesn't really tell you much. You have to manually mouse over them to see "why" you can't build them. Sometimes it's because you have already built as many of those as you can while other times it's because you lack the resources. Displaying these in a different manner such as one is gray and one is red would be nice. This way you can tell at a quick glance if you can't build it because you lack the funds or your simply at your max. I suggest red as the at "max".

3) Still on the vein of organizing the build menu I think resource tile buildings should be in their own row/column so they stand out more. Or some other method that players can quickly identify that this is a unique building allowed because of a nearby local resource. Also this way players who know their is a nearby resource they want to gather but are new and don't have to try and figure out which building icon it is.

Turn Notifications

1) Often times early in the game after a battle my SOV is injured so I park him in a city to heal up. It would be nice if there was a notification when he was fully healed. This way I don't have to keep checking back while I'm doing other things.

2) The notifications at the start of turn like units and buildings are built are nice. It would be even nicer though if clicking on them would zoom you to their location.

Resource Bar

1) When you mouse over the resources on the top bar it shows what their + Per turn is. It would be nice if it said the name of that resource along with it. Cause in one game when I was doing quite well and sending out a bunch of pioneers to claim resources all over the place I noticed I had this wierd new resource on my bar that looked like a yellow circle or golden sun. I'm not really sure what it was or where it was coming from as my game crashed shortly after. Being able to see the resouce name would of been nice.

2) On the resource bar it would be nice if there was a second row below the current one which displayed the income totals. This way players could tell at a glance what their income rates are. This is fairly common in a lot of TBS games these days as people like to know if their gaining or losing money each turn without having to check individual menus or drop down tool-tips.

3) Perhaps a toggle option to turn the 2nd row I suggested into something more detailed. For example a stack with the icon of say a city, a sword(units), and a cart(pioneer sites). With the net income from each. That way players can see at a glace where most of their income/expenses for those resources are coming from. Be it their cities, their units(likely only expenses there heh), or those pioneer resource bases they have setup.

Map Display

1) City names on the map are very hard to read because they are extremely light and they appear under the cities. On fantasy cloth maps the city names always appear on the top layer so you can read them. They should appear over the city building icons making them easier to read.

2) When zooming out it's a bit odd to see your cities disappear and only the main icon remain when the rest of the terrain stays fairly static. I think the cities should maintain the outline of how they are layed out even if it just with the use of general generic icons rather then the specific buildings.

3) Being able to mouse over individual buildings in your city to see what they are producing would be nice. Currently if you mouse over any building it gives you the general city stats with population. This I think should be displayed when you mouse over the city center and the other buildings should show displays similar to what you see when you mouse of building made by your pioneers.

Unit Design

1) There should be an option to delete old unit designs. Messing around with a lot of designs and now they show up in every game. Simply retiring them only works until I start a new game.

Unit Info

1) It's actually very hard to see how much mana you have. It does not show up when you open the SOV stats and the bar which is based on a % doesn't really help much. Mousing over the portrait simply says "Unit Details" which is not much help. I discovered that with much trial and error you can mouse of the tiny blue line of the mana bar it will display how much mana you have. This is the only place I've found that list it. To make it easier in general I think when you mouse over the unit's portrait it should show the units HP and Mana.

2) When a Pioneer wants to build on a resource mousing over the Build on resource icon should show what it cost to build on that location.

Well that about covers it for now. If I think of anything else I'll be sure to post it.