City Level Up - Anyway To Inspect City?

I try to give them names which help me remember what path I want them to take. I'm not so plain as to call them ' Conclave 01, 02, 03' but I will use things like 'Riverside Village' to denote a future town, or 'Druidic Circle' for a conclave.

Ugh, they need to let you inspect at the time of upgrade.  You should be able to minimize, review your empire, and then make a decision.

A long standing issue. I name my cities "FireIron 432", etc where 432 is the food/materials/essence. This is (for me) the key factor in what a city will be designated (3+ essence = conclave, first 4+ materials, and chokepoints = fort, all else = town) and lets me see city (potential) quality at a glance on the world map. I have also experimented with tagging a letter at the end "Riverside T", "Tarthchoke F", "Crystalgrain C" etc.

Even if there was simply a button which toggled between the decision and the city details screen (with no way to exit these two screens until a choice was made), it would be better than the blind pick system for people who don't use a naming convention.

TBS Gamer has it right.  We've been asking for access to our cities, or at least more info upon which to make informed decisions during leveling, for quite a long time.  So far, nothing.  I just make sure I look carefully at the next city down in my list, which always seems to be the next one to level, and decide what I want to do in advance.  There's no problem with levels above two for me, because I find all but one of the choices in most cases either weak or outside my current strategy.

Agreed.  There should be some function to allow players to make 'informed' decisions.

Ive asked for this, as well as a button to the ledger screen.

I hate having to name my cities:

City 1

City 2

City 3

Conclave 1

Conclave 2

Fortress 1

It makes my maps ugly.

I also like naming my cities to give me level-up hints.

However, note also that you can use your arrow keys to see the city itself and the surrounding tiles.  This is not ideal but it's better than nothing (except, of course, when you are renaming the city and are using the arrow keys to position the cursor within the name).

you know that you can see the information for that exact city (including the grain/materiel/essence) right on the screeen when you make the choice, right?

The popup dialogs really break the flow of the game all to pieces.  Stardock should consolidate all their messages (including level ups and carravan destruction) into the quite functional asynchronous notification system the game already has (the messages on the right-hand side of the screen).

In this case, when a city or champion levels, the player gets a notification.  Clicking on that notification will center on the champ/city and pull up the champ/city details page.  On the details page will be a shiny button that says "Level Up".  Clicking on that will bring up the choices for leveling.  And if you still aren't sure, you can click "Nevermind" on that dialog and simply come back at your leisure to pick your upgrade.

It provides some info, but not the information I want to see.  It does not show the base grain, materials, or essence for the city itself.  It is hard to tell where that production or mana comes from. Is it buildings and resources or the base grain, materials, and essence?

Exactly what Rhaegor said. The information the city summary provides on level up is not the RIGHT information, for me.

For my play style, the decision about what type of designation a city will get is based upon a city's eventual potential yields, not its current yields with buildings and enchantments. This is even MORE true without any reference to what buildings and enchantments are in effect on that particular city at that particular moment in time.

I rename the cities I want to be fortress and conclaves (Fort XXXXX, Conclave XXXXX), and let the rest to be towns. That is usefull for the begining, but once you have many cities, it is easy to forget renaming, and maybe you will change your idea (you find a better place for the fortress or conclave while the previous city is still growing). Anyway, I think you will not have many fortress if you want research and food. And if you want research, it is enough with the number of essence to determine if it deserves to be conclave or not.

But it is true that I miss having more information in the city popup, instead of renaming. A minimize option for the pop-up to be able to check the city would be appreciated too.

In the level up screen: Grain can be seen hovering over Food. Materials can be seen hovering over Production. And Essence count is between the too (iirc). Try hovering over thing things if interested, should be similar to the side bar on the city screen.

I don't tend to have a problem with city management. So no real comment on the topic.