The population could simply be displayed as current/max, i.e. 88/100. 

Looks good, thanks SD

Hip Hip Hooray!

I asked for ponies Brad.  Where is my Pony, Brad?  PONY!  NOW!

The city list window is good too.  Even if it's not pony related...

Can we get other body models/races to use for created nations?  Like short dwarf bodies?  Or tall skinny ones?  And then fix the armor visuals, Brad.  The armor and clothing, Brad!  ARMOR!  So my Urxen enemies armor fits?  That would be cool.  Please tell me you are working on it, so I don't go crazy...crazier.  I can't wear gloves on my Urxen and they would look cuter with gloves, but it looks goofy when their shirts pop through it. Thank you, Brad.

This looks like a very good start on a useful feature.

As some others have said, the #1 resource column seems a bit dubious.  How is it being calculated/weighted at the moment?

I could see this screen being of immediate usefulness when a new tech is researched.  Then I could go to the city list view, pick out all the cities that could use the unlocked buildings/units, and then immediately build them. 

To that end, it would be great if:

-We had the ability to choose/change column headings.  If I want to see where all my crystal/arcane/tech/metal is being produced in the city view, I'd like to be able to change the columns to do this.

-It would be great if we could call the city build/train dialog boxes up directly from this menu, without being dumped from the list menu into the main gameworld.

-The minimap was functional enough to indicate a city that you have highlighted in the city list window (flashing, different color, etc.).  This would help us know if we should be worried about that 0 in the defense column.  If the city is miles away from the front, that might not be an issue.

I agree; Wheeeee!

Shades of Galactic Civ . Awesome !

We will be able to change production and modify queues from this window, yes?

Really?  I mean, yes, this is much needed, but...  It's not exactly a revolutionary screenshot that we're looking at there.  It's beyond me how the game could have been released in this day and age without this "feature."

So sure, /thumbsup and all that, but "Hip Hip Hooray?"  "Awesome?"  No.  This whole ownership experience continues to feel like walking into a much touted steakhouse with high expectations and then having to methodically talk your waiter through the night after finding that you don't have any silverware, and the plates are dirty, and your appetizer came out cold.  And the guy at the table next to you is unironically raving about the fantastic service, because the waiter brought him a fork.  Guess what dude: at a normal restaurant, the waiter doesn't have to bring you a fork, 'cause it's already there.

^ This just goes to prove, there's no way to make some people happy.

To be honest I expected this to come with 1.1, for it to be in 1.09 is a nice welcome. Thanks SD.

Much needed feature!  Thank you.

Good idea.

Great feature!

As was suggested before it could be great if we had some kind of minimap where the city you're currently selecting/highlighting could be shown...

No no, I'm happy about this.  It's good.  It's one more step towards a game that I'll spend some serious time playing some time in the future.  I'm one of what seems to me (from periodic lurking over the last month or two) to be many who have already paid their bucks and are now patiently waiting for the game that we keep being told is coming.  And that's fine.  It's a bad business model, and I won't be purchasing another SD game at launch, but hey, that's where we are.

It's just funny to see what should be a standard feature in this genre hailed as something amazing, when what it is is late.

I'm very happy to see the spreadsheet for cities... I feel so at home wth it...  I hope the fine suggestions that everyone has made already, level up indicators, being able to see all resources, not just trhe "major" resource, etc.  are implemented.  I'm very happy, indeed.  Thank you SD... the whole dev team!

Just my $.02 on this matter.  I agree that this game is unpolished and it would have been great if the published 1.00 was about where 1.2 is probably really going to be. 

But there's an opportunity here.  A really rare one for a community that bought this game to give good and pertinent recommendations on how to make this game better.  Klaxton499's advice in this thread is a good example, and other people's follow-ups on how to make that happen may well help shape the design process for this facet of the game.  I think that's an amazing thing about elemental. 

We've got game programmers actively making this game as we're playing it, and we can tell them what works and what doesn't, and every once in a while we might even come up with something that really makes the game significantly better.  Hopefully they read through the ideas forum and the reactions to their journals and really take a portion of the best suggestions to heart.  I know I keep posting here because I'm optimistic that some of the ideas that I suggest may make it into the game and improve it.  I even keep playing (an hour a day or so now, at most) so that I can keep seeing how the game works now and thinking about how it could be better.

This is something of a standard feature, you're right.  But if we as a community can be supportive and advise SD on how to make all of these 'standard features' into the best possible implementations we can, then we'll end up with a game that we can love and play for years to come.  At least that's my hope.

Now that I remember to wonder about it, might there be any chance that we'll get a similar list view for Champions? I've fought the city-spam imperative in all my games so far, but I still occasionally ended up with quite a bucketful of champions, and the whatever-thingy on the left of the main map is just not much in the way of UI for an old-school TBS player (old-school being much about shunning real-time) like me.

This.  Please don't use colors - I don't want my resource harvesting or influence spreading outpost that I don't want to ever grow past 10 to constantly grab my attention with glaring red numbers.

As others have mentioned, displaying all of the resources, with sortable columns would also be great.  In fact, this screen with those feature is one of the requests I made in the 'what mod do you want' thread:-p.  A similar unit selection screen is in the works, I hope?

I'd also love to be able to initiate building and training from this screen, but no one has mentioned that building placement has relevance.  I'd love to click 'Build' on the screen and have it jump to the main map with a quick zoom to the city building screen.  Once done, a quick zoom back out and you're back in the city list screen (zoom feature toggled in options - exists to place the city in your mind / become more familiar with your empire, and as eye candy).

Thanks!

Yea, one for champions i sa great idea.  And ponies.

A city manager was never promised or in the design. You can argue that it should have been but the lack of having a city manager screen is not evidence that the game was somehow not finished.  I don't remember even seeing a single beta tester post requesting one.  It was a feature I requested be put in from my own playing AFTER v1.0 had come out.

I agree it's nothing amazing or wonderful but at the same time, it's not evidence of an unfinished game or something either.  You will find that over the next couple of years we'll be adding a lot of features to the game some interesting and some mundane.

I realize you and others feel the game should have had various other features but it's going to get pretty old pretty fast if every update we do we're going to get people saying "Well this should have been in the original release".  

We're going to be making one for improvements too so that players can enable and disable their various improvements.

I'd like to see one for all units and armies and such as well. 

Originally, the empire tree was supposed to take care of all this but it's really not proven sufficient for this kind of detail.

Another feature could be that  people could click on the defense number of a city and a pop up would show up with the exact units that the city's garrison is currently housing.

What I would like to see is also a 'not' type list.  For example (and I have not seen a 'not' list in ANY game as I can recall) is show me every city that DOES NOT have a barracks, granary, what-have-you that all cities should have. A few games with resource type items might even have a list.  that is good.  But finding that ONE or TWO places where the resource is missing, well that would be really helpful and a time saver.

Perhaps I've been too busy lately to follow closely, but is there a good way to remind one's self about the resources utilized by and/or near the expanding radius of a city in the process of leveling?  It's sometimes difficult to decide the best bonus to choose, and an extension of this window during bonus selection might be nice.

Not for unutilized nearby resources, but the city is selected during the bonus question / selection, so the output is displayed in the bottom of the UI below the dialog.  That said, it's not very obvious, and more information in the actual question window would be a win.