I intend to expand this topic because I am not very satisfied with my experience.
I think UI is very, very underestimated in general, and represents a significant portion of the entry level learning curve. Poor UI also adds to fatigue from prolonged playing sessions. iPhones killed everything when they launched - not because of some amazing technical innovation, but by streamlining the interface, removing every unnecessary element, every redundant click and menu.
1) Poor rendering of some text, notably city names. Try zooming in and out, you will see that the letters become distorted, blurry and inconsistent. Properly rendered font does not do this.
2) Illogical placement of some elements. List of cities is up on the left, yet when I click something, the info appears down on the left, and I have to look down, losing sight from the list, and when I want to compare and chose another city, I have to look up again, and so my eyes are moving up and down constatntly.
This is not ergonomic - related information should be displayed in one area, so that I can view them ALL AT ONCE. Ideally, there should be a consistent principle governing all the elements, and the information should expand via some sort of menu - I right-click the city in the list, minimalist building options are displayed on the right. When I left-click, training options are displayed. If some command has parameters, they are displayed in a newly expanded menu next to him. Neat, tight, efficient. If I want to look at the picture of the inn, or read about their importance in history, I can read some sort of encyclopedia, but here, I am making decisions. This was all perfected in productivity applications, why reinvent the wheel?
On the other hand, I like the top bar - global things on the left, the expanding tooltips are GREAT!
What is really archaic is that menu on the lower left corner of the screen - when I click on my hero, I want the options to display next to him, click my action, and continue surveying the map, without having to decypher some counter-intuitive panel in the corner. It's important. Bad Guis kill games, gut them, and leave them bleeding in the gutter. Trust me.
3) Interactivity - this is mostly present already, but everything should be clickable, and again, consistent principles should apply - right click = info, left click = action (or menu of actions).
4) Colors - first, I noticed that dark blue dots on black bg are used to track training progress, probably leftover from light Elemental GUI. Please don't do this, human eye can't focus on contrast in blue part of the spectrum only, so dark blue on black, or yellow on white are illegible.
Also, consistent color-coding - it's already at some places, but inconsistently. Color is great for conveying information - red = deficits, bad things, unfulfilled prerequisites, green the other extreme. Consistent colors make navigation easier and build user confidence quickly.
It's already late here, I will come back to this.
