This may have already been suggested but I think a UI overhaul and simplification is the key here. It's a fantastic concept, one I've been waiting for but currently the UI is Crusader Kings levels of baffling. Being able to smoothly and easily switch between the overhead view, the worker management and first person views would make the game feel a lot smoother. Also being able to rotate buildings would really help with road placement.
Hey thanks for the great feedback. I'll definitely care about the building rotation! Could you give me some more details about, what you'd expect of a good UI? This would be a great help, as I'm really trying to make it as intuitive as possible but, at some point, I could need some more creative advice.
Great! I have some experience in UI design so I'm happy to help. For a start, check out the Endless series (Endless Space, Endless Legend) for examples of very clean, clear and intuitive strategy UIs. At the end of the day, it's about working out what UI works for your game but there are some basic principles that are worth keeping to.
Try prioritising player actions based on how often they will need to do them. For example, with your game, players will be switching from 1st person to overhead regularly. They'll be assigning workers regularly. Think about any other things players will do very often. Then make a point of making those things easily visible and accessible on the UI. Make them the largest buttons, easily visible. You've got a good start by having number shortcuts for certain things. However if a player needs to make 3 clicks to access something they need every 2 minutes, that's 2 clicks too many.
Then think about the menus and what information is the most important. It's tempting to give players all the info they might need immediately but that often just leads to a confusing wall of numbers and text. Try making important numbers bigger. If necessary, hide more detailed, micromanagement stuff behind tooltips or context menus. For example, seeing how many workers you have assigned to a building and how many you have spare is really important, so that should be easily seen at a glance.
Sorry if that's a bit much and you're probably already thinking about a lot of this stuff. There are entire books written on UI design and player psychology so it's a very broad subject and it's up to you how much time you want to spend looking into it; I'm sure you've got a lot of work to do! A good start is stripping everything back and thinking; What do I actually need to see right now? What do I need to do? Testing and tweaking is the best way to figure this out. Good luck!
Hey, big thanks for this great and detailed reply!!! I'll definitely check out the Endless series and will follow your advice and recheck all players UI actions concerning how often they'll be triggered and how important they are. Working with different sized texts and using tooltips more often seems a very good start. Thanks a lot.