Steam Deck Issues

[JimboRH23]

I play exclusively on the Steam Deck, and have run into some issues that are perhaps not affecting users on other systems, or at least only those using the ‘Handheld’ viewing experience or similar devices:

- Game Freeze during intro video:
This doesn’t happen all the time but occasionally the game will freeze during the intro and has to be closed and rebooted. Sometimes this will happen several times in a row before eventually loading.

- In game notifications:
When using the “handheld” viewing experience, notifications are all grouped into one icon, regardless of what this is. I understand this is likely to save space on the screen but it would be much better if certain notifications were kept separate. For example when a unit is under attack. Many times I’ve had a unit be killed because I wasn’t aware or notified that they were being attacked. The current icon of a blue ‘!’ is too vague and easily missed, especially as it includes all the other forms of notifications in the same icon.
The only solution I’ve found to this is to switch the viewing experience to Desktop/Laptop so the notifications appear separately.

- AI attacking User:
I think this is possibly a game issue rather than a Steam Deck/Handheld issue, but as the AI seems to take all its goes in one move, the game isn’t showing battles involving player units. I understand this is a mechanic to perhaps speed up the game, but I think when the user is being attacked it should still show those moves by the AI and simulate the other moves. Or at least provide the option for the play to decide to show the AI moves or skip them. As with the issue above, I’ve occasionally missed being attacked because I’ve not been shown the action. At the very least it would be nice to see the battle rather than jump to having a damaged unit.

- UI / Tooltips preventing unit movement:
This is a rather frustrating issue, especially during combat. Regularly when trying to move a unit, such as to attack a settlement, a pop up appears with details of the square. This pop up obstructs the cursor, meaning you can’t click to move/attack the square and have to move the cursor and screen to try again.

- Unit pathfinding:
This isn’t something that happens all the time but occasionally I’ve run into an issue where my unit has taken a much longer route than needed, even going back on themselves. For example I want to move an archer 3 tiles to the left. There’s no obstacle in the way etc. instead of moving in a straight line, when I click the intended destination the path the unit decides to follow is 7 tiles, heading up and around a random mountain, when they had no need to go that way.

- Wrong unit selected / moving:
Another random but occasional bug I’ve run into is the wrong unit being shown as selected. What I mean is, say I have 2 archers, at the start of my turn the game highlights one for me to move. I decide to move this unit
2 tiles, so I click to move the unit. Instead of moving the one that is highlighted, my other archer that is in the next town decides to head to that tile instead. This hasn’t happened a lot, but it’s happened enough times that it’s noticeable.

- HUD too big:
Whilst I’m able to resize text on screen, it would be better to also resize some of the HUD. I find the mini map and the icons at the top of the screen to be unnecessarily big, especially when using a handheld device, taking up half the screen. I know I can minimise the mini map, but the icons for age progress, current research etc don’t need to be as big as they are and should be the same size as the player unlocks icon etc. Or at least have the option to scale up/down the size.

- Missing scroll bar when selecting AI
This might be the same for everyone or just a handheld issue but when setting up a new game and selecting which AI players to play against, the game only shows a small selection of names in alphabetical order, the remaining leaders are not visible in the list. I’ve discovered that using the shoulder buttons will scroll through the names, but this was a happy accident. There’s no scroll bar or arrow to click down the list and no instruction to use the shoulder buttons. A simple up/down arrow to allow scrolling of the names would make it a lot easier.


These are just some of the main issues I’ve run into so far on Steam Deck. There are a number of others too and so I will add more when I have time or as I come across them.