-snip-
Incidentally in the case of forges, it didn't use to do that, instead starting at the last used category.
- Hospitals now need to be converted from meeting areas. This is nonsensical, as hospitals aren't social spaces, and basically adds an additional step to setting up a hospital zone. In previous versions, hospitals were designated separately.
This is not true. You can assign any location from any zone, as you would know if you had... literally tried at all, or indeed paid attention to the UI in any respect. I usually use a water source zone for my hospital.
This isn't me having had a bunch of experience early talking, I noticed this the instant I realized I had to make a hospital, that every single zone can now be assigned to locations. Meeting areas are not required for this.
I'm annoyed not because you didn't know--that's fair--but because you didn't bother to check at all before complaining about it online, which always nettles me.
That wasn't the complaint. The fact any zone can be converted into a hospital doesn't fix the root issue that hospitals used to be
their own zone designation/function. I shouldn't have to put down a zone first, just so I can then have a medical area. This is obtuse and adds several more clicks to a process that should be more easily achieved by opening the zone designation tab, clicking 'Medical', and putting an area down.
You also cannot have a single zone have multiple functions, I did check. You
can have zones overlap, but that requires repainting zones over each other, which wasn't necessary before. Otherwise you can only change a zone's name (potentially handy change/addition) edit a zone's size, suspend activities at it (a good change/addition, actually) delete it, or assign it to a created location such as an inn or hospital. That's at most 6 functions, 5 of which have no business being part of a shared zone to begin with.
You cannot, for example, place a water zone and click a button to have it also be a fishing zone, or a pasture also be a training and fruit gathering zone anymore. You can have those zones overlap as previously stated, but that requires manually placing multiple zones over the same space rather than use the zone that is already present for multiple purposes. This is a negative change that adds extra steps to get the same results from a single zone designation last version.
Additionally, attaching a function, to continue in this case using a hospital for example, to say, a water zone. There's no clear indicator on the zone itself that it now does medical as well as watering duties. It remains marked as a watering zone. For a clear indicator of medical use, it needs to be converted from a meeting zone, which will mark the zone clearly with a caduceus.