The little NPC and city icons turn dark when they can't move anymore. That's the only indication I could find.

But I agree that that just doesn't spell it out quite clearly enough, and while I admit that Civilization's continual reminder of events seemed tiring, I think it's necessary for a couple of reasons:

• Give the player a sense of progress -- When the game pops up modal messages, you realize something has happened, and that might be an accomplishment of some sort. It's good to let the player know they are making progress.
• Let the player know they need to do something -- If the game doesn't let you know what's going on, how do you get a handle on it? Let the game act as an adviser to you.
• Keep the game moving -- Instead of forcing the player to look to see if the turn has ended, pop up a message telling us it has and give us a button in the popup that lets us start a new turn. That would move things along much better than the current implementation.

this has to do with the timing of the auto-movement. in star dock games, units moving automatically, because you gave them a path that takes more than one turn, will move AFTER you click end turn. the reason is, that the developers think that you should have an opportunity to change the movement in THIS turn, and not in the turn before. this may sound logical but if you play civ often, where it is a movement IN the turn (automatically, after all non-"go to"-units have been moved manually), and not AFTER the turn (in civ, all units move before you press end turn), it is a bit confusing. GalCiv movement was therefore very confusing for me, and I would be very happy if there was an option to have civ-style movement or stardock-style movement. But since this IS a star dock game, and since this complaint goes back till GalCiv1 I'm quite sure they won't change this.    

In Civ there was a small flashing message that said "Press Enter or click to end the turn" or something like that.  It is a great indication that there are no more movement left.  I'd like to see something like this in Elemental.  Or maybe the end turn button glows or something.  It's been a while but I don't remember what GalCiv 2 did to indicate it there were no more units to move and to click end of turn button. 

I personally don't like the auto-turn option because it makes me feel "out of control".

You're probably overthinking it - and it's not just you.  This happened to me when I first played GalCiv2 ("Ok is this guy out of moves?"  "how come he can only move once?  Asteroid field?  Is he gonna die?", and so on).  The thing is, you don't literally, at all times, have to be "doing" anything.  You can station a guy somewhere, have someone wander carefully past those hills, do a quick budget and figure out where you want your next town, whether you want it for caravans or food or whatever else.

At no point during that should you worry that you're not "doing it right" if the turns aren't all being 110% maximized.  Sometimes I slip too, (send out a scout and forget that I've only told him to go so far for a couple turns), but in the long run these things make little difference.

One thing to keep in mind?  Agenda.  After you've gathered information about how your cities get built, how your armies get raised, all that stuff, think about jotting down a list of things to remember.  Refer to it before clicking "End Turn".  It might look like this:

• Find natural borders, the limit of expansion.  This includes other national boundaries.
• Find a means to make money, including the expansion with another town for trading, as well as reaping from reward tiles.
• Acquire a production of (Materials).
• Get (Number) of troops to support (Character).

While your turn is still active and you have moves, move in the direction of a bullet agenda.  Might help you feel more organized.

Good luck

It's not such a matter of worrying about "doing it right" as me wanting to be making the most of my turns.  You're right, it's not 100% critical that you never "slip" but it sure would be nice, wouldn't it?  At the very least unproductive turns due to not realizing you had idle units/cities should be minimized.  The interface should help the player out as much as possible in this regard.

There is.

Go to Options then Keyboard.

There are 3 keys for Next city , Next Unit and Next City/Unit (which is Tab)

I know what the tab key does.  It doesn't select the next _idle_ city/unit.

Exactly.

I like that idea too.  But I also want an easy way to focus on the unit/event/city that is holding up the end turn button!

Or at the very minimum have a number next to each unit indicating how much movement it has left. As it stands it's all guesswork. And I can swear that sometimes my units don't get a single movement point even though I've pressed ENTER.

Main characters like Sovereign get an icon on the left that darkens when there are no more movement points but I've yet to find any indication for common units.

Huh? How is a key to go to the next town that isn't doing anything anymore useless than next idle unit?  I'd like to know if I've finished a building queue in one of my cities and forgotten about it, much the same way you want to be reminded of your units.

I agree 100% with the OP.

I'm running at a high resolution so I might be missing something that's obvious when the UI is bigger but there really needs to be more feedback on turn ending and beginning.  As it is, there's barely a sound effect (is there a sound effect?) and the turn meter is tucked alllllllllllll the way in the corner of the screen.

I'd also appreciate it if the game would let me see a proposed route for a unit before committing to the move.  Preferably with icons showing where the unit will be at the end of turn X.

I figure this stuff is obvious for turn-based strategy games but it's been many betas and I'm still not seeing it.

Simple have a popup ala Heroes 3 style.

Asking if your sure your done and listing if you have towns that are not building/doing anything that can or units that can move.

It doesn't have to tell you which just have a popup.

an OPTIONAL Popup and there problem solved.