After some pondering I think a lot of player confusion can be cleared by making ALL map objects clickable in the same vein characters are, and showing a small info window on click, similar to the existing battle info window that appears on hovering over any fighter. E.g. you click on a stone and see a small info window saying: "Stony outcrop. Can be mined out for +3 stone. Required mining skill: 0". Or a chestnut tree saying that it can be harvested in autumn for +3 food and requires 20 in gathering, etc. And also a button on everything to mark it as a priority target, so that we could intentionally clear space for building placement. This clickability was actually my expectation when I first launched the game.
A lot of char info and settings could be probably moved to a similar window that shows up on click and disappears after clicking on anything else, instead of being shown in multiple separate menus that require manual closing. Redundant clicks to perform any frequent, repeatable action are always a horrible chore that kills games quickly.
BTW found one more bug while writing this; game crashes on clicking "battle skills" menu of a goblin.
Also can't wait for interspecies sex.