To improve the usability (especially for beginners) you can perhaps show the keyboard layout, if you push the [tabulator] button... like: ( I found this for battlestation pacific, http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=78695 ). The score-board can be shown, if you press [shift] + [tabulator]. The player gets every information in the game and has not to visit wiki and so on...
shift already does important stuff Empires doesnt use that many keys either, most of the advanced shit is packed into the f menu.
