I've never played the Settlers series of games and there are a few things I seem to have overlooked/missed.

1. In the upper left hand corner is a mini-map with a square indicating the area you can currently see. Recently when I got the 'tinkerbell' sound that lets you know an event had taken place, I checked all my woodcutters huts, my stonemasons huts, my hunters hut, and they were all fine. I finally realized that a small tower I had built quite far away had been finished. But even though I had several lookout towers, what I didn't realize was that I was under attack.
Is there some way to get global messages rather than just messages pertaining to the area currently visible on your screen? (Ditto for specialists. Do I really have to check every possible screen for specialists instead of just doing a global search?)

2. Two iron mines & two iron smelters three screens apart. Is there some way to have your carriers deliver ore from the mine to the iron smelter beside the mine instead of watching two carriers traveling opposite directions across three screens in order to make deliveries to the iron smelter furthest away? (It takes almost a minute of real time for a carrier to travel one screen, and when you are in desperate need of iron for weapons, your mines storage capacity is full, and your carriers are taking forever to make deliveries; well, you may not produce the weapons and soldiers you need.)
PS: Those same carriers ignore my storage places that are supposed to be storing excess ore and iron. Presumably this is because my smelters are demanding the ore, but why can't they demand ore from the mines they are beside?

3. I haven't been able to figure out what the mini-screen at the bottom left is for. There is a zoom feature, but since it is already zoomed in close anyway???