[0.952][UI] Empire tree suggestions

from Elemental Forums

City icons

The city images in the empire tree are all the same (I think they change based on city level, or maybe faction, I can't really tell — most of the time they are the same). By the time there are >4 cities in play, those icons might as well not exist since I can't remember which one is which past the first few.

Suggestion: replace city images in the empire tree with symbolic icons representing the type of city and its level. "My huge conclave city" is much more memorable than "my third city". Using standard faction crests (circle, square, shield, star) with the faction flag and a roman number inside, for example, would be a huge usability improvement.

 

Army icons

These could really be bigger. Unless the hero portrait is particularly distinctive, they are pretty hard to tell apart, and also hard to tell apart from hero-less armies. Army icons don't have to be the same size as city icons; in fact, there are usually more cities than armies so it makes sense to use larger army icons and smaller city icons.

The new colour-coding of unit types is great, but I can never remember which is which. Is purple a hero, or was that red? This may have something to do with the fact that the colours don't seem to follow a hue progression based on the unit's importance.

Suggestion: purple->red->yellow->green for sovereign->hero->unit->pioneer makes more sense than purple->yellow->red->green.

Suggestion: use shapes in addition to colours. The army portrait, in addition to being bigger, could be placed in a shaped frame (star for the sovereign, shield for a hero, circle for a hero-less army, square for a non-combat unit) and the small coloured dots next to armies and cities could use the same convention. 

 

2,031 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

City icons
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Like this feedback. Also don't forget to show us which city is the capital now that it's actually important.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The new colour-coding of unit types is great, but I can never remember which is which.
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Also, sometimes they are just wrong: https://forums.elementalgame.com/430651

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Very nice work on the city icons in 0.980! Distinct and easily identifiable at a glance.

Now if only army icons were just as clear :)

Here's another suggestion: army/unit backgrounds in the empire tree could be similarly colour coded. Current portrait backgrounds are too noisy at such a small size, so how about, for the purposes of the empire tree only, overlaying the unit portrait over a coloured background instead, representing the leader's chosen path:
orange warrior, blue defender, purple mage, green assassin, yellow governor, and grey monster/trained/pathless.