The was a tournament yesterday and people were complaining about how they couldn’t see whose army was whose.
Which player colors do you feel need to be changed to be more distinguishable? How would you change the current player colors?
All the colors have the same brightness making it hard to distinguish them from each other.
Yellow(3), Brown(4), Orange(5) are extremely hard to separate.
Changing some color to be brighter and other darker would make it easier to see the color differences.
Purple and blue are also extremely similar. This isn´t often an issue, since in single player you can assume you´re always the blue-looking units, but in some custom settings there might be loads of units/buildings - and it might be hard to differentiate the two colours.
Thank you for sharing the screenshots, pate623. I haven’t played in many multiplayer games with more than 4 players so it has not been an issue for me. I agree with you that the player colors should be tweaked like you show in your mockup.
I made the comment during the beta that the FE graphics team went too far in the realistic direction with the graphics and ended up sacrificing what made units and buildings easy to recognize and differentiate from one another, which is important in an RTS game like Age of Empires.
I’m not sure if this is already on the development list, but it is an easy and important fix so let’s hope it carries priority along with some of the other multiplayer suggestions.
In 1v1 games it’s bearable but in 2v2 or bigger games it’s a pain for the eyes.
@pate623 said:
All the colors have the same brightness making it hard to distinguish them from each other.Yellow(3), Brown(4), Orange(5) are extremely hard to separate.
Changing some color to be brighter and other darker would make it easier to see the color differences.
Very good variation of colors. Although I do not like color 7, that purple is too saturated. Some kind of dark violet almost black would be good.
The orange is also too bright. If you already changed yellow and brown, the original orange would have no resemblance to any other and could be used.
I think very saturated colors take away realism. I would have preferred a white color and a black one, that would be great.
@korowizard said:
@pate623 said:
All the colors have the same brightness making it hard to distinguish them from each other.Yellow(3), Brown(4), Orange(5) are extremely hard to separate.
Changing some color to be brighter and other darker would make it easier to see the color differences.
Very good variation of colors. Although I do not like color 7, that purple is too saturated. Some kind of dark violet almost black would be good.
The orange is also too bright. If you already changed yellow and brown, the original orange would have no resemblance to any other and could be used.I think very saturated colors take away realism. I would have preferred a white color and a black one, that would be great.
Black doesn’t work with this game because the health bars.
https://cdn2.techadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/reviews/3672303/age_of_empires_definitive_edition_review_4.jpg
@korowizard said:
Very good variation of colors. Although I do not like color 7, that purple is too saturated. Some kind of dark violet almost black would be good.
Is this it what you thought?
The orange is also too bright. If you already changed yellow and brown, the original orange would have no resemblance to any other and could be used.
Yeah i did took the orange too far, but the original is still too close to a yellow.
Maybe this one looks better?
I agree, orange and brown currently look too similar, I thought I had found bug when hoplites were walking with my phalanx, thinking that some had not upgraded the models, then I realised they were enemy hoplites mixed with mine.
We really need to be able to choose colour as well and bring back grey.
The vibrant colours are a must for easy identification of units. Not fluoro colours though, but vibrant “natural” colours. In the old game, I think red and orange had a problem, but all others were great.
Also, when units / buildings die, they should become a little less vibrant shortly after death, otherwise things get lost in the debris and fully coloured bodies.
The key is to do this without making it over the top or taking away from the nice graphics. AoE was always a natural looking game without LED or fluoro colours that may exist in other games. Of course, it makes sense as such colours were hard to make in ancient times 
@pate623 said:
@korowizard said:
Very good variation of colors. Although I do not like color 7, that purple is too saturated. Some kind of dark violet almost black would be good.
Is this it what you thought?
The orange is also too bright. If you already changed yellow and brown, the original orange would have no resemblance to any other and could be used.
Yeah i did took the orange too far, but the original is still too close to a yellow.
Maybe this one looks better?
Better! Definitely that new color is what the game needs.
Now i created Brown(4) and Orange(5) with the exact colors i would like to see them. I didn’t see it necessary to alter yellow(3) at all.
With my eyes/screen the brown looks now actually brown and the orange looks good too, but i’m not completely sure if the orange looks like a safety vest or not on other screens.
The new orange is OK, but is possibly too close to red on my phone screen Hard to tell without them being in a battle, and they’d still get lost in the colours of the debris and dead bodies anyway
Personally I think the yellow is more like light green lime.
I have more minimap problems with the colors.
Like if i am blue and playing on a water map. I get confused sometimes as i dont se where my ships are.
Yellow, hard to see the difference between gold mine and yellow units on the minimap
Gray, same as yellow but with stone.
Teal, i think is the correct name, when it come to see animals and units on the minimap.
The colors are in general better than in original game, and I don’t want them to be brighter/fluorescent. Green was better in the original though, and I don’t know why it’s not a nice dark green in new version.
I totally aggree. Colors are not easy to distinguish, especially at spectator mode.