Units feel hard to distinguish in AoE4 despite the compromises made to art style (the enlarged weapons and their unnatural colors). And I feel there are multiple reasons for that.
In part it’s because the attack animations are very fluid and complex, while also being slow, and while they’re taking place the unit loses its unique stance that makes it stand out, or it obscures its weapon.
Very similar fighting animations are probably one of the worst offenders. When a unit holds a torch, all of a sudden you can’t tell if it’s a military unit or a Villager. The same goes for some of the Delhi units building walls.
Some units also look too similar to each other. During battle it’s hard to tell apart an OotD MAA from a Landsknecht, and this can be devastating. Both units have near identical attire, with the exception of the Landknecht’s hat and it’s two-handed sword. But when the unit swings its sword with a long winding animation, it loses its stance and all you have to differentiate it at a glance from a MAA is the hat. Either that or you need to wait for the slow swing animation which is not ideal when you quickly want to differentiate it. Other units like the newly added Khan Hunters or the Malian units, are even more similar to already existing units, and only differ in the color of their armor, or other small accents which are hard to tell apart from afar.
Adding to it are the particle effects, units seem to cause a lot of dust when walking, or smoke when firing gunpowder weapons, or in the case of the Japanese units all the army looks radioactive. Why not add the halo effect only on the buffing unit (the bannerman), to help with visibility? Especially since Japanese armies have so many melee units that can look very similar, like the Onna-Bugeisha that wields something that looks like a Spear.
Other problems are the overly long pointy sticks that “stick” out too far during fights, making it hard to tell what unit they are hitting in the forest of pointy sticks, and the fact units tend to be somewhat disorderly when fighting.
In light of all this, I find it hard to use Panoramic mode, because most of the detail is lost and the units become way too hard to distinguish, whereas Classic mode feels too close for base management purposes, making the buildings take too much screen real estate. The compromise I found is to use Panoramic mode slightly zoomed in to a level where it’s still farther than Classic. And it makes me wish there was a default Zoom level option added to the Settings, as I have to do this at the start of every game.
I wish more attention was put into visibility, by making unit skins and color accents more obvious when the units break stance to attack (like giving the OotD Landknecht a very colorful feather on their hats), or making the fighting animations much more iconic and faster. Also, there needs to be more care when adding units that are very similar to existing ones. A slight color change is not enough. Small changes between features of their skins is also not enough when looking at the units from afar.
