Even if you manage to mod your UI (which there are none of a year later), you can’t play with it in multiplayer. You’d have to roleplay in some skirmish like a goblin all by yourself, or convince a bunch of people to install a new UI to play with them in custom games. This goes for all other mods too.
I’m happy to have seen them at least think about the UI in the last patch. But, literally pasting an icon on the empty background of the dull UI is just not enough. AOE4 is in dire need of resources for improvement of basic things like UI, mods, water visuals, lighting, better camera angles with more zoom options, animations and some environmental assets like nature, trees, cliff textures and proportional adjustments to buildings.
I’ve made multiple of mockups in the past that tries to address these things while keeping it in the same style as the game currently has. For instance, a very basic RTS feature that is missing from AOE4, here;
More on this image in my post here.
Or for instance better ways to show a building’s attacks;
Or better utilizing the space for unit icons (which for some reason are always cutouts and shrunk);
Or even an alternative style unit icons, trying to combine the charm they brought in past games alongside the same modern design principles utilized in AOE4;
Ultimately, I really do champion the idea of them rehauling the UI themselves over relying on mods. For example, compare what COH3 got to AOE4. While their UI was bland and soulless initially, they were far more invested in listening to their playerbase, which actually led to a redesigned UI with the same charm of the past COH games before they even launched it.
Yet, here we are in AOE4 a year later, and all we get is this.
I really really wish we would have gotten the same treatment.