Hi, I wanted to propose two mod ideas that I think would be really useful, for anyone out there who makes mods. Or, if these mods already exist, I would love to know about them!
Place the blacksmith and/or production building upgrade icons in the unit details panel. That way, instead of having to look closely to see if an enemy unit has +1 or +2 attack, I can more easily see if they have fletching, bodkin, chain barding, etc. just by seeing the icon(s) prominently displayed when I click an enemy unit. Frankly, this could be done for all upgrades (ballistics, chemistry, bloodlines) and units (loom for villagers, monk upgrades, etc.)
For team games, it would be great to see a list of all the team civ bonuses for my team during the game loading screen. This could be really useful to know for strategy. For example, if I see my Chinese teammate gives more wood on their farms, I know I can maybe delay horse collar. With so many civs now, most players do not have all the civ team bonuses memorized and so I think this would be super helpful. And doing it on the loading screen ensures you can know all the bonuses going into the game even if one of your teammates went random civ and you can’t look up their bonus in the lobby.
I suppose it’s hard for new players to figure out this game, but I think the clutter of icons will only get in the way. It will make the game casual. But for a mod I think it’s fine. About ballistics. You can’t see ballistics in a unit’s stats, so adding an icon would be cheating.
I feel like there is a lot of empty space in the unit stats area and it wouldn’t be cluttered, but then again I’m on a large high res screen. In any case, yes, this would be only a mod for those who prefer it, like me.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t ballistics remove the minimum range of some ranged units? That is shown in the unit stats and so it might not be cheating to have the icon.
I would like the second mod to exist baseline. I’m pretty sure there’s enough open space on loading screen to fit in team bonuses from allies as well.
First idea seems a little…redundant. You’d just start thinking ‘wait, what’s this icon again?’, or if it’s in text form ‘what was Fletching again?’. If your argument is that a player won’t be able to immediately see the +1 or +2 being a certain upgrade, that player definitely won’t be able to remember the icons either.
This argument only has some basis on hidden unit upgrades, f.e. ‘did the Vikings player get Chieftains?’ or ‘did the Dravidians player get Wootz Steel?’ as you won’t be able to immediately see its effect from the stats. But I’m not sure if having that information is good.
Naturally, I disagree. The whole point of icons is to more easily represent things visually, so a big icon will likely be quicker to see for most people than a small font number.
I see this as similar to the building foundation flag mod, where an icon on building foundations indicates what is being built. Yes, you have to first learn the icon for each building, but once you know the icons they make it much easier to quickly see what the building is.
The whole point of icons is to