I’ve been wondering about it for quite some time, people often ask about new skins and animations for units or buildings, but what about giving each UT its own icon? Obviously it would be a lot of work considering you need two of them for each civ, but I’m pretty sure it would actually take less time than creating a new building set for instance (at least in DE with all the destruction animations). It may also help remember what the tech is about on a gameplay level with just a glance if you’re not used to this civ (not mentioning help understand what it refers to from an historical point of view, since some of the most exotic names don’t make it very clear).
It’s not like it takes away time from developers.
Not like a game designer or programmer will have to suddenly draw a picture.
I always thought it was kinda strange that they have generic icons.
It’s not like it’s important for readability since they are always in the same 2 places in the Castle anyway.
They could still give the irons a silver and golden border to make them visually distinct from normal technologies.
I’m not so sure about this. The only situation I can think of where it would be useful is if you used to know what the tech was and then forgot, and the icon jogs your memory. But even then, it would be hard for the icon to communicate much of the actual effect.
Maybe I’m just being unimaginative. I think I’d need some examples of ideas for what the icons could look like, before I can judge whether this would be worthwhile or not.
I actually even like it the way it is. When watching streamers it’s a good training to memorize the names and effects of the UUs as in most standard Arabia games you don’t get use them anymore.
As some people have mentioned, maybe, possibly, it could help to refresh people what techs are what, but hovering over the tech or going to the tech tree does the same thing. I know that’s at the sacrifice of useful apm, but it’s not like it’s not currently in the game.
giving every UT a unique icon would be nearly 90 icons. That’s a lot for very little gain IMO. It might actually be detrimental. you see those silver and gold crowns and you know automatically what you’re looking at. IDK if it’d be as instantly recognizable if there was a distinct icon. The UU doesn’t have a problem so maybe it’d be fine. IDK.
I’d rather the devs focus on other things. If somebody wants to make a mod that did this all the more power to you, but I don’t think this is a good use of FE’s time.
Interesting idea, but I think it would be difficult to express the necessary level of detail in the rather small icon, if you’re proposing to have them reflect the effects of the tech. Trying to come up with a reasonable icon for Garland Wars, Perfusion, or some other techs, I think would be difficult.
What might be interesting is to have unique or “regional crowns” for UTs. Possibly with architectural sets or civs sharing a common cultural heritage getting regional crowns for their UTs.
Crown of Charlemagne for Franks and Teutons:
Magyars’ Crown:
Bohemian:
Civs that didn’t emphasize crowns per se could use helmets, or other icons of the civ:
Japanese:
Montezuma’s headdress for Aztecs/Mayas:
Mianguan for Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese:
Mansa Musa’s Crown for Malians and possibly Ethiopians (possibly throw scepter and orb in as well):
Turks could go with a fancy turban, or something like this, possibly shared with the Steppe Lancer civs:
I think it can be useful for beginners or people who rarely play a civ. It doesn’t need to always be entirely explicit, as usual for AoE2 (Husbandry is pretty bad at conveying it’s about speed, for instance), but for people with a good visual memory, just having a different image can help memorize stuff faster.
I think most people would identify UT pretty fast (or learn to do so) just from the slot they’re placed ### ### as people have mentioned the icon could also have silver or golden border to better distinguish them (actually it could also be done for UU). Currently the only thing you know from looking at a UT’s icon is that it’s a UT, but if you’re not used to a civ it won’t help you that much especially if you don’t know yet which tech comes in Castle Age and which one comes in Imperial Age. If the Mongols’ Nomad tech had a bunch of yurts rather than the standard crown, it may save you a few seconds of hesitation before remembering that it’s pretty useless and you don’t need to research it.
Honestly, I don’t like it. I find enough good the way it is now. I’d prefer put that effort in make Elite UUs skins differentiable from non-elite version
In this case, I’d rather just leave it as it is. Maybe there could an event thing/DLC to add in extra icons, but the base game should have the same crowns.
That’s because I find that way easier to explain to new players. “Just click the white/golden crown to get your unique tech”. Explaining that with position would be far more difficult, especially in the middle of a game.
Why do so many people think that a few sprites or even just icons would be a lot of work?
Look at what AoE3DE is regularly getting im mew content, multiple new unit skins and many new icons for stuff like new home city cards in free patches multiple times a year.
And AoE3DE has like 1/5 of the playerbase AoE2DE has.
Why do the devs seemingly invest less effort into AoE2DE then into AoE3DE when it comes to visual improvements?
Yeah, it’s more than a little disappointing when you look at all the graphical assets that have been added to AoE2 in the 15 months since DOI, which was itself pretty minimalist in terms of extras:
I’ll leave that to someone who actually pays attention to AoE3.
I also don’t count RoR as added assets - just a mod that replaces AoE2 graphics with existing AoE1 stuff, and the RoR graphics aren’t even accessible in AoE2 mode.
Honestly, the proposals in this thread are fairly low effort (especially mine). Probably pretty comparable to the profile icons that get churned out with every event, but are mostly unremarkable. But yeah, would be great if they put more effort into things people care about and less into silly mods.
four new unit/building graphics (dromon, centurion, Roman castle, gazelle),
two new profile icons,
versus
13 gimmicky event graphics,
14 new gimmicky event profile icons,
four new gimmicky event terrains.
To be honest, it’s a stretch to count the gazelle (port from AoE, not actually new) and the profile icons (just the “Train Centurion” button). I don’t really know what to make of it. Terrible priorities. They could at least have given us the polar bear without a penguin on it as a gaia predator:
