I think the combat UI can be improved to show more relevant information which is missing and remove irrelevant information to leave the screen less cluttered and more focused.

First I think that height differences need to be more apparent. This has been suggested many times so I made three possible proposals for how it could be done. This proposal applies to both in comabt and out. I do not think that the terrain itself should be modified to look more unnatural, but rather there should be a tactical mode which you enable to get information.

Height proposal one: border arrows on slopes. One arrow indicates a height difference of one, two arrows indicate two. This proposal clutters the screen the least and is very clear, however it does not immediately show you height differences of tiles that are far away. This means if you want to know if an archer will be get a high ground bonus shooting from one spot to another you will have to count all of the ups and downs in between. Since that is one of the primary impacts of height this proposal is not very helpful.

Height proposal two: tile border shading. Each tile has it's border shaded depending on it's height. Alternatively the entire tile could be shaded, or instead of going from black to white it could go through the colors red to blue. This is reasonably understandable and does let you compare heights of distant tiles. However because there are 10 possible elevations if I remember correctly, that means that if you use gray scale the shades will be so subtle it will be hard to distinguish them, and if you use color the screen will look zany.

Height proposal three: numbers. It doesn't look very good at all, but it is clear and doesn't have the problems of above.

Another huge problem is there is no way to see movement or vision, which is essential tactical information. Whenever you select or highlight a unit, including enemy units, it should show you that unit's movement and vision. Additionally when you go to move a unit it should change the vision indicator to display what the unit will be able to see if it moves to that tile. As you can see above I painted all of the tiles that the archer can see blue, and made a border of where it can move in purple. I actually had to entirely make this up because I have no idea how vision rules work, and I'm not always clear on movement. The fact that I cannot at all predict what tiles a unit can see is severely problematic.

Right now combat grays out the field of play and leaves the rest of the world color, which looks pretty odd to me. In cities it's very useful because the little buildings clutter the screen and make units stand out less. However in open flat areas it just looks silly. Instead you could make it so that when you are out of combat it shows the combat area in gray, but when you select that combat it shows the valid area in color and grays out the rest of the world. I think this looks better. Additionally as you can see above rather than painting the world a flat gray that looks like the fog of war, I just desaturated tiles.

If this proposal is not accepted then instead I think there should be three small changes to the gray version. First forests are not easily identifiable and looks like rocks, their icon should change. Second, the borders between the tiles where there is a slope is not grayed out and that looks weird. If the ground is gray, all of it should be gray. Third since the ground is already gray the fog of war is not easily identifiable. Tiles which are not visible should be a significantly darker shade of gray.

The UI also takes up too much of the screen when the field of battle should be the main focus. While you are selecting a battle you do not need the boxes in the top left and bottom left as they aren't relevant. Additionally the top and right boxes can be substantially compressed. I made a possible example here, although the example given in this thread is also good. Additionally it bothered me that it splits the units in combat above and below the unit card. In my suggestion I moved the peasant from the bottom of the box where it's almost not visible, to the top, where it is clear.

Thank you for reading my proposals.

Hi all ! 

First of all, based on last OpenDev, we all could see and appreciate the overall reduced scale of the UI (and in particular the battle UI), which - at least for me - is a great improvement compared to the first OpenDev : it was pretty consistent and convenient all along the playthrough.

But still, while playing and watching some playthroughs, I feel that the battle UI needs some refinement, so I'd like to follow up on @Eulogos proposals above, and suggest some propositions that could help in terms of visibility/readability on the map. 

• The first suggestion would be about the "engagement and deployment panel" :  

• The Players’ icons could be smaller (such as the one on the battle management panel on the right side, or even smaller), thus gaining space underneath the central panel. These icons actually do not provide any additional informations in the current panel, apart from being clickable and bringing a panel on the right informing about your units/armies or the opponent’s units/armies.
• Or adding a button to toggle off this part of the panel, such as already suggested here, would increase the visibility underneath the panel. 

• The second suggestion would be about the “Attack prediction” panel once fighting engaged :  

This panel could be tweaked a little, saving at least the blank space, like this : 

That would even clarify the ”Strength/Health bar”, positionning the overall strength on the left, and the damages on the right, since the bar is decreasing from right to left. 

I also assume that further bonuses/modifiers would be added on units as the game advances, so saving this blank space would prevent having a panel too tall, blocking the battlefield view. 

• The third suggestion would be to actually position the attack prediction panel on the bottom center of the screen. Since the perspective on the map is from the bottom to the top of the screen, it would help for the visibility and readability of the battlefield (sorry for the bad screenshot editing, but you get the idea !) : 

Thanks all for reading.

Eulogos wrote:

I second these suggestions.

I couldn't have expected less from you ! ;)

While I'm at it, and since my screenshots/pictures editing spree is going wild, I find it's a bit of a shame that Veterancy's modifiers/bonuses aren't adding up on the Attack prediction panel, which is also taking a lot of space, rather uselessly to me (and it's not sorted correctly as well).

So I could really see just one line for Veterancy modifier/bonus, the number would add up anytime the unit gains another veterancy point/star :

Veterancy 1 :

Veterancy 2 :

Veterancy 3 :