An empire's current culture was much more up-front when Humankind was first released, and avatars/leaders took a back seat.  The community in general found it a bit confusing and harder to keep empires straight when the Harappans became the Huns became the Norsemen, so we have the current model of centering leaders for consistency (which I like).  However, I do think it would be neat if the empire icons changed to match our current culture.  All culture icons exist as options, but are chosen at start-time and locked in instead of changing dynamically with our culture.  I think having our icons change through the eras — or at least making this a game setting — would help with quick empire identification and immersion by keeping empire icons topical and keeping anachronistic icons (especially card suits and pistols) from representing empires.

RedSirus wrote:

An empire's current culture was much more up-front when Humankind was first released, and avatars/leaders took a back seat.  The community in general found it a bit confusing and harder to keep empires straight when the Harappans became the Huns became the Norsemen, so we have the current model of centering leaders for consistency (which I like).  However, I do think it would be neat if the empire icons changed to match our current culture.  All culture icons exist as options, but are chosen at start-time and locked in instead of changing dynamically with our culture.  I think having our icons change through the eras — or at least making this a game setting — would help with quick empire identification and immersion by keeping empire icons topical and keeping anachronistic icons (especially card suits and pistols) from representing empires.

Agreed, dynamic icons would do a lot for both culture readability and immersion, and there are already plenty of other ways to tell players apart.