Art-style of UI: Imperator 2.0 is best

[Deutscher Kaiser]

I have seen a lot of discussion about people preferring to stick to EU4's UI art-style over what we have seen so far for Caesar. While the UI has nostalgic value for me, I don't think it's among the best Pdx-UI's, stylewise I liked Victoria 2 a lot better. However, I am all for a cleaner and more transparent UI ( not like Vicky 2) that overall, newer Paradox games have done an admirable job with.

That being said, I very much agree that particularly Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3 failed to create as much period-flavour with their UI-design as their immediate predecessors. But I think Imperator did a wonderful job with mixing both - clarity and period flavour. And with 2.0, it also got much more intuitive and transparent. Sure, the Roman-marble aesthetic might have helped with combining both, but maybe Caesar could achieve the same by using a very light and restrained Renaissance-style, less heavy and baroque than EU4.

What do you think?

 

[commune1945]

I agree.

I would also like to add that the IR map representation and icons were great (port and fortress icons).

 

[capetown2]

I agree.

I would also like to add that the IR map representation and icons were great (port and fortress icons).

The icons were hard for me as a first time player to understand, maybe some colour coding could have helped there, but now I’m pretty secure with what all of them are.

 

[za3tarani]

for me, in imperator everything melts together it is not easy make any difference all the text and get the importan/desired info. maybe i havent played in enough to get used to it. also generally the overall coloring of imperator, im not a fan tbh

 

[Buladelu]

I agree.

I would also like to add that the IR map representation and icons were great (port and fortress icons).

If only we had a city icon.

(I post it with a secret hope that someone tells me there's an option I missed somewhere, because I find it extremely strange you have no icons for cities and have to squint and loot for buildings or open list of territories)

 

[Testerian2]

That being said, I very much agree that particularly Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3 failed to create as much period-flavour with their UI-design as their immediate predecessors. But I think Imperator did a wonderful job with mixing both - clarity and period flavour. And with 2.0, it also got much more intuitive and transparent. Sure, the Roman-marble aesthetic might have helped with combining both, but maybe Caesar could achieve the same by using a very light and restrained Renaissance-style, less heavy and baroque than EU4.

Imperator have a lot of problems. First - light style is heavy on eyes. Second, color code used is very bad for color-blind people. Third there is not enough visual distinction for different parts of the interface. Icon set could be better.

I'm not saying that I:R is not better than Victoria3 and CK3 (those are clearly "visuals-first" design) but I see EU4 superior to all three overall.

 

[Buladelu]

EU4 is extremely hostile to colorblind people. I only realized you can see if the army is hostile by looking at the color of its plaque when I saw a colorblind mod changing it.

I'm not sure what's wrong with light style. Black font on white background feels natural to me and one of the better UIs in Paradox games. In general it's surprising how these text-heavy games make the same mistakes of using hard to read fonts or color combinations again and again. CK3 font is good but we can't have good things so half of the text in the game is grey on dark grey. And EU4 font is so hard on the eyes it's hard to find a streamer who doesn't use some font mod.