Introduction
I have had a variety of distractions and derailments since roughly late July of this year, both personal and political(I assumed that 2022 would be a politically boring year midterm wise and that was not even close to correct).
Of course I never stopped working completely and I’m basically always *thinking* about Axioms. But I did things like work on tangential features like the adventure character combat system rather than the core stuff or play a ton of games in adjacent genres to Axioms to get in the zone and brush up on various common concerns and criticisms.
FYI, it has been a rough year for strategy games. Almost no major games have had a truly spectacular launch and many have bombed or fizzled.
In any case I’ve finally picked up on a topic that I think deserves the place of first design blog post of 2023. I had many that posts I worked on a bit and then burned out on, or that I felt were not important enough or lacked code implementation at the current moment. But I think this topic is something I was lucky to stumble upon.
Misusing Magnificant Maps
The thesis of this post is that not only are maps in so called “map painting” or “map staring” games not living up to their full potentially but, they are actively harming games in the way they are used. Maps are a tool that should draw their purpose from the goals of the game. A map is the most crucial part of the UI of these kinds of games and they do not get nearly enough attention. Attention focused on conveying information on the primary parts of the game.
Maps Over Menus
Often games will provide a variety of “map modes” that convey information on the map instead of in the menu. But they almost never convey this information in the manner that you need to make smart decisions.
When you convey game information in a menu you are often losing out on the whole picture. You can sort menus or spreadsheets by 1 or 2 factors but you’ll often lose the geography. Such and such nation has the biggest population and this and that country are 2 and 3. But where are these countries? Do they have large armies? Do they like you? A country may be red because they have X military power. Well I’d rather see X military power 2 countries away than X/2 military power right next door.
Of course I can dig through 4 or 5 menus and gather up some data and then process it myself. But most people have a limited “working memory”. You’ll often have to go back and forth through several menus if you realize you need extra information or you forget something. And of course menus often block off the map.
Ideally we want to have several composite map modes that can integrate different information to give us a good visualization on things like external “threat” levels from other polities, a representation of the “unity” of our own realm(since Axioms has much more complex politics, intrigue, diplomacy, and character social systems than existing games), potentially something for “economic potential”, and “expansion options” and so forth.
UI Advances: We Need More
Especially for a game like Axioms which is many levels more detailed in simulation compared to existing major studio games we need our UI, and that includes the map not just the menus or the game alerts, to be more useful. Existing UIs are insufficient for the simpler games they are used by.
Jon Shafer, the ex Civ lead designer, went indie to produce his dream game At The Gates. He did eventually finish it but it almost destroyed his life. More relevant to us is that Jon Shafer pioneered recusrive/dynamic tooltips, which Paradox popularized, for At The Gates because he felt existing UIs were not good enough. At The Gates is relatively simple, due to being Civ-inspired.
Axioms needs to have 2-4, depending on efficacy, similarly significant UI advances. Sure hardcore grognards or dissatisfied Paradox “bittervets”, or Slitherine customers used to Distant Worlds or Shadow Empires, might be willing to grind through a complex and unfriendly UI. But that is a limited pool of players. Accessibility can be provided by clever design and not just offputting simplification.
Another relevant issue is that you need to have a variety of tools or else even brilliant advances like adaptive tooltips can actually hurt you. Paradox got a hammer and now they think every problem is a nail.
I often refer to Axioms Of Dominion as a Map&Menu game or more specifically a Map&Menu Fantasy Society Simulator. Notice that Map is first in the duo, and I didn’t coin the phrase so it wasn’t because of me.
Moving Visualization Out Of Menus Into Maps
Some games are better than others but most strategy games woefully underutilize their maps. They’ll often default to pretty high fidelity terrain maps which they developed because they look sexy in marketing. But there’s virtually no game where terrain should be the default mode.
You’ll often see the “country” map mode as a default. This seems like it might be better than terrain but that is a low bar. We want the best map mode. This is a bit of a variation on the “three reads/looks/levels”. You should default players into the map mode that provides the information they’ll be using the most often. Although you’ll ideally train them to consider a small set of “primary map modes”.
Every strategy game has a core game loop. For a recent economic sim that is the “building tab”. For a variety of reasons, including some poor UI decisions, players of this game will spend the vast majority of their time clicking buttons in that tab. If you know, you know. A key issue is that instead of optimizing a map mode for that purpose, the game herds you into the useless terrain or “borders” map mode. That is two layers of bad design. Too much time with “menu blinders” on and not giving you the primary visualization you want to be looking at.
The Mental Impact Of Map Modes
One reason I’m talking about map modes so much isn’t just the potential improvements in usage or the number of modes but that the UI shapes the experience of the player. You can yell all you want about your game not just being a map painter but if the primary map that the player spends most of their time looking at is the political/country map and the major feelings of growth come from seeing your color expand, you are creating a game where the UI is dissonant with the spirit and the mechanics.
For instance if I was designing an industrial era sim I would design the default map mode to show tall growth, maybe a combination of population density, average wealth/income, and industrial density/transport capacity. I might even hide the simplistic country colors map mode behind some layers of menus. Especially if all my gameplay was primarily in the buildings tab.
The Many Map Mode Of Axioms
While Axioms does provide access to basic map modes that target one type of data what I’d really like to do is provide a sort of “main map” that cuts to the core of the game loop. I am considering whether I should design a set of maps for each intended play focus, though. Map painters, city builders, social schemers, and so forth. There is also my holy grail. “Dynamic map modes”. Must like I am looking at many ways to make menus more dynamic I am also trying to figure out a way for players to select different information to add to their “master map mode”, and of course even customize a set of modes to their preferences.
Core Map Modes
Axioms has a really robust simulation so we have a lot of potential map mode combinations. I’d love to do a “War Planning Map Mode” where provinces are colored by the amount of food and fodder and firewood, and the difficulty of terrain, and the water access. Perhaps the defensive measures you are aware of.
A map mode with some of the same data incorporated could be the “prosperity/stability map mode”. Food supplies, transport access, banditry, population opinion.
Basically the ideal is to create a situation where players can perceive crucial composited information “at a glance”. Existing games will present various information in “alerts” before you can click end turn, Civ is a good example. They might use Paradox style “alert banners” which you would hover over or click on. Some games will have little icons on the actual map though this is semi-rare.
A trade or industrial map mode could display visual trade routes, color the province based on the top 5 exports, and so forth.
I’ve coded a “unity map mode” already for testing that considers various factors for each of your controlled provinces like cultural assimulation or integration, how many characters consider themselves your subordinates, and other stuff like that. Axioms can have “long term split control” which is uncommon in many games. So if half the tribal leaders in a province support you and half support another leader that isn’t a big problem. Or if some are independent or w/e.
Master Map Mode
As an example the master map mode I would expect to play most of the game in myself is the “Intelligence Map Mode”. I’d like to combine various data points about each province in the game based on how much I know about it. I’ll compare this to another potential main mode, the “Threat Map Mode”.
The Threat Map Mode would factor in the distance from my core and border territories, the power and political position of the owner, an abstraction of how complete my knowledge of the province is and other factors to color the map based on the danger to me.
Do the ruler and/or the power brokers hate me or are they undecided or do they love me? What is the official political stance and what are the personal thoughts of those characters? How powerful is the state militarily? Are they aggressive or expansionist? Do the major characters keep their word? How far away are the border and core provinces of the state? If their political structure is less centralized, how do the local magnates feel about me?
You can see how this map mode sort of represents the combination of several map modes in the two major map mode possessing franchises. Both have an “opinion map mode” for instance but nothing much more complex.
The “Intelligence Map Mode” would contain more uniquely Axioms-esque data. How much information do I have on the characters in a province and potentially their superiors in their top level society? What data on their populations?
Axioms has a unique “Intelligence Network” system/mechanic where you have ~8 tiers of “information” about Provinces, Populations, and Characters. If you had max intel on a province, all the characters in it, and all the populations you’d get a color coding, perhaps a dark blue, that would phase into a bland medium grey for provinces you had no information on.
The “Threat Map Mode” could be modified by your knowledge of each province. Maybe you’d lighten the color if you knew most of the important info and darken it if there were a lot of unknowns. Codifying your level of uncertainty is an important practice in leadership positions.
I’m wondering if light/dark and color/no-color representing two different spectra would work. Also considering how to apply other spectra.
Designing Custom Map Modes
So probably the way dynamic/custom map modes would work is you’d click a “New Map Mode” button or an “Edit Map Mode” button and then select a data point to display. Then you could select something like “good or bad” and “all good values deepen hue” or set some values to darken or lighten. Could also do something like a black thick border and then color subsections of provinces. So you’d pick a number of subdivisions and then select some colors to deepen as you go up or down from 0 which would be a grey color.
Of course the default map modes I’d put in the game would cover 80% of situations and some people may never customize. Important to remember that people who would appreciate a dynamic UI are more likely to post reviews on Steam or do YouTube/Twitch content so it can be worthwhile to add even if most players wouldn’t use it.
Non-Map UI Potential Options
I’m going to briefly mention some things I’d like to do with the UI that are not map related. During any tutorial I’d really try to hammer home crucial hot keys. I am going to have a hotkey that pops-in with submenus for all the top level buttons. So the names of each submenu will be displayed inwards from the primary UI buttons on the rim of the screen.
I will probably add a “menu panel search function” as well. So a top level search bar or a hotkey that pops one up center screen. So you can just type “population” or something. Well or a drop down list might also work. Just a flat list of submenus you can select from. I would also consider this for map modes.
Another thing I thought about a lot is dynamic menus. So similar to map modes. The basic plan until user testing provides data is to have an “expand” button on menus. That will make available 2 “modular panels” and you can select a submenu from a different menu to be displayed there. So if you are in the diplomacy menu you could add economic panels or add intelligence network panels that have data. This is intended to prevent shifting back and forth between menus especially in the case where the default position of key data is deep into a submenu tree.
Also I am really considering whether this could be used to perform actions that then modify the situation. So in diplomacy you could have a character interaction panel so you could send gift or do some other simple and common action to raise opinion or w/e. Consider being in a Paradox menu and the tooltip for accepting a treaty or a marriage or w/e says you are a couple points short. No need to transit to the panel with Give Money or something, just have a modular panel with potential actions right on that page.
Another core use is analyzing population data or something like in Imperator or Victoria. There is often a case where a given player will want to constantly reference specific data relevant to their play style that devs didn’t think of. And different players would have different preferences so trying to guess would be less efficient than letting the player pick a couple bonus modular menu panels.
Finally I have already implemented a few functions like notes for all characters and provinces and some other objects and important character/province pins. I have a family tree implementation as well that is flexible if a bit basic that I’ll be improving but I’d also like to look at other “relationship diagrams” that might be useful. Subordinate trees or friend trees for instance. Sadly I can’t think of an easy way to push this out onto the map.
I would also love to hear suggestions for an outliner for people who use those. I am also considering “always open modular panels” as something I might look into. So to some degree the players themselves could choose what UI sections are in the “three reads”, well specifically the first read in this case.
You can see this GDC talk for an example of “The Three Reads”. That part starts at 5:11 if my timestamp link doesn’t work. The whole video is interesting from a design perspective, though.