A while ago a returning player gave a fairly harsh critique of AH3, saying among other things that the graphics or colors were visually assaulting. That stuck with me, and I believe one of the things he could have been referring to is the clipboard map:
For kicks, I made an attempt at reducing the clutter and busyness of the map above. I reduced the saturation and opacity of the land layer, changed the ocean color to be more consistent with a typical physical map, with coastal shallows depicted as a lighter shade of blue. I reduced the color saturation and size of all the map icons and removed the chess piece graphic because it has such a DOS-character set look to it and its redundant anyway; the color of the icon being an indication of the owning country. Radar coverage areas are shown shaded now rather that white circles. I chose a simple sans serif font for a cleaner look, and the labels are more tightly placed to the icons.
The map below shows all of the the same information displayed on the original above, it's the same scale and area shown. The reduction in icon and label font size think helped the readability a lot:
I guess my wish would be for a more map-like clipboard map, with a less cluttered look.
