Analyze, Adapt, Overcome Feedback (why it stinks)

There has been a lot of criticism of the Analyze, Adapt, Overcome update today, and I completely agree with the criticism that is has received. First off, this seems to be another attempt to make this game more like the successful strategy game HOI4, the first attempt was the doctrines, which are a fun feature, however this is not. the unit divisions in HOI4, which, unlike this game, are actually pleasing to look at and help you with gameplay.

From what I have read on the forums and the update, it seems that the developers thought that this would be "helpful" as we would be able to gather information easier, such as the units health, what type of units are in a stack, and so forth. However, replacing a bunch of unit icons on a map with a bunch of diamonds on the map actually makes it much harder to see what units you have where. For instance, all units in the infantry tab are placed by an icon bearing the "infantry" symbol, however, are you only going to have one type of infantry in your entirely army? Likely not. Your of course going to have the regular infantry, you'll have motorized or mechanized infantry if you're a fan of fast attacks, commandos if you are a nation with the allies doctrine, and paratroopers if you are going to execute some special forces missions, however, all of these very different units are simply just replaced with an infantry symbol, making it very hard to tell what you have where. (This also includes ships, aircraft, ordinance units, tanks, and nuclear weapons, which just use the plane icon, no difference between a nuke bomber and an interceptor for sure) However, I can almost already hear the developers typing away "You can zoom in to see what units you have where" and yes, you can do that, however for people like me who are on much larger maps such as the world at war and historic maps, it's extremely important to be able to see specifically what you have where in the "larger picture" and forcing us to zoom in on the map to see what we have where is very tedious, and not helpful to the "bigger" picture of the map, where many of us will end up having gigantic nations that span multiple continents. Additionally, you still have to zoom in fairly close to even see the unit "icons" appear on the map.

My second complaint is it is now very hard to see what units of yours are under fire, as the new lightning symbol is very small and not easy to see. before it was a large circle, and it was clearly obvious to see where your units were attacking / being attacked, and how long it would take before their next attack would take place. Now all we get is a tiny lightning symbol at the top of the unit icon that makes it very hard to see which units are being attacked and which are not, making it harder for players to see where their units are engaged or where they may need to pull away from, which is disasters for anyone who is trying to not lose any units. Additionally, the "dot system" that has replaced the actual unit number is contrary to what this update was supposed to be about, making it easier for players to find out more information easier. It's especially unhelpful as the 3 dots could be for a stack with anywhere from 10 to 1000 units, very unhelpful.

These unit icons actually make the game less fun to play as well. I'm sure most of the players here enjoyed not having to zoom in to a microscopic level to see their tanks or fighters moving across the map. Now we are all stuck with a bunch of boring, tasteless diamonds that don't even look good.

This update seems to be another feature that nobody asked for and nobody wanted, and yet the developers still seem surprised that nobody likes it. Maybe if they did polls asking what people what changed, they would start getting somewhere and help make this a better game