During LinCon we discussed the color problem with Assyria and Babylon. They look far to similar, especially if you are at the other end of the board and wants an overview.
The best thing is that we actually found a solution. Use the dark blue currently used for Nubia for Assyria instead, and then use the Assyrian color somewhere at the edge of the map (Dravidia or Iberia perhaps), and move that color to Nubia.

What do the rest of you think?

Sounds like a good idea. The only reason we left the colors the old way was so that the orginal counters would work.

I think it would be best if Assyria were the darker color of Assyria/Babylon. I suggest switching the Nubian and Assyrian colors.

Ofcource, this is what I meant all along. Original post edited.


The problem with this is that Nubia still are to close to Babylon/Assyria (only Egypt in between). I'd like to get the "middle blue" (current Assyra) as far away as possible from the other blue colors, and that isn't Nubia. That is why I sugest a tripple exchange with either Iberia or Dravidia.

Having just switched to CivProject counters for Zeno's Painted Porch, I must concur. Assyria and Babylon are too close chomatically

I played with the colors abit in Photoshop and came up with a new suggestion. I don't know how to upload files but here's what I got:

Saba: lighten slightly
Assyria: Darken slightly
Babylon: light slightly to a baby blue
Nudia: Added red to make it more purple
Kushan: Pulled back blue to make it more magenta-like

If someone can post a file, I will email it to them. I bascially brought the left side of the AST into photoshop and adjusted on side of it so you can see a before and after

I can post files, just email me at jon@severinsson.net. Otherwise just gining us the (s)RGB values is enough...

I emailed Jon the file but here are the color changes I suggest:

Saba old: R: 192 G: 112 B: 116 Saba new: R: 211 G: 145 B: 191 Assyria old: R: 25 G: 164 B: 221 Assyria new: R: 10 G: 127 B: 204 Babylon old: R: 101 G: 191 B: 215 Babylon new: R: 145 G: 215 B: 230 Nubia old: R: 78 G: 118 B: 180 Nubia new: R: 104 G: 64 B: 153 Kushan old: R: 158 G: 74 B: 152 Kushan new: R: 174 G: 56 B: 170

Edit: I included the file in the post
Also, please note that the colors in the image isn't 100% correct, as MiracleMat seems to have used the old, broken, AST as a base, and additionaly saved the file as JPEG.
- Jonno

Before, between these 5 countries there was basically 3 blues and 2 purples. Now there are a light and dark blue, a pale purple, a magenta purple and a deep violet color.

I would definitely make the type white for Nubia and probably Assyria too.

Anyway, those are a graphic artists suggestions.

I liked MiracleMat's sugestion, but I thought some of the colors could use some fine-tuning.

So I made a new proposal, any eluminating comments are very welcome.

They look great, I just don't know assyria/Babylon are far enough apart.

I'm colour blind, and have always used Civilisation as an example of a well designed colour scheme where I have no difficulties (while some 4-player games give me major headaches).

In Jonno's latest colour scheme, my main problem is that the Saba and Kush colours look nearly identical. The other pairings are fine. Obviously, there's going to be some overlap, but I'd suggest swapping the Kushan colour with (for example) Mauryan, to give a bit more a space between the similar colours.

Nice Colors. I would lighted Saba just a touch tho. That's should help Paul. Remember 10% of people have some sort of color blindness.

First, I got to apology to Paul, and everyone else who are color blind, I completely forgot you when I came up with this proposal. However, lightening Saba or Babylon from my proposal is not recommended, as such light colors look awful printed (in my experience at least).
Neither is moving the Kushan color to Maurya, as Saba is a civilization that usually get Astronomy early, and thus is more likely to directly border Maurya than Kush...

Re: Color blindness

The interesting thing is that most color blindness is usually red-green, whcih means they have trouble telling Reds and Greens that are the same value apart. For that reason, we don't use the grreen poker chips when we play with my color blind friend, Frank. Frank also tells me that when we play Ticket to ride, the easieest way he tells the 8 colors of train cars apart is the little symbols on them. You all probably didn't notice, but he did.

So maybe we should think about making very different symbols on similar colors (or like values, like reds and greens). Maybe even reversing the symbol between black and white. Take that into consideration and the color issue becomes less important, as they each look unique even in grayscale.

I might be thinking this too much out, but I'm a graphic artist in the real world, so...

The symbols are generally already quite distinctive, except the ships that's confusingly similar. Reversing text and symbol colors is however not such a good idea, as it's supposed to depend on the darkness of the background, and thus the wrong color would only make it worse, especially for color blind people.

So I think our best bet is to adjust the background colors. So here is a slightly modified new proposal:


My greatest concern now is Kush/Assyria for color blind, but I don't think they are interacting enough with each other to be a huge problem...

P.S. Paul, are you completey color blind, or only red-green, yellow-green or similar? I'm asking becouse I'd like to have someone completely color blind tell me if the two images above looks identical to him. If so I can make color-blind-tests myself, by converting the image to grayscale, while if not I'll have to get some extra input on each proposal we make.