Star-shaped Ellipses

[SkeletonCrew]

Also, should enemy leaders then get the gold crown or the gold & silver crown?

Enemy leaders should generally keep the gold crown, see clarified definition. I believe this is the most obvious course.

I agree it's the most obvious but it requires C++ code changes. Giving all leaders the gold & silver crown and then manually overlay a golden crown only requires WML changes. (and code changes the hiding problem I stated before.)

[Darth Fool]

I think that the problem here is that we are fighting two natural instincts about how to interpret the gold/silver crowns. The first instinct is that gold > silver, and the second is to view things as bits. In the first interpretation, a pure gold crown is better than a half gold/half silver crown is better than an all silver crown. This would mean that pure gold should be recruit + must survive, the half gold half silver would be either the must survive or can recruit, depending on which you think is more important, and the pure silver would be the other one. In the bitwise interpretation, Gold = can recruit, silver = must survive, so pure gold = can recruit, 1/2+1/2 = can recruit and must survive, and pure silver = must survive.

I think the solution is to not use a silver crown but rather use a silver shield. I have tempted fate by providing a hack to show what it might look like, but obviously we would want one of the real artists to make it. The point here is that by using a silver shield instead of a silver crown, it is easeir to realize that the second interpretation is the one that we are using. Instead of having people fall into the gold > silver mentality trap, we provide a crown vs shield mentality, so clearly crown+shield > crown.

The only problem that I can see with this is that if the unit has some xp, the xp bar might cover up the fact that it is a shield and you are relying on the players memory that silver=shield. I think that it is probably ok, but in case people think otherwise, the other option is to move the shield to the lower left. This uses less real estate than the upper right for two reasons. One, it overlaps the xp bar and hp bar a little, and second, since a units image is already masked on the left side, it is less intrusive than adding something to the right side.

[Eleazar]

I think that the problem here is that we are fighting two natural instincts about how to interpret the gold/silver crowns. The first instinct is that gold > silver, and the second is to view things as bits. In the first interpretation, a pure gold crown is better than a half gold/half silver crown is better than an all silver crown. This would mean that pure gold should be recruit + must survive, the half gold half silver would be either the must survive or can recruit, depending on which you think is more important, and the pure silver would be the other one. In the bitwise interpretation, Gold = can recruit, silver = must survive, so pure gold = can recruit, 1/2+1/2 = can recruit and must survive, and pure silver = must survive.

I think the solution is to not use a silver crown but rather use a silver shield. I have tempted fate by providing a hack to show what it might look like, but obviously we would want one of the real artists to make it. The point here is that by using a silver shield instead of a silver crown, it is easeir to realize that the second interpretation is the one that we are using. Instead of having people fall into the gold > silver mentality trap, we provide a crown vs shield mentality, so clearly crown+shield > crown.

The only problem that I can see with this is that if the unit has some xp, the xp bar might cover up the fact that it is a shield and you are relying on the players memory that silver=shield. I think that it is probably ok, but in case people think otherwise, the other option is to move the shield to the lower left. This uses less real estate than the upper right for two reasons. One, it overlaps the xp bar and hp bar a little, and second, since a units image is already masked on the left side, it is less intrusive than adding something to the right side.

Overlapping the XP or HP bars is unacceptable to me. 2 icons are excessive to indicate one of 4 states. 1 icon with 3 forms or nothing is much more elegant.

I think you are thinking too hard about this without examining the wider context.
• there is only 1 kind of hero/leader in MP. To adopt a system that needs 2 icons to indicate these leaders is weird in that context.

These extra types of heros appear in SP campaigns which generally have text explanations of which units are vital. The crowns reinforce that information, they don't exist in a void.

I agree it's the most obvious but it requires C++ code changes. Giving all leaders the gold & silver crown and then manually overlay a golden crown only requires WML changes. (and code changes the hiding problem I stated before.)

Is there a reason we would want an overlay, like the current implementation of the silver crown, to stay on during combat?

[SkeletonCrew]

I agree it's the most obvious but it requires C++ code changes. Giving all leaders the gold & silver crown and then manually overlay a golden crown only requires WML changes. (and code changes the hiding problem I stated before.)

Is there a reason we would want an overlay, like the current implementation of the silver crown, to stay on during combat?

The current silver crown should be hidden which requires a code change. Since UMC can also have used overlays and might require them to stay visible I'd say it has to be an option to hide them during combat.