sorry in advance writing three versions of this that I scrapped took some time it's late now I should probably read over it tomorrow
no matter how bad the below text sounds i'm still quite happy with pretty much all Stardock games I own, and I do own most of them + all DLCs I do plan to keep buying them and am very happy I'll get siege without paying extra 
first off ashes still being actively worked on is why I have pretty much every stardock game but adding units and spending time on balancing the game is fixing what isn't broken:
while ashes got a lot of things right and not to much things wrong it did screw up some very essential things especially with how and when it displays information and mainly with how it hides critical information from you 99% of the time
simple example of where it is hiding critical information:
- select one unit and hold ALT
alright
- select two identical units and hold ALT
you get two identical looking circles one for each unit.
- select one unit that is anti air and one that is anti ground and hold ALT
you get two identical looking circles. size difference doesn't help to identify the role of each unit so I ignore it when I say Identical
- select dozens of units and hold ALT
you get very boring but unhelpful salad a bit more useful then not showing any range at all but not much
- form an army from above mentioned units
you now see the range of a randomly chosen unit from that army all others are hidden
it could be anti air it could be anti ground,... it could be the unit with the smallest range it could be the unit with the largest range
thank god it can't be radar range that at least is displayed differently from shooting and building ranges
also thank god I don't have to keep ALT pressed to see where I can spot enemy units in the fog of war, that at least, is always visible
- now deselect that army and hold ALT again
you are back to salad
now lets talk about zoom
i would argue there are 6 zoom levels
closest to furthest
- level one
useless except for screenshots because there are no icons
- level two
still useless only the smallest and weakest units get symbols (shouldn't it be the strongest units that are identified and highlightet first?)
strategically important supply lines become barely recognizable you can see them if you know they are there (google maps can subtly highlight streets that snake around randomly you should be able to highlight straight lines you drew into the maps in the first place)
- level three
builders, buildings and cruisers get represented by icons
frigates are still represented by the same icons cluttering up your view I would be fine with that if they weren't indistinguishable from the ten times more expensive cruisers
strategically important supply lines still invisible
- level four
the textured map turns into a turns into a height map (why can't I choose if I want a normal map or a terrain map independent of zoom level? why can't I easily tell if a slope can be overcome by ground units or not on this stylized map it should be easier to spot on a stylized one that's why stylized maps exist in the first place to better present information
also you loose the visibility of almost all the range indicators you got by holding ALT, if you could find your orbital nullifier (an absolutely critical building) ALT would still show its range however you won't find it because it looks the same as 90% of all buildings, a square with a dot in the middle that can be anything from a radar to a Ressource producing quantum archive to a strategic weapon
dreadnoughts now get their individual icons you can glimpse them but due to their top secret nature they are hidden behind a generic dreadnought icon that looks the same for all of them still from the glimpse you get I can tell that the size difference to cruiser and frigate icons is finally large enough you would be able to distinguish them from dreadnought icons if you could see the dreadnought Icon
-level five
frigates and cruisers turn into dots that are roughly as distinguishable to each other as they were before however now they look identical (yea sure I could have remembered what each unit does and then what their Icon is but adding all the information ashes keeps from me makes it not enjoyable enough to do that given how much unnecessary difficulty ashes adds to learning these things) why are their icons based on their 3d models in the first place there should be a system that tells me their role, strength etc is in the icons in an RTS the icons complexity should be minimized and differences of the Icons between vastly differently acting units should be maximized so that they remain useful even at the highest zoom level even if they overlap with dozens other icons.
- level six
let's not talk about level six it's useless you might as well remove it
or better replace it with the map you get when you hit spacebar, actually replace all the stylized maps with that one add indicators where there's terrain land units can't cross,
also ALWAYS show where nullifiers (yours and your opponents are in action) you can already get that information its where your sudo kill all nuke doesn't work you should have the option to have that displayed. why wouldn't you want to know where your armies will be annihilated instantaneously
greetings and a good night
