zahar0z
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But you can see the piles and guess approximately how many resources there are.
Added 1 minute ago
variety, in any case.
For example, crystals suddenly change color at the last "level," so are you sure the player will immediately realize that these are crystals and not gemstones? Mercury starts as a flask, then ingots, then a cauldron; it is not intuitively clear to the player that all of this is one resource. And so on.
Then, if we take wood as an example, all the piles are different, and it is clear from all of them that it is wood, but it is not intuitively clear which pile is larger.
In short, from a gameplay point of view, such things must be very well refined in order to make sense.
For example, with wood, all three piles should be the same in terms of model and texture; simply, the first one has, for example, 5 logs, the second has 10, and the third has 20 (and you can add an axe). The same applies to other resources. Then the player will be able to easily understand the game's language, and the idea of "understanding the amount of resources by the model" will be achieved in principle. Another question is that the vast majority of players will simply not pay attention to these nuances.
There is also a common technique of indicating such things with color. That is, in one game, for example, there is a chest object, and depending on its coolness, it is divided into wooden (brown), steel (gray-blue), and gold (red-yellow). Color coding works perfectly in this case; the player looks at the chest and roughly understands what level of reward awaits him inside. But specifically in Heroes, there are already 7 types of objects for resources. Which, in principle, use color coding to some extent. Is it worth increasing this number to 21 objects?
P. S. Variety is not necessarily good by default. There are situations when more means worse, because many unnecessary options in certain cases can "clutter" the game's "language."