User interface is a very important part of strategy games because the user needs to know a lot of information. On the other hand to  containing a lot of information this UI also needs to be compact and not fill the screen. That's why quite a lot of the UI in Ascendant Dawn's UI is fairly small and expands when it is hovered over. 

The UI in Ascendant Dawn went through a few iterations, mainly going from opaque to  translucent. I also started applying blurs under these translucent widgets which is something a lot of modern games do.