True, I guess the while lines are still there but they very often run right on the paths underneath so they sort of fade a little and they still connect the most irrelevant aspect of the unit icon to the location though, which I have stated my issues with. It's the thing I try to glance past as I'm reading a unit icon.
The mechanic that moves unit sprites away from one another I cannot see at all anymore though, regardless of the number of sprites. In my own thread I have an example of just three individual stacks overlapping each other in such a way that only one of them has a readable unit tag at all.
I agree on the colors and general graphics though. As far as I recall, the reduced graphics mode was introduced later, which in my opinion looks much more readable and pleasing at least as far as the backdrop, the map itself is concerned.