Seems like simply upgrading some of the characters to equivalent emoji would have been a big improvement. I know many people don't like emoji, but for the most part they are pretty universal and easy to understand.
This is not really needed. The game doesn't actually use ascii output, it renders the text (windows terminals would probably be too slow), and it supports graphic packs than can show the dwarves as actual pictures of dwarves. The biggest problem is when a glyph is reused for multiple things, as in that case the graphic has to pick one of them or stay generic.
