I'm not familiar with each flags and their people.
When playing on the right side you have each of the countries with their colors and their military strength. What you don't have are the flags.
When on the map you see flags but not the colors (everybody is yellow). So unless you are familiar with which flags is which you don't really know who you are dealing with.
is there an easy way for me to know who is who is who right from the main UI?
I don,t even know who is empire and who is not. It's all rather confusing for me.