Hi, if anyone is interested in reworking the icons that came with the game or has made ones of their own this guide might help.
The following is the only way I know to create a review panel icon that shows faction colors and yet does not have those annoying black dots:
(1) First, you will need a utility called “Seqgrab.exe” which is available in the collection of utilities called “CA_BIF_BUF_Utils” which can be downloaded from http://www.mizus.com/Tools/Files/.
(You will also need the readbif program, and a program which can properly save lbm files, I use “GrafX2,” paint-shop, etc., will not work for this.)
(2) Now open the bif icon in readbif and extract it as a bmp.
(3) Open the bmp in GrafX2 and save as an lbm named “10001.lbm” (note, the quotation marks throughout are only used here to show emphasis, do not use in actuality).
(4) Open the program called Seqgrab, and set the information as follows:
– In “path to images” write the location of the 10001.lbm file, e.g., for mine it was “C:\Program Files\Total War\CA_BIF_BUF_Utils”
– In “filename stub” type “1”
– Choose grab from lbm
– Check the square that says “whole frame grab”
– Check-off the square that says “purple as transparent”
(5) Then click “ok” and a bif named “1.bif” will appear; simply rename this with what the original bif file was named and paste it into the appropriate folder and you are done. Now the bif icon image will not have any black dots, faction colors will be rendered appropriately, and it will be as good as anything that came with the game.... or better.

Thanks. Lysander.