Well the title is quite self-explanatory. These are new icons for the minimap, that replace the flags with less bulky round ones. Although not shown, neutral ones are also included. Extract the zip to your Empires folder to install. Some files will be replaced, but backups are included. If you don't like the change, simply go to 'empires/materials/vgui/' and find the three '.backup' files. Remove the '.backup' extension after deleting the existing files with those names. Enjoy!
This saves space, but... they don't look like flags... they look more like balloons... but still useful.