I'm currently rewriting the client for a strategy game. The clients are for iOS, so the normal UI framework already has fairly good support for simpler animations and effects. I've experience successfully leveraging it for two game titles already.

The advantage is low battery consumption compared to an animation lib (for iOS Cocos2D and SpriteKit), as well as excellent text and input handling. It's also easy to get a rough UI up and running.

Since I have yet to run a full-fledged project with an animation lib, it's hard to evaluate the downsides, but I believe that I might not be as generous with animations as I would with a animation lib / normal game engine.

The game itself is very static, it doesn't need more animations than you'd need implementing chess.

This is why I'm on the fence here: standard UI framework or an animation lib as basis for the game? It's not clear to what's best.

I'm hoping to add a few tasteful animations to prevent it from feeling to static, but hardly sufficient to motivate using an animation based framework. On the other hand, I'm extensively modifying button rendering, view transitions etc, so at places the UI framework isn't much of a help.

What would you recommend and why?