So, I think we'll still have humogous amounts of micromanagement. And that's better then NOT being able to micromanage... after all, we want control of our empire, to do things OUR way.

For those who likes micromanagement, they have the option to do so.

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They call me Mr. Fierce

Mostly on the repatative nature of the tasks.

Examples of this:

In Mastore of Orion (1 and 2) I would simply destroy the planet rather than conquering it because I did not want to have to deal with the management of the plant. However, I very much enjoyed the expansion of the first hundred turns.

Civilization: After about the first 20 or so cities, I stoped building because the creation and growth of them became boring. However in the early game, the micromanagement was fun.

Early game: Micromanagement = fun
Mid game: = Chore
Late Game = BORING.

So perhaps a better question is what changes to make micromanagement less "fun". Obviosly the early game ius focused on creating a stable source of income (both knowledge and coin).

Mid game is more of a consolidation of position and the beginnings of offensive. This is where the majority of games are realy won or lost. The switch to military focus has begun.

Late Game: Simply staving off the inevitable or mopping up. Almost entirely military based.

Some solutions:

Be able to found more "complete" cities. I never understood the need to build a temple in a city in 1900. This means that the costs of a city founding in late game goes up or there are certain technology gates that once passed, raises the default buildings built in a city.

As suggeseted above an robust custimized build order for all cities. In my opinion this some what workable, but unfortunately is unable to react to changing needs quick enough.

Of course someone is going to complain...(hey how will you be able to build a city with all that in a turn when it takes like uh 20 in the ancient age)...sigh

In the beginning, when you have the people tightly controlled, and they are tightly focused on whatever it is they are doing, I can understand. But in 1950, in a democracy? Come on...

You are right in the black and white sense that no American President is going to tell the City of Hoboken to build a library.

However, you could look at it another way. You as a leader give Tax credits to Hoboken to improve literac. Hoboken takes it an pop out comes a library.

Doberman, I think that many of those complaints of anchient build times vs. modern build times can be understood though modern construction practices and their superiority to older ones. After all it used to take 10-20 years to raise a cathedral in the dark ages, but 1-2 years today.

I like being able to micromanage as much as possible, but I don't like pointless repetition.

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- Biddles

I know that my build preferences CHANGE over the tech ages. And by having some basic queues saved, I'd just pick the one I wanted.

Being able to specify several cities at once to build a particular thing would be nice as well.

Remember, Bill Clinton doesn't give a tax break or anything to Hoboken for it's library. Now, Hoboken's State might, or some functionary in the Federal Burea might, but... The pres is concerned with the MACRO management. He has people to figure out the details...

This can be solved with SWPIGWANG idea of programable automation. You should be able to set a list of what should be built first, next and so on, also stuff like "IF rifelmen < 3 THEN build rifelmen" should be allowed to put in this production list.

one pretty obvious solution to the finished city idea is that some modern discoveries means that you don't have to build that structure anymore. the discovery of (lets say) capitalism would mean that all cities are equpied with marketplaces just as some wonders used to do.

One example how they managed to remove a lot of micromanagemt without taking away any gameplay possiblities in the old games was the control of what tile the pop. worked on. that worked fine even if you didn't care about it but manicas like me could move 'em around (and making it possible to build even more settlers!!!!).

1) Settlers: Click on a tile and select what should be done to it in what order, and the settler moves there and does it;

- Select a group of tiles or a line (for roads, rr's), all those tiles will get the same tasks performed on them (FE, irrigate and build road);

- Have a preference list for "auto"-settlers w/in city limits. The settler checks the list before doing anything (FE, check for grassland w/ shield: if YES goto and road, irrigate, if NO then check for plains, etc.). The player can modify the list from within the game. They can also modify the AI in the game files.

Free- markets: Have multiple items available to build in cities each turn; in republic/demo &/or somewhat free markets part of the production is controlled by the AI (i.e. your citizens). They tend to concentrate on temples, markets, libraries. You won't have to mess with it if you don't want to.

Aside from that I agree that maybe in modern times cities could be built with some improvements in place, or the improvements appear when a certain city size is reached.

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Theben
Co-Moderator of the Civ3 Forums

As certain tech points are reached certain city improvements fall out of the queue and become part of the basic city infrastructure. This basic city infrastructure is a seperate item that has to be the first improvement built.

But wait you say I want to build a rifleman not spend 80 turns waiting for the grainary and temple and market and courthouse ....

Easy fixed. Use 3 queues one for units, one for improvements and one for special projects or for feeding the production pool. What is then needed is a set of 3 sliders which allocates the production between the three queues.

The production pool is an idea I have had which becomes a sort of global production allowance. This pool is broken up by sliders into 3 areas. These being public works, city support and general production.

The public works production is used to actually build the terrain improvements (the improvements are defined by a "survey" type unit (eg. engineer, settler and maybe with later tech and within city areas just defined.)) the improvements are built in a similar way to city improvements. Each defined improvement will slowly accumulate production until its finish point is reached. A settler or engineer can still count as a certain amount of production per turn towards any improvement being constructed in the same square. A special tech point may be reached that allows you to define a rush or critical job with a cost of 3 for 2 and 5 for 3 respectively.

The city support section is used for aiding cities producing initial basic city infrastructure (and possibly other build items if a flag is manualy set for that item and city). This added support allows your set of major cities to assist the new cities you found to build their initial improvements.

The general production pool is used to assist in the construction of units, wonders and non support city improvements. This general production pool could also be traded to allies etc to allow them to produce more or to aid joint special projects. (eg. lend lease during WW2)

There are really three concepts involved here. They are
1- Basic infrastructure -over time certain improvements bacome "basic" and must be constructed in cities or they suffer happiness problems or health crises etc. The option may exist for the player to place certain improvements into this "basic" set.
There is the problem of what to do if a improvement is added to the "basic" list when some cities do not have it. That can be solved by simply popping up a message box allowing the player to make a choice. Thus when sewers are discovered and they are considered basic you have the choice of automatically adding them to the end of all queues, next in all queues or to become the current item in all queues. Once they are basic they must be added.

2- Multiple build queues- for the three different production using areas and the ability to manage the spread of production. The units, improvements and special queues allow for more flexibility with the cities. The special queue can be used as an option queue allowing wonders and possibly a second unit or improvement. When empty the production for this queue is passed on to the pool.

3- The production pool- assists smaller cities and less productive cities to grow etc, as they are supported construction wise by the older and larger cities. The pool can not be banked for later use (maybe this is possible with later techs) and is split between its target areas with the allowance for prioritisation within the areas. In the case of there being no public works being defined then the pool could spontaneously construct public works but they would not necessarily be where the player wants them. (AI guided) The city support pool if overflowing could improve general happiness as it supplies festivals / feasts / other happiness expanding events. The general production pool will if overfull generate additional funds and scientific research.

So anyway this would all require a fairly easy way of controlling the sliders for the different cities. This could actually occur on the city inquiries screen with the three different queue items being listed oon top of three small sliders. Within the city management screen itself the option to fix the pattern for 10/20/or infinite turns could be given with a one click flag thus stopping any global changes overriding certain important cities for a period. Certain tech advances in the governing area would limit the movement of the various slider bars at the city and national level. A full command economy would allow almost total freedom while a free economic democracy woul require all areas to have at least some productive expenditure.

Number one will certainly minimize the micromanagement of cities. However, it does not address another concern of mine.

The fact that late game cities take entirely too long to become productive members of the empire. In that fashion, I believe that complete cities would suffice. Again using gateway technologies as the breakpoint.

I like Number 3, the fact that a portion of a cities production comes from the national level. This is both realistic an helps to address the productivity issue of new cities.

O am not sure that I am fond of the 3 different build queues, but I think that I could live with it if it is implemented.

The city's general production queue could produce anything except specialized units requiring Structures. Barracks could be a separate build menu that could produce non-motorized land units, train existing land units (any type) to vet status, combine these functions in one step, or "repair" a non-motorized land unit.

Perhaps separate add-ons (toggles, essentially, costing much less than a structure) would be required for the general queue and the Barracks to produce or train mounted units, special mounted units like camels or elephants, and gunpowder. Cannon should be available as a add-on only for Barracks and not for the main queue to better represent the cost of that specialized foundary work.

A separate shipyard wouldn't be required for wooden vessels, it would be just an add-on, however cannon would have to be supplied by a Barracks foundary, or by disbanding a cannon unit, in order to make armed vessels.

Factory would be required for metal hulled vessels and motorized units. Add-ons required for cannon (as above), armor, aircraft, electronics, rocketry, etc. If you wanted to be able to produce two types requiring Factories simultaneously (say, a ship and an armor) you would have to build a second Factory. It wouldn't cost full maintenance and could later be upgraded to Mfg Plant.

Production pool: I agree with Utrecht. I do not think that it is necessary but I could live with it.

About prerequisite buildings: 100% agree!
Example. I conguer a city of an stagnant city on an isolated island and next turn I land my stealth bomber there!

The concept of a complete city at once is a little quick if being created based on a single settler unit.
The option may exist to create cities with improvements by paying for these at the time the city is built but to match the improvement costs it will be very expensive. 1500 gold + to create a size 1 city with the barracks grainary temple and market preconstructed.

If you use accelerated and assisted production with a pool, then assuming only 1-2 new cities are growing at a time then it may only take 2 years for each basic improvement to be finished off. This assumes a large and productive civilisation assisting. This is not instantaneous but it is better than nothing.

The concept of settler assistance in city building could also be explored. For each additional settler in the stack when the build order is given you gain one basic improvement and an additional boost to population (note if a non linear population model is used this won't be a complete step up in population). This allows a large civ to generat 4-5 settlers stack them together and build a new city with a population 5xnormal and with the first 4 improvements completed. To stop abuse I would suggest that this be limited to just the initial founding of the city.

The three queue concept could be reduced to one or just two with the support pool assisting the creation of any improvements and the general pool assisting units and wonders. I just believe the three queue concept gives flexibility and allows for the simultaneous production of needed improvements and units in a small city.

Suppose you know all the Civ advancements. How would you build a city from scratch? How would you arrange the builds in the queue? I call the arrangements in such a queue the MBQ (Master Build Queue).

When a Civ hasn't discovered the prerequisite advancement for an improvement in the MBQ, that improvement is simply skipped. When that advancement is discovered, the corresponding improvement will be added to the queue preemptively (inserted right after the current build, or starts right away if there is no current build).

The MBQ can be overrided by a local build queue.

Basically the same system with the option of multiple queues.

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- Biddles

Markos:

I was about to select "Give me automation options", but that's no good either! You see, even Civ 2 can already claim to have quite a few automation options. The problem is that putting a stalk of broccoli in charge of guiding your Civ does less damage than these existing automation options .

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Mark Everson
Project lead for The Clash of Civilizations
(That means I do the things nobody else wants to do ;-) )
This Radically different civ game needs your suggestions and/or criticism of our design.
Check our our Web Site & Forum right here at Apolyton...

the polls takes for granted that the automation options are decent

To me, SMACs Automation and Building Queues have improved a lot from Civ2 and gave me more reliefs.
Usually in SMAC, i just let the darn Governor do what he wants, but able to control him/she with this EXPLORE, RESEARCH, BUILD and CONQUER buttons and the other options for the Governor. I usually just look around in map mode to see what each base is currently building, if that base is building something i don't want right away, i just right click and change production. Also in the right click, i am able to change the Base building preference (EXPLORE, RESEARCH, etc...)
So what iw ould like to see in Civ3 is something like that, but more options for the Governors and more Building preferences and able to customize your own preferences. Also they should Base/City status menu so i can just tell the base what to build from there and also coordinate other bases to give a hand with another base.
When i play, i will only micromanagement in certan crisis like revolts sometimes or being threatening by another faction/civ and the sort or if i want to build a peticuliar SP/Wonder.

I like the other ideas in this thread to like pre-contructed facilities when establishing new cities.
More control in automation and customization of preset building queus and the sort.
Settlers ideas which have been posted
Bases helping each other out, so having supply lines and routes.

Another thing i like in SMAC is the Supply Units you can build.

Personally, I quite like a bit of micromanagement. Not too much though, because it becomes dull then. I can think of a few possible approaches to keep the micromanagement in the game, but limit it to avoid it becoming a chore.

1. The player has a fixed number of micromanagement actions per turn. Anything not given a specific instruction manages itself. This sort of reflects the decreasing possibility for direct control as your empire gets bigger.

2. Cities can be grouped into regions and managed as a group. Regions could get bigger as the communications between cities get better. Perhaps travelling time could be a criterion for deciding which cities could be in the same region.

3. You have AI advisors that you give a budget and let them get on with managing an aspect of your Civ. This is a logical extension of the advisors in Civ2. So, you could give your military advisor a budget of say 100 gold per turn that they would be able to spend on building troops and city walls etc. They could also decide where to put the troops and so on. This idea has many possibilities, but could easily be spoiled by naff AI programming. Selectable and editable AI scripts would be a good idea, so that you could choose from different personalities, and even customise them, and exchange them with your friends.

Your option 2 is a fairly obvious solution. At a certain stage of advancement regional governments come into being which allow for the amalgamation of cities. This reduces the micrmanagement at the time it starts to really grow. This could happen again later and allow super regions or nation level management.