How do we reduce micromanagement in Civ 4?

[Optimizer]

Please post your suggestions for ways to decrease micro-management in a future civ game.

Some of mine:

* Cities connected by rail/highways could form a "food pool" and "industrial pool", sharing all their food and shields.

* Diplomat and spy actions would be accessible through the map by clicking enemy cities.

* Automatically trade resources with allies.

[Trifna]

* Stacked units

* Rally point

* Workers replaced by "which area do you wish to ameliorate?"

[asleepathewheel]

Re: How do we reduce micromanagement in Civ 4?

Originally posted by Optimizer
* Diplomat and spy actions would be accessible through the map by clicking enemy cities.

That would be a nice addition, right click on a city and be able to investigate it. I like that, but only in addition to the menu we already have in C3C (PTW)

Originally posted by Optimizer
* Automatically trade resources with allies.

no thanks. I don't necessarily want my allies to have resources

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Play something other than Civ. Micromanagement has always been a part of Civ.

[MrBaggins]

Huh? He said reduce... not eliminate.

CTP2 massively reduced micromanagement through stacked armies and great nation management dialogs integrated with build queues, plus larger than 21 square cities.

[Switch]

Have options available to units available through right-click. One benefit of this would be if you wanted to upgrade all of your base defenders, you wouldn't have to wake one of the first. Just right-click on the one unit and select "Upgrade all." Though keyboards good and all, I sometimes prefer to just use my mouse, which was actually do-able in SMAC.

And I think making pollution back into a simple effect, rather than a terrain element, would greatly reduce MM. Of course, don't lessen the effects of pollution, and don't make it any easier or harder to eliminate. Just don't have 8 workers per city running around cleaning pollution.

[asleepathewheel]

pollution control/cleanup is definately one of the areas that could be streamlined in Civ4.

[Illuminatus]

Why reduce - increase? But certainly decrease micromanagment with unit movement.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
Play something other than Civ. Micromanagement has always been a part of Civ.

Right, and why we're at it, why not make it so that spearmen beat tanks all of the time, since that's always been a part of Civ, too?

When people talk about micromangment they usually are talking about the chores of the game. Things that are simply never fun, but must be done.

I agree that I don't want automatic trade with allies, since that simplifies the political game (not just MM).

Stacked units, good governors (that would be sort of a holy grail), build queues (that don't ask for a confirmation after every completion, like Civ 3), and more extensive right click options are all great.

If the game were tweaked to make empire growth slower, that would help. Managnig a ten city Civ is usually lots more fun (if not as powerful) as a fifty city Civ. The best way for that would be more Civs per map (which causes its own problems, yes), since any other way to limit growth (4 pop cost settlers!) would feel artificial.


This is a good topic to explore, I wish I had a few more ideas right now.

[wrylachlan]

1) Rebalance the unit costs and upkeep to lower the total number of units (see my thread on the subject).

2) More high level controls like -
Military Advisor - upgrade all. Automates the whole upgrade process, including waking units up, moving them to barracked cities, upgrading them, then moving them back to their fortified position on the front.

3)The superworker = ability to combine 2 or more workers into a superworker.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Reduction of micromanagement was one of the big killers of MoO3. Players felt as if they were just along for the ride and weren't playing the game.

I really don't want to see Civ get murdered like MoO did. Tools and options to handle some of the micromanagement are fine, but a lot of players like the micromanagement of the game.

I don't see why we have a mandate to change Civ4 into a version of RoN or something else, Civ is a distictive game, maybe some consider it a dinosaur, but for a dinosaur Civ 3 and its add-ons seemed to have done pretty well.

[MrBaggins]

MOO3's problem was in the design concept... remove a lot of abstraction, to make it more "realistic". Then they had to add in a ton of automation, to allow players to function without dealing with every tiny detail. Thus players felt disconnected, and rightly so.

MOO3 didn't reduce micromanagement at all... just hid it.

Reducing micromanagement doesn't have to go this route. Better interfaces... like CTP2 Nation/Build manager, for one... always reduce micromanagement. Automation for repetitive commands helps a lot too... like automating bombardment.

Reducing the number of map entities, including cities AND units is the other important approach. People can only concentrate on so many items (I recall a number like 7,) simultaneously. Concentration tends to degrade beyond this.

A tendency for players to group cities into administrative regions, and informational helpers, like sortable lists and triggered reminders, somewhat makes up for this... but even with this, large empires are more difficult to micromange than smaller ones.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Eliminate cities and units and it wouldn't be Civ. I'm all for a lot of these ideas and think they would make great games but there's a fine line between improving/inhancing the game to make the next version and transforming it into a completely different game.

Civilization is a classic. I would like to see it stay as true to the original spirit of the game as possible.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
Eliminate cities and units and it wouldn't be Civ. I'm all for a lot of these ideas and think they would make great games but there's a fine line between improving/inhancing the game to make the next version and transforming it into a completely different game.

Civilization is a classic. I would like to see it stay as true to the original spirit of the game as possible.

I didn't say eliminate. I said reduce the number of.

Stacking means less things to move on a map.

Larger cities (more than 21 squares) mean less cities on a given map.

Both reduce micromanagement, without removing the "civ" concepts.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
there's a fine line between improving/inhancing the game to make the next version and transforming it into a completely different game.

There is also a fine line between "staying true" to the original and being stubborn.

A lot of players "love Civ, but..."

And the micromangment required each turn to do what should be simple things (upgrade your obsolete units, move your army a little closer to the other guy, build up cities, etc...) is very often what follows in the above sentence.

The ideas in this thread are about removing that "but." We want to be able to say, "I love Civ, period." If we stick to a clunky interface that demands turns take forty minutes in the industrial age before we hit enter because "micromangment has always been in Civ," we're going to keep on making exceptions to the "I love" statement.