Micromanagment OR NOT??

[Mark_Everson]

How did he do that?!

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...

[MarkG]

how did I do it?? html, what else?

the polls takes for granted that the automation options are decent

perhaps we can have another poll on how good the so far automation possbilities are

[ember]

I have proposed many regions systems to reduce the amount of build micromanagment. Look for them in the old regions and economics threads in the wish list...

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[~LordLMP~]

Hi, just reading this thread and just wanna post my opinions and ideas.

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.



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-LordLMP

[Zanzibar]

I like Krenske's idea with the 3 building queues, but I would do it this way:
1. a units queue. The question here is: who controls this queue ? The player (of course, if he wants to), the military advisor or the local governor?
2. a local improvements queue (similar with SMAC)
This 2 queues would be financed from the local shield production.
3. the special projects queue, financed by the central (federal) government. Let's say you have a "development of territories" advisor, and he tells you: "Sire, we must built an Aqueduct in Philadelphia and a Hospital in New Orleans" and you say "OK" and give him 20% from the federal budget. Then he begins to build in Philadelphia and New Orleans, but from a queue which can be controlled only centrally (from the government), so there is only one globalized queue => less micromanagement (or more, if you want to tell him exactly what to build). Maybe the units queue can be do it in the same way, controlled by the military advisor.
By the way, I think the budget concept should be far more elaborated than it was in Civ2. After all, you can control a country very well via the budget. Maybe each ministry should have his own budget, and build what he want with his money.

[vanbeke]

The only issue that I have with the micro management problem is the time it takes late in the game -- it is necessary to set the priorities (and to speed the production along). As it may be necessary to immediately defend the city (depending on the technology: SDI, SAM, City walls, Coastal fortress), or be able to move units in and out (airport or starport), or build a defensive unit, I would not want to leave any of these decisions up to an AI that could not be overridden.

So I see micromanagement as a necessary component of the game

[fish_damage]

just a thought on building up new citys. Perhaps the introduction of a unit to give a city some shields, as the caravan does for wonders?

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Speling? Ey thort ownli mayjes cood dew thaat?

[jenzler]

I love micromanagment. What troubles me is that I can't move a unit from one city to another an opposite sides of a continent with the move command. Even though their is a rail line the unit decides to take a short cut across a mountain or something. I hope the AI can be improved in this respect. Also there shoul;d be some sort of "note-pad" feature; like 'this unit is available to go fortify a city' or 'this engineer is available for a new task'. By the time I click through all my units and cities (in the late game) I can't remember what needs to be done where. If I could line up some available engineers and then assign them to tasks later (like when I find some pollution) rather than trying to go find an available engineer and then getting distracted.... It is most annoying to forget to fortify a new city and have it overun by barbarians (I admit it, it's happened more than once, what kind of leader am I?) especially in the end game when I have ALL SORTS of units available to fartify with.

[Krenske]

Fish_damage ?????!!!??

I proposed the pooled production to allow smaller/starting cities to build their initial improvements quickly using national based production. Adding new units would be bad I tmink. I refer you to my above point on grouping several settlers together at the start of a new city to jump start it considerably. From the middle of the game on you should have no problem getting 5-6 settlers together to rapidly found a new city.

[fish_damage]

Krenske:
As to the username, it's a long story. Including a latex plaice.

I like your ideas, but if the developers choose to stick to the old civI/II system, I thought they could include a caravan like unit to allow you to develop cities faster.

[Matthevv]

Just to add my two pennyworth -

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.

[Krenske]

Mathevv,

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.

Note:- this is well covered in the regional and economic models threads in the lists group.

[Blue Waldo]

Why not have the best of both worlds. Just make the game so that civs are only 15 or so cities. This way you will be able to mico-manage and it wont be over barring. Plus it would get rid of the ICS. Just make cities over 15 HIGHly incress the chance that your civ will split into 2 if there is any unhappiness.

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BlueWaldo, GameLeague
bluewaldo@hotmail.com

[Sikander]

I liked MOO II's governors, who came with some advantages (like increased food production %s etc.) Of course they had their costs as well, but it was interesting to allocate your governors depending on their abilities. Perhaps cities which are a certain distance from your capital, or overseas require a viceroy, who might increase the chance of a revolt or civil war. Perhaps Governors would have ratings in the following areas:

Defence: % increase for combat units in the city radius.

Loyalty: % chance of the city breaking away from the empire.

Food/Shield/Arrow ratings would increase (or decrease) those areas of production by a certain percentage.

Justice: Reduces (or increases) the number of drones/unhappy folks.

Perhaps require each city to have a Governor, and as your Civ grows larger, the quality of the Governors gets worse.

[MarkG]

three months later, the final results

Micromanagment or Not?

Yes!	786 / 33%
I can live with it	221 / 9%
No!	91 / 3%
Give me automation options	1058 / 45%
Microwhat?	166 / 7%

2322 total votes