Micro or Myth ?

[ACEofHeart]

Was one of the "supposely" key features of MOO3 to take out the Micro-Management that was present in its predecessors ??
I dunno, I played MOO2 hundreds of times and never felt any micromanagement pains.. By the time I got a few new planets and researched key techs, I used auto-build on just about every colony. The only thing I ever inserted was newly designed or re-fitted ships.. and when any battle was too large I just used Auto there too as the AI always did a respectful job...

And for someone thats trying to "streamline" a game for the player, how did they come up with that MOO3's Interface and ridiculous long travel moves.. ???

And maybe I'll also start another thread as to the mysterious absence of demos !!!!

[Trystan]

I often wonder myself about what people consider micromanagement and if there really is such a thing as macromanagement. The way I see it, micromanagement is doing anything at the smallest level. As in MOO3, if you go into your build queues or DEA screen, that's micromanagement. Putting specific ships into build queues, then putting them into task forces is micromanagement.

It all depends on game context. If you could build a building brick by brick or click on the name for it to be built, the first way would be micromanagement and the 2nd would be macro. But if the game didn't allow you to build it brick by brick, then the 2nd would be micro.

To end my ramblings, MOO3 has just as much micromanagement as MOO2 did. It is just that they don't have the proper micromanagement tools to make it easy. It makes you feel like you have to jump through hurdles to do it. There's not enough feedback on what you are doing.

[kalbear]

I totally disagree. MoO3 has nothing like the headaches that MoO2 did in the later stages of the game. In fact, it's actually kind of a pleasure to play later on when your empire is stable and there aren't shortages - it's when you start seeing the beauty of the viceroy system. Instead of, say, having to build all the various new improvements I get from tech, I can feel assured knowing that the viceroy will do it if it makes sense to do so and I've emphasized it enough in my plans.

I do a LOT less MM in this game than I ever did in MoO2. There is still some, particularly in the early game when you're setting up your first colony, but it starts going away very quickly.

[Trystan]

Didn't you ever use the auto-build in MOO2? If you did, how can you say you needed to micromanage anything there. I only micro'd what I wanted to. By mid-late game that was only my ships since I love watching the graphics and ships going boom.

[kalbear]

Even in the mid game, it's hell if you want to, say, upgrade all your planets with robominers. Or autolabs, or deep core mines. Anything like that becomes utterly ludicrous, quickly.

Do you have to do it? Nope, but it's not optimal and the computer won't do it for you.

Autobuild in the late game almost always ended up doing 'trade goods'. Which is fine, but not exactly stellar AI. By comparison, the MoO3 AI is pumping out better industrial powerhouses than my originally designed worlds ever were, and my poor homeworld is relegated back to being boring.

All by simply making and applying development plans liberally. I like this idea much better; trusting the AI doesn't come naturally, but it does eventually come.

[Trystan]

So in short, MOO3 has a better auto-build than that of MOO2.

[Proteus_MST]

And an Autobuild you can better adjust to your own needs.

In MOO 2 I never trusted the Autobuild too much after seeing it doing silly things, so I always managed all of my Planets by myself.

In MOO3 I have only a few Planets where I manage the Military Building Queue by myself (usually the economically strongest, which also have the largest Shipyards in my Empire) and sometimes I place some DEAs by Hand.
For all the other things I trust my Viceroys. They do a really good job if you set up the right Development Plans.

[Iasius]

In moo2 the autobuild feature would usually build buildings first that i don't really want to be build until all the various production bonus buildings exist.
For example it would try to build a star fortress that takes 100 turns or so to build, but skip the automated factory which would be built in a fraction of the time, but would combined with building a star fortess after you build the af actually get you that sf faster.
Doesn't seem to happen in moo3. Just set migration for new planets and watch them grow fast.
I think most annoying micro in moo2 could have been avoided if they had included a custom built queues that you could reuse. I pretty much always used the same order of buildings for my new planets, but I still had to click those 7 items every time.
OTH in moo3 sometimes when I deplete my ground troops reserve I have tens of magazines and hackers left over, but the ai still builts mostly those support units.
But in general, fix the PD weapons and let the AI actually invade me instead of just blocking my outlying colonies to death then I'm pretty much fine with moo3.
But I read somewhere QS doesn't want to do a patch for several weeks. Ah well, guess some modders will have to do their job for them (I hope).

[darcy]

Moo1 autobuild was best.

"You can build a shield now. Want to adjust all sliders accordingly?" And then choose the percentage you want to invest.

Can't imagine how many clicks such a simple thing would take in Moo3.

[kalbear]

None, darcy - if it's a better fit for a planet, that planet will build it automatically. If it couldn't spend anything on planetary economy and then you get a tech or three that improves it, they'll go nuts.

If you wanted to micromanage everything though, it would take a while. Fortunately, that's almost never necessary.

I guess I find that infinitely wonderful. It takes out a large part of the mid-late game hatred I had about, well, almost any TBS game I've ever played- having to develop and redevelop all these colonies one after another.

[Porkins]

Originally posted by kalbear
By comparison, the MoO3 AI is pumping out better industrial powerhouses than my originally designed worlds ever were, and my poor homeworld is relegated back to being boring.

That's just the problem for a guy like me. I want to be the one who figures out how to make a powerhouse planet, then gain the satisfaction of doing it. For me, I gain nothing by letting the AI figure out how to solve my supply / development problems for me.

I understand those who don't want to play this way. But for me, it's like playing (for example) Caesar III, and the computer handles all the city building. I just show up for the battles.

The macromanagement features are hard to figure out, and poorly documented. I'm still trying to get the hang of development plans. I applaud the intentions behind these plans, but either the execution is off, or it's the lack of documentation, or both.

A couple things that QS really should have done otherwise / ought to address in a patch or update, though: the Dev Plan assembly screen UI is really horrible. It's really tedious to pull down, pull down, pull down, click, x3 for each plan. Lack of save feature is also dismaying, as are bugs regarding filling / displaying more than 12 plans.

I understand the new approach the devs were going for, but so far I don't see that they made the game any easier to play by introducing the macro / limiting the micro. Except for the people who fly on full autopilot, I think people generally spend as much time managing this game, whether it's through the (tedious) task force construction interface, the repeated trips to the (also tedious) ship design screen, to the dev plans and back... not to mention the people who are trying to manage their military build queues, going through five layers of clicks to do so for each planet....

In short, I don't think our mileage per click is any better for all this...

But I'm still trying, and to be honest, enjoying this game somewhat (although I have yet to be attacked by a capable AI...). It's just that the implementation seems to be so far off in so many different areas.

[kalbear]

I thought I'd hate that too, but really, once you find that optimal solution it's somewhat silly to not have it be automated. Having the AI know what it's doing is so...well, refreshing, perhaps I'm still aglow because of it.

The documentation in this game is absolutely horrendous. I've found most things out by either reading the actual game information in the spreadsheets or by asking others to do the same. Documentation for this sort of game needs to be in-depth and useful. Neither is the case here. And sometimes, it's flat-out wrong. That's a big flaw in the game, IMO - more information needs to be there. Everywhere.

And I totally agree about the dev plan screen. Only 12 dev plans? No scrolling through? No replace for each? Gods...who the hell designed it? Add to that that it doesn't 'commit' changes, only additions and deletions, and it's a pain. Fortunately, once you set them up you rarely have to play with them much, so it's a good thing usually.

My mileage per click seems greater to me. One of the things that tickled me greatly was that in the late game, I had behemoth tech and was pumping out them on my big 12 planets through MM. I had also designed smaller dreadnoughts and battleships, because I thought the behemoths would be too big. Ended up not using them at all.

However, the AI did. Every turn I could field a full armada - 3 to 4 behemoths and 10 battleships/dreads. it was absolutely perfect for me - I didn't have to worry about building all the smaller ships that go into a TF, just optimizing and overspending on the smaller ones. It rocked.