Micromanagement: How would you do it differently?

[SuperSmash5]

I think one of the things that can be annoying about this game is the micromanagement involved with getting the best yields out of your cities and having your workers improve tiles.

So if you were in making a new Civ game and wanted to do something about this, how would you change how city yields and improvements work in order to make them involve less micromanagement?

I've come up with a few ideas but nothing that really fixes the problem. I think being able to queue up worker actions would help or specify certain tiles to get certain improvements would help. Maybe improvements would work better if you built them from the city instead of using a worker or if the workers were tied to the city and existed within the city menu. City yields are harder to work with because the situation changes every time you grow and sometimes you want to grow fast and then suddenly stop growing. And then sometimes you want to change specialists after finishing a new building.

Any ideas? I know a lot of people who play Civ like to mod little tweaks. So maybe some of you guys have ideas for how you would deal with micromanagement.

 

[RealHuhn]

To be honest, the micromanagement is the main reason why CIV 5 is fun. Strategic depth you know.

The opposite of micromanagement is automation and we all know that it can make games incredibly flat and boring to everyone who likes to use his brain from time to time.

I've never played CIV Revolutions but I think Firaxis tried to make the series more appealing to the console crowd by making it easier and less complicated and let's be honest here: Die-hard CIV fans despised that game, from what I heard.

Bottom line: Keep the micromanagement! Combat management needs a few more grouping features and hotkeys to move troops quicker though. That part can be annoying and doesn't add anything to the strategic depth of the game.

Of course, a few tweaks to the UI and controls can't hurt either.

 

[Ryika]

To be honest, the micromanagement is the main reason why CIV 5 is fun. Strategic depth you know.

The opposite of micromanagement is automation and we all know that it can make games incredibly flat and boring to everyone who likes to use his brain from time to time.

I've never played CIV Revolutions but I think Firaxis tried to make the series more appealing to the console crowd by making it easier and less complicated and let's be honest here: Die-hard CIV fans despised that game, from what I heard.

Bottom line: Keep the micromanagement! Combat management needs a few more grouping features and hotkeys to move troops quicker though. That part can be annoying and doesn't add anything to the strategic depth of the game.

I agree.

Imagine Worker- and Tile-Micro was gone and auto-explore would work, what would be left? It's basically clicking the End Turn-Button until a City has done it's building queue or a new key tech is done.

 

[Memoryjar]

Micromanagement is not really a problem. You can have good cities with only changing the focus. If you want more micromanagement you can lock tiles worked. But focus are enough for many games.

If I could change something in Micromanagement, it's tiles expansion. When you have Petra, have a lot of sea tiles is irritating when you need to spend 140 a desert hill tiles. It's the same with Incas after construction, 250 gold for a wonderful tiles when governor bought a swamp or a jungle tile. And many other examples.

 

[Fluffball]

I am in the camp that micromanagement is fun and part of what makes the game interesting and fun and at the moment i think the tile yields and resource balance/management is in a pretty good place.
If you add more resources you simply add more micromanagement and if you simplify resources you start to make the game too simple.
There are two types of micromanagement though one being fun which involves choices and decisions and having to implement them yourself the other is just wasting time needlessly.

The worker action cue is/was a happy median between automating workers and doing it yourself. I say was as it is another classic case of something that was in previous games but got forgotten in the whole we'll just bin everything and start afresh concept rather than building on previous games. It also keeps the fun side of micromanagement while removing the time wasting side of it.

The real issue i see is the fact that you don't get notifications past a size 6 city when your city grows and just as bad for a real micromanaging annoyance is no notification when a city gains a new tile?????!!!!!!
So to ensure you are most efficient with your tile use you need to check your cities every turn to see if they are about to grow or gain a new tile.

In regard to changing specialists or even tiles worked after building a certain building at least you get told a new building has been built by being asked what to build next unless you queue your building then the only notification you get is a list of actions written in light text which is often hard to simply read because it is highlighted poorly against the game world never mind that it only pops up for a few seconds, doesn't even tell you which city(s) the notification relates to and you can't bring it back up????!!!!!

So my general improvement would be better supply of information when changes happen so you don't have to keep checking everything to find out what is going on as that is just micromanagement that is simply time consuming and time wasting rather than the good micromanagement which is about choices and making decisions.

 

[Ryika]

just as bad for a real micromanaging annoyance is no notification when a city gains a new tile?????!!!!!!
So to ensure you are most efficient with your tile use you need to check your cities every turn to see if they are about to grow or gain a new tile.

Enhanced User Interface (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263) has that as an feature. It's an awesome improvement mod and I wouldn't want to miss it anymore. <3

 

[Fluffball]

Enhanced User Interface (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263) has that as an feature. It's an awesome improvement mod and I wouldn't want to miss it anymore. <3

The pedantic answer first. We should not be relying on mods for what should be and previously were feature of the game and considering most mods don't allow you to get achievements or even a score on your own personal hall of fame many people don't use mods

Now the more relevant answer...I tried that mod and did find it visually and informatively well designed but it gave massive performance issues as i outlined in my post on this page
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263&page=25
The short version being it would crash the game on huge maps and increased game load times from 3 minutes 30 sec to over 10 minutes so it would crash the game then have to spend around 15 minutes (including basic game loading) for it to reload for it to only likely crash the game again.

So sadly the game is literally unplayable for me as i like huge maps with that mod so reverting back to the poorly designed basic interface is the lesser of the 2 evils.

 

[gozpel]

I think one of the things that can be annoying about this game is the micromanagement involved with getting the best yields out of your cities and having your workers improve tiles.

This really made me laugh!

Micromanagement in Civ5 is not micromanagement, it's just management. It's not hard to scroll through your 5 cities now and again, to see when they are about to grow. You have handy options like production/food/gold-focus and just have to swap one citizen to a different tile after the city grows. And you get a green message when a city got a new pop.

Now let's talk Civ3, when you have 53 cities...

Thank you for making me laugh, I'm sure you get the hang of it! I'm NOT patronizing you, Civ3 was very different and it was for the masters of micromanaging. Civ5 can only be annoying in this aspect if you don't have lots of time to play.

I can't but dream back to the days of Succession-games, where a friend left me save in "pristine condition", and we had maybe 40-80 cities. Before I played my 10 turns i just HAD to go through every city, and yes, most of the times I found the missing 1-2 gpt. Good times. Even if a turnset of 10 turns could take 4 hrs...

All you have to do OP, check your cities this turn. Ok, Rome will grow in 3 turns and you already locked your citizens onto food/food and gold tiles. Set it to production-focus if you have a hill or something. When your city grows it will give you 2 extra hammers into your current build (or 3 if you already mined it), then change that guy to another food tile to keep on growing.

And to end this rant, I'm not even close to compare myself against the better players here when it comes to winning. But I doubt many of them can beat me when it comes to micromanaging a city.

 

[Krajzen]

This really made me laugh!

Micromanagement in Civ5 is not micromanagement, it's just management. It's not hard to scroll through your 5 cities now and again, to see when they are about to grow. You have handy options like production/food/gold-focus and just have to swap one citizen to a different tile after the city grows. And you get a green message when a city got a new pop.

I agree. For me Civ5 is the most friendly of all complex strategy games I have ever played - it doesn't require stupid RTS speed, tedious micromanagament and it is deep yet simple to learn (I never looked into Civ5 instruction, just game tutorials + civ fanatics help the same is impossible for Paradox games )

Civ5 has also OK interface. It could be better in many aspects, especially statistics, but all these Big Buttons are really nice - I got Civ4 and think it has much worse interface and is much less intuitive.

Now let's talk Civ3, when you have 53 cities...

When Civ3 was released I was 6 years old but even if I was 16 I couldn't play it - I hate micromanaging like that.

Good times. Even if a turnset of 10 turns could take 4 hrs...

Hey, so not only me and Civ5 have problems with extremely slow late game

I had once great war between giant empires and a SINGLE TURN - the turn of my Great Invasion - took me 40 minutes

All you have to do OP, check your cities this turn. Ok, Rome will grow in 3 turns and you already locked your citizens onto food/food and gold tiles. Set it to production-focus if you have a hill or something. When your city grows it will give you 2 extra hammers into your current build (or 3 if you already mined it), then change that guy to another food tile to keep on growing.

To be honest managing citizens is important only in cases of:
- early game and early cities
- rushing with production (wonder race or enemy invasion)
- making sure Awesome Tiles are worked but there are not really many of them.

When I have 12 cities empire with powerful economy I don't really care about squishing every single hammer in every city, especially as I win and enjoy Emperor/Immortal games without such micromanagement


Personally I have much bigger problem with movement of all these units... One after another... And all these narrow passages... In terms of strategy/tactics 1UPT is waaaaaay better than Stacking and more enjoyable, but it is obnoxious when it comes to logistics

 

[Ryika]

I had once great war between giant empires and a SINGLE TURN - the turn of my Great Invasion - took me 40 minutes

Awesome. ^^ I think my longest Game took me about ~100 hours in total - a marathon-game on a huge map, with only domination enabled.

Personally I have much bigger problem with movement of all these units... One after another... And all these narrow passages... In terms of strategy/tactics 1UPT is waaaaaay better than Stacking and more enjoyable, but it is obnoxious when it comes to logistics

Imho that's not really a problem with the 1UPT-System though, it's just that there are too many units on the field in general and that the automovement-system is just awful. If only the script would circle through all the units and retry to move a unit when the field it was meant to move to was occupied by a unit that had a move-order itself, that would already be a huge improvement.

 

[Memoryjar]

One after another... And all these narrow passages... In terms of strategy/tactics 1UPT is waaaaaay better than Stacking and more enjoyable, but it is obnoxious when it comes to logistics

Sometimes, I regret to not have a drag box or possibility to make groups of units like in RTS :
«Hey, you this 8/10 units go there.
- My lords, we find a barbarian encampment on the way. What must we do ?
- Propose them some tea... Group 2, Fire ! Ok, now go THERE».

And don't tell me about present pathfinding where a unit can stop 10 turns before its destination because an AI units is on the target tiles this turn.

 

[beetle]

I agree with sentiment that the need to micromanage pathing is pain bottleneck.

Micromanagement in Civ5 is not micromanagement, it's just management. It's not hard to scroll through your 5 cities now and again, to see when they are about to grow. You have handy options like production/food/gold-focus and just have to swap one citizen to a different tile after the city grows. And you get a green message when a city got a new pop.

Sorry, you just described micro that can be optional for those that like it, but should be important than maybe it currently is. Frankly, I cannot be bothered. Minute control of my workers I actually enjoy. Minute control of my citizens, not so much. The focus choices work very well for me, thank you.

All you have to do OP, check your cities this turn. Ok, Rome will grow in 3 turns and you already locked your citizens onto food/food and gold tiles. Set it to production-focus if you have a hill or something. When your city grows it will give you 2 extra hammers into your current build (or 3 if you already mined it), then change that guy to another food tile to keep on growing.

Ugh. Too much work, not enough payoff. If the game really wanted me to do this, I would get notifications that the city was about to grow, not that it grew last turn, too late for me to capitalize on it.

But I doubt many of them can beat me when it comes to micromanaging a city.

Plenty of people seem to enjoy this aspect of the game. I am glad that you have the option. I tried it, and it makes my turns take three to five times as long. I would so much rather get more games in.

 

[McBean]

In regard to changing specialists or even tiles worked after building a certain building at least you get told a new building has been built by being asked what to build next unless you queue your building then the only notification you get is a list of actions written in light text which is often hard to simply read because it is highlighted poorly against the game world never mind that it only pops up for a few seconds, doesn't even tell you which city(s) the notification relates to and you can't bring it back up????!!!!!

I've stopped using the building queue when building buildings that you can assign specialists to. I've burned myself a number of times by forgetting to assign the specialists right away. I'll be halfway or more thru the next building before I would notice my mistake. I'm usually pretty good with my tile management but this specialist assignment mistake still gets me.

I like the idea of a worker queue. It would be nice to queue up a few tile improvements and let the workers go on their merry little way. This to me would be better than fully automating them.

 

[SuperSmash5]

This really made me laugh!

-stuff-

Geez, it's not like I've never played this game before and don't know what I'm talking about. It's like, in Civ 4, where you constantly have to balance your growth against your happiness. It's not so bad when you're managing the 3 cities to reach their initial cap. But mid-late in the game when you have more like 12-20 cities and your happiness is constantly changing so you have to keep changing your food yields, that's annoying. The same goes if you conquer 5-6 cities at once and you're sending your team of workers out to fix stuff and you've got improvements finishing every turn and you have to keep checking to see when you've grown so you can whip basic buildings. I don't play Civ 5 too much and I know it doesn't have the same situation as Civ 4, but it's basically the same idea.

It's micromanagement because you can't express how you want your city to look like to the game in one action. You have to split it up into a series of little actions over time even if what you want hasn't changed. If I want my cities to grow to max population and then maximize yields in a certain way, this is not easy to communicate. If I want to build a series of improvements, I have to specify them one by one as the opportunity to make them becomes available.

This is why things like worker automation and city governors even exist. I don't like them because they don't seem to optimize the way that I would. They're not ideal but they're there for a reason. I'm wondering if we can do better then this kind of automation that doesn't quite understand what you want. There are ways to streamline decisions without reducing their power. It's like how if you want a worker to build a road, you don't have to check up on it after each tile is completed.

And on that note, I have to say this is a really thoughtful community. You know, I was expecting that people would think I was weird for putting thought into this part of the game. So, yeah, good on that.

 

[TractorBoy]

I very rarely automate my workers, but this thread got me thinking.
If you have your Cities on food, production or gold focus, would the automated workers recognize this and act accordingly?

 

[beetle]

That would make sense. It seems to me that the pop-up terrain improvement suggestions change based on city focus.

 

[tramwajg]

Thanks for all answers

As I have seen, most of you like to micromanage every single city. I also like it, but when I have 10-15 cities, not 50 or more because then it becomes boring to make the same build queue in every single city. I remember playing as Poland in civ 4 world war 2 scenario, finally I was attacking america and I had over one hundred of cities. One turn was taking around 10 minutes only for micromanagement (improvements, buildings).

Of course, first turn of big wars are nice and I like spending a lot of time on them but when I have to build next building in every single city and do exactly the same, it is getting boring because I want to return to the battlefield. And I usually forget about many important things.

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

It isn't micromanagement if it has an affect on the game, it is strategic choices.

What has to be avoided are choices that have no affect (or very minimal) because that creates tedius and boring gameplay.

Civ 5 seems to have removed most of the tedius moves (at a some cost to strategy and gameplay because they also removed some micromagement that mattered (IMO), which I won't go into (been discussed off and on for years now)). Always trade-offs in this area.

Anyways, it sems to me that early on you have to select worker choices and modify your city yield, ect., but that typically ends after awhile. Rarely do I feel the need to hand choose tile spots to work, even while on diety, after a city is size 7+. The drop down menu choices more than suffice (because matches that require constant adjustments to that level of detail are very rare but also really awesome when (if) you win them).

And bottom line is just don't do it if you don't want to . Once you get a big lead it doesn't matter, puppet more cities that you take over. Or raze em all, I rarely play those kinds of games to the end, you know you have won. Only worth it if someone big is left but once his force is crushed, its over. Of course, obsession to play to the end has had me finish off many games over 3+ hours when victory is clear. Addicts, all of us

 

[gozpel]

Geez -Stuff-

I see your point there, when you mention 12-20 cities. By then micro isn't that important. Except happiness. Only players like me would still be doing it, you don't have to as you're winning the game already, basically. And believe me, I DO understand your hesitation to do the micro.

Remember to keep an eye on your happy vs population growth. If you're going haywire in growth, it's a good time to stop that and concentrate on production. This will give you time to build colloseums and circuses and whatever you have to build up happiness.

A few puppets can drown your happy like nothing, so I have a rule to keep my max unhappy at -9, I prefer to +1, but sometimes you are warring and have to pay for it.

The better war-mongerers on here have a tactical plan when they want to get an early Domination-win. Normally 2 cities, build up to 3-4 pop, spam archers and halt growth. Then they go out and puppet the world.

I'm bad at this strategy, but I'm good making 30-40 pop cities and can live with having only 10 cities. And I usually win on Emp/Imm.

 

[beetle]

As I have seen, most of you like to micromanage every single city.

I would be curious to know how common it is to lock down tiles. The sample in this forum is skewed of course. I would think that if Farixis really cared to support this audience, there would be a prompt on the turn cities are about to grow, not turn after!