Any ideas for reducing unit micromanagement?

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There is a lot about civ6 that I love. But one area that I think is a big weakness is the area of unit micromanagement. civ6 has a lot of different unit types that the player has to move manually and one by one. You got military units, builders, military engineers, Great People, rock bands and religious units. They all have to be moved manually. The micro can get a bit tedious.

Here are a couple ideas I brainstormed for reducing unit micro:

- Military formations.
Basically, this idea is that you could link up adjacent units and they would move in formation if the geography allowed. I am not talking about stacking. The units would still be adjacent to each other in different tiles but they would move in unison. So for example, you could put a ranged unit behind a melee unit and move both in union. The ranged unit would always stay behind the melee unit. Or you could have 2 melee units side by side and they would stay next to each other as they move. This would allow you to move several units more easily without having to move them each one by one. It would help with the military unit micro.

Builders
Why not let the player preplan their tile improvements? Basically, click a tile and designate it farm 1, click another tile and designate it farm 2, click another tile and designate mine 3. Then, you could automate builders and they would follow your plan, going to farm 1 then farm 2 then mine 3. This would allow players to preplan their city's tiles and reduce the micro of actually having to move builders manually for each charge.

OR

Do a hybrid system of civ6's builders with Call to Power's system. When you build a builder in the production queue, instead of getting a unit on the map, your city center would get charges that you could just spend by clicking on a tile within range. This way, you avoid the micro of moving and using a charge. You just generate charges and then spend them directly on a tile.

Great People
Frankly some Great People don't even need to be units IMO. Great Generals obviously need to be on the map. And yes, there are some GP where it really matters where they go. For example, GP that give you walls, it matters what city you put the GP in. But why do Great Writers/Artists/Musicians need to be units when they are just going to give you great works anyway? It seems like several unnecessary steps to give you a GP unit on the map, move the unit to a district, then get your great work. If the unit is going to give you a great work, just give me the great work directly and let me move it to the desired slot from the great works screen. Also, some of the other GP bonuses like a Great Scientist giving me a couple eurekas, doesn't need to be a unit. Just give me the eurekas when I get my GS!

Religious Units
Let me escort missionaries with apostles or apostles with gurus. This would at least let me stack 2 religious units together to help reduce the micro a bit.

These changes alone could drastically reduce micro.
 
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Well, I've just done up a Stacking Unit Formation mod for my use which allows land and naval ranged and melee units to stack and be part of formations. This mod essentially takes the unit formation bits from Gedemon's Combat Stacking Overhaul and applies it to naval units as well (but excluding recon, so recon keep their auto explore function).

The good thing about this is the AI makes use of the stacking and makes unit micromanagement a tad less annoying while not bringing back stacks of doom.

I wonder if this can be applied to religious units as well...
 
Honestly, I remember grouping units in warcraft 2, so the formation idea was possible in games over 2 decades ago. There really is no reason why you can't just select a group of units near each other. I think you could even do it in civ4, but I could be remembering wrong.
 
Honestly, I remember grouping units in warcraft 2, so the formation idea was possible in games over 2 decades ago. There really is no reason why you can't just select a group of units near each other. I think you could even do it in civ4, but I could be remembering wrong.

Civ4 had nothing to do. Units didnt need a tile back then, you just put all your 50 units in 1 tile, and then each of them attacked against the enemies stack. Each time, the unit with the highest defense was used to defend.

And you cant commpare it to warcraft either. The pathing/positions of the units in civ5 and 6 is much more important than on an rts. When you tell a group of units to move in warcraft, it doesnt really matter much how they advance. In civ it means everything. Also, there isnt even space to move more than about 4 units at the same time (using a combat ready path)

I feel you, I hate late game wars bc of how annoying it is to move all the unitls. But there isnt a simple solution. Its the price we pay for having 1upt (1 unit per tile) which makes the strategy much better than when we had stacks of doom.
 
Unit formations are not really compatible with the terrain in Civ VI. Any such formation would effectively be limited to a speed of 1, which would probably make things more tedious than less; either your troops would have to move incredibly slowly, or you'd be constantly forming and unforming the formation. resulting in even more micromanagement.

The best way that I know of to handle this problem is to use stacks but then have a separate tactical scale for 1UPT resolution of battles. It works well in games like Age of Wonders, but it would be a dramatic change for Civilization, so I doubt it will ever happen.
 
Unit formations are not really compatible with the terrain in Civ VI. Any such formation would effectively be limited to a speed of 1, which would probably make things more tedious than less; either your troops would have to move incredibly slowly, or you'd be constantly forming and unforming the formation. resulting in even more micromanagement.

The best way that I know of to handle this problem is to use stacks but then have a separate tactical scale for 1UPT resolution of battles. It works well in games like Age of Wonders, but it would be a dramatic change for Civilization, so I doubt it will ever happen.

I thought that would be the direction for Civ7. Just as they unstacked cities in Civ6, they should move combat off the strategic map.
 
So you changed the AI to make it use it?
No need. The AI appears to already stack the units if they are in different formation classes, as opposed to mods that (only partially) remove the 1UPT limitation globally which allows the player to stack but the AI can't make use of it. The AI still appears to deal with the units individually though, rather than as an actual formation.

Besides, I think allowing 1 melee and 1 ranged unit to stack still keeps the basics of 1UPT tactical gameplay while reducing the problems (a little) by allowing a more concentrated attack or defensive line and reduces the tendency for units to be spread all over the place.

The formation class stacking can potentially also be applied for other types of units (cavalry units, anti-cav etc - need to test this), which results in a stacked combined-arms type of army group.
 
Formations that allow two complimentary units to merge temporarily. Shouldn’t be too different from the link function.

Pike and Shot comes to mind. A separate unit is unnecessary, just group a pikeman with a musketeer, select the formation, and voila. Combined arms.

Attach a fighter escort to your bomber squadron. Join your swordsmen and spearmen in a shieldwall. Maybe two hoplites make a phalanx, or two legions make a testudo. Whatever works.

Then the key as the opposing player is figuring out how to crack these “harder” nuts.
 
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