Casual clicking/micro management

[Apocalyptic]

I hear some support for just casual play for people that never go into the cities and people who are very careful and prefer to micro manage. Where do I learn to micromanage? I tried the other night and messed everything up.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Micromanaging is done to get the most out of your cities. People can either use the governors, just let their cities grow but without governors, or micromanage most of their cities almost each turn.

I tend to be the let cities grow without governors person, but occasionally I'll micromanage a bit. A good article (and indepth!) can be found here.

PS: You can't really mess up micromanagement - you'll just make your cities less productive.

 

[punkbass2000]

It requires a lot of foresight and otherwise boring calculations. Eg. You have a city the produces 3fpt and needs 20 food to grow (a typical town without a granary). It will grow in seven turns but will waste one food (3*7=21>20). On the last turn before growth (or any single turn before hand) you can move one citizen to a square that produces one less food and gain any extra commerce or shields that that square produces over the original (maybe go from irrigated floodplain to irrigated plains, for example) without losing any growth. Further more, for one turn, another city may be able to make use of the (presumably) high food square and perhaps improve its growth by one turn. MM is essentially the art of not wasting anything as much as possible and can be done to various degrees.

 

[IbnSina]

Micromanaging can be as simple or complicated as you like. The most basic form is adjusting the science slider for the last e.g. two turns before you learn a new tech in order to maximize the gold you get to keep without slowing the research. At the other end of the spectrum are those who examine citizen work in every city every turn. Most casual players are somewhere in between. It's all a matter of what you enjoy (and the level you want to play).

 

[Zild]

By the sounds of it I'm quite a deep micromanager (doesn't translate to fast-paced multiplayer games too well!)

That said, since I don't like straying from Regent because it "cheats" for the AI, but since I do want a bit more of a challenge, I think I'll start MMing less, and maybe even use governors - this could be deemed more realistic, as a civ's leader would not usually tell a city how it should work, or even sometimes what it should produce.

This will also cut my game time a great deal

 

[Crimso]

Micro-managing entails that you have a larger end that you're working for. Civ is for most of us only as rewarding as the amount of effort we put into it (to a point of course). Outline some goals before the game begins: the victory condition you want to win by, your foriegn policy, stuff like that. Once you get into the game, start planning ahead. This is why Civ is turn-based. Make some realistic goals for yourself for expansion, war, economy, culture etc. Know when you will hit your Golden Age to maximize its effects.

Here's an example of some basic micromanagment: say you're producing a steady stream of Swordsmen for an early conquest. They cost 30 shields each, so in the cities making them, try to work the tiles in such a way so that you yeild 5, 6, 10, 15 or 30 uncorrupted shields a turn. Even producing 11 shields a turn is a potential waste, because you could change a few labourers around to get more surplus food insteading of producing 3 unused shields. Know how many you are going to make, so you can anticipate when you're force will be ready, and when you'll stop producing units that you'll never use but might still pay for. If it isn't obvious, you cannot micromanage with automated workers.

One of the first steps you can take is making sure that no size 12 city is producing a single extra piece of food before the discovery of Sanitation. The advantage you'll have over the AI is astonishing: just one extra sheild each in 20 cities over the course of 50 turns is 1000 more sheilds, enough to buy 10 marketplaces, or add 14 more Knights to your army. The average amount of shields I find you'll garner from micromanagement is closer to 4 or 5 per city, so after 50 turns you will come up with 4000 to 5000 more shields then the AI. This is why I can't agree with you Zild, because the AI definitly needs to 'cheat' if we're going to have a challenge here. I won't turn on the goveners as an 'equalizer' because there is really no going back after getting that feeling of acomplishment. It is not more realistic because a governor would not produce enough extra food to feed 5000 people only to throw it all away.

I am by no means a hard-core mircomanager, in fact I only got into it 10 or 15 games ago (although I stopped using automated workers really early). Look around the board (JOIN THE DEMOGAME!) and you'll find people who put Diety and Sid to shame because of their admirable attention to detail. And as I said before, micromanagement is a means to an end. Do not bother micromanaging if you haven't defined your end.

 

[Zild]

I would have to disagree on one point - sometimes, you have to live with "wasted" resources. The style I play - particularly if I'm playing a One City Challenge - often sees my cities at maximum size. It would be pointless to remove a citizen from a square that produce 4 food, 3 shields and 4 commerce if the best alternative has, say, 3 food, 2 shields and 3 commerce...

But the basic ideal is the same - city growth is typically more of a priority than production, but as soon as you can't grow, re-prioritise some more.

As for the golden numbers of production (those by which the shields required can be divided without leaving a remainder), I actually disagree there sometimes too - when building spearmen (20 shields) for example, I often find it best to produce 7 shields for two turns, then cut down to 6 shields (whilst gaining a commerce boost) for the third.

In fact, if you play this really well, it can also be possible to minimise the losses due to corruption - for example, a city might be able to produce a 40-shield improvement in three turns. You could build it in three 14-shield turns, or two 13-shield turns and a 14-shield turn. If in this example the 13th shield was corrupted, however, you would need 14 shields for two turns and 15 for the third - a total of 3 shields lost to corruption. Depending on the lay of the land, it might be better to produce 12 shields (none corrupted) for two turns, and then 16 shields in the third turn - only one shield corrupted in total. Obviosuly this only applies in certain situations, but when it does, it's worth taking advantage of...

 

[doolally]

-i micro happiness and the science slider. which, i guess is really the same thing, cos i'm moving the luxuries slider to manage happiness

-imho there's no reason for my cities to ever go into disorder.

-edit: oh, i also micro the shields in the early part of the game to give myself a boost. i scan the cities and whenever something is going to be built in 1 turn i pop in and micro the shields so i don't waste any. i usually stop this when i can't count how many shields are left in the production queue

 

[Apocalyptic]

Where do I find info to do micromanagement???

 

[thetrooper]

Where do I find info to do micromanagement???

Post #2, by Ginger Ale.

 

[Tomoyo]

The most annoying city is one where you have a lot of flood plains and hills/mountains. You need to keep switching between high food and high shields, accounting for the food boz and the production box, not to mention keeping track of starvation and its effects on WLTKD.

 

[Kuningas]

That's why I run governors in non-settler factory cities

 

[MrRats]

Yeah, I always use governers!