Civ 4 an end to Micromanagement?

[ThERat]

don't know whether someone brought this up before. But I would like to say that whoever claimed that Civ4 has less MM than Civ3 is completely off. In the few games I have been playing, city management is as important as ever.
Focussing on research or gold versus shields requires constant MM. Also, in order to get settlers out, you again need to MM. Another factor is that cities are prohibitively expensive initially and this gives rise to MM in order to avaio bankruptcy.

Am I alone here to say MM has not been eliminated at all?

 

[logical_psycho]

They never said it was eliminated, you can automate it.... and now it works better than before. If city management would have been removed I wouldn't have bought the game.

 

[cleverhandle]

The "no MM" rumor has definitely been exaggerated. Managing your workers to develop your cities in an effective and focused manner is still awfully important, as can easily be seen by using a spy to see what a crappy job the AI still does of it. But I think that what *is* true is that the more tedious MM is gone. When I study the tile manager to decide what orders to give the workers, it's a more strategic decision that takes into account my long-term plans and short-term needs for that city. As opposed to "mine green, irrigate brown, rail everything". The carrying-over of overflow is also a big help. But yeah, ignoring the finer points of managing workers, builds, and your economy is still a bad idea.

 

[ThERat]

They never said it was eliminated, you can automate it

well, you could do that in Civ3 already, automate workers and set city on governor, if you don't mind crappy results

"mine green, irrigate brown, rail everything"

It wasn't as extreme as that, under anything but despo you also would need irrigated grass etc. it was all about getting a certain spt or growth. Or specialist corrupt cities.

Overall I am happy that the rioting is gone, that was a major flaw. Or no overflow. But now, you again need to check, is your city still happy? If not stop grwoth and go for shields etc. In my mind not such a huge step, though personally I am not unhappy.

But I just wanted to say that there were surely enough boasters telling us MM is almost completely unecessary.

 

[warpstorm]

I usually don't bother micromanaging. I actually use the new governors and find that they do decently. Perfect? No. Good enough that I don't have to check every city every turn and tweak them? Yes.

 

[Sadan01]

As far as units are concerned, I like the fact that you can queue up commands for them to do. Such as with a worker, I can:

1. Tell the worker to move to a certain tile.
2. Build a mine.
3. Then road it.
4. Then move on and repeat.

Nice! Worker Management was one of the things that got me bored really quick in the end-game of Civ3 (especially on larger maps). Now I find that these new commands make this less agonizing.

I haven't played the game on any difficulty higher than Prince however on Prince, there isnt too much of a need to MM your cities. Only when you are in need of more production or gold etc - i.e. you want to specialise them a little more.

 

[cleverhandle]

It wasn't as extreme as that, under anything but despo you also would need irrigated grass etc. it was all about getting a certain spt or growth. Or specialist corrupt cities.

Absolutely - I was being a bit glib. But still, Civ3 city development was much more formulaic. Essentially (in productive cities), you simply wanted to work bonus tiles first, and then trade shields for food using mines/irrigation until you hit the fpt number you wanted. Some of that is still true, but improvements like cottages and windmills along with the new needs to actually maintain irrigation channels and health levels make it much less cut-and-dried.

Overall I am happy that the rioting is gone, that was a major flaw. Or no overflow. But now, you again need to check, is your city still happy? If not stop grwoth and go for shields etc. In my mind not such a huge step, though personally I am not unhappy.

Yes, I still spend plenty of time in the city details screen and don't really understand how anyone could claim to play well without doing so. And like you, I'm not unhappy - it seems that more of that time is spent thinking about interesting choices rather than formulaic ones.

But I just wanted to say that there were surely enough boasters telling us MM is almost completely unecessary.

I don't think people were really "boasting" about it. Just that less MM was one of the claims made by the devs. And certainly, it is partly true. Just not completely gone, nor should it be IMO.

 

[Panzeh]

While you can have lots of cities, they all need to be reasonably profitable(meaning no superfluous cities) and you need to be gradual.

 

[lysander]

Overflow production and research has drastically reduced micro management. If you wanted perfection in any previous civ game, you had to swtich your workers around in every city every time you had one turn to build something, as you were wasting all your excess shields. You also had to raise your tax rate so that you werent getting extra science when you discovered something, as that too would be wasted. These mundane activities are pointless in Civ 4.

 

[atog]

well, you could do that in Civ3 already, automate workers and set city on governor, if you don't mind crappy results

it's SUREtainly much smarter than the civ 3 one. like it will balance growth and production according to what you are building.
example:
1) when you are building settler and worker, it maximize total food and production altogether. (like since food all goes to production, the AI will decide to go for the mined plains hill with iron and no growth for a 1man city)
2) building defending units. the AI will put more emphasize on production while not maximizing it to reduce growth. especially in small city when 1 hammer means 60 turns, 2 means 30.... etc...
i find it sometimes better than what i can do. just occationally. but i really can depend on it when some cities just dont matter.

you sound like a perfectionist. like all 35 cities must be doing their best even if it means an hour a turn LOL

 

[MarcAntiny]

I usually don't bother micromanaging. I actually use the new governors and find that they do decently. Perfect? No. Good enough that I don't have to check every city every turn and tweak them? Yes.

I have to disagree... I usually focus a couple of cities on great people and find that the damn AI controlled cities are constantly trying to use specialist in every city when I have the city set to grow, or produce, instead the have merchants and artists in the city... damn waste, constantly checking the AI and forcing them not to use specialists...

 

[ThERat]

you sound like a perfectionist. like all 35 cities must be doing their best even if it means an hour a turn LOL

well, I play in SG's and alone as well.
And when I play alone I tend to get lazy and don't check that often, maybe every few turns and I get freaking annoyed with tile assignments at times.
An example: there are tiles that give 2food and 1 gold versus 2 food and 3 gold. Guess which tile the citizen is assigned to???

Now, even in Civ3 I set all on governor but wondered why I struggled on emperor. If you wanted to go beyond that, MM was the way (of course a proper strategy as well).
I don't find Civ4 much different in that respect. It's ok to automate for the casual gamer, but once you try higher difficulty, the only way to make up for the AI bonus is by optimizing things and that means MM.

 

[Mercade]

As far as units are concerned, I like the fact that you can queue up commands for them to do. Such as with a worker, I can:

1. Tell the worker to move to a certain tile.
2. Build a mine.
3. Then road it.
4. Then move on and repeat.

Haven't found out how to do that. How do you queue worker actions?

An important element of micromanaging that has been removed is the optimization of science beakers and production hammers per technology or building so that the excess isn't wasted by lowering your science slider and raising it again the next turn. Excess beakers and hammers are now simply put towards the next technology, unit or building. It rocks!

 

[GenericKen]

Gotta agree that overflow was long overdue for civilization. It was ridiculous that the older games literally had you counting beans to time your settler pop just right.

 

[zagaz]

Haven't found out how to do that. How do you queue worker actions?

IIRC it is by holding down the shift key as you click on the actions for the selected worker.

 

[Sadan01]

Haven't found out how to do that. How do you queue worker actions?

Zagaz is correct. With the worker selected, you can hold down the shift key, and then assigned orders. Such as with a worker on an unimproved tile with unimproved tiles around it (step by step):

1. Hold down shift and select farm, for instance.
2. Shift still held down, select road (you'll notice where normally Civ will show you the run-down of the unit selected, a queue will appear with the turns listed).
3. Still with shift held down, use the mouse to "move" the worker to another tile.
4. With shift still held down, repeat to your hearts content.

To make the worker go do his assigned tasks, let up the shift key.

I have found this, besides all the other good points in this thread, to be a VERY useful addition as I absolutely hate having to give workers orders every single time. I have other things to think about such as city/building management and other strategies.

 

[yoshi74]

You can automate it, but as in civIII you lose the advantage you can get by MM the cities by yourself.
And i still think the advantage of MM vs. goveneurs is significant. So when moving up city governeurs are like automated workers: Don't do it.

 

[Bast]

City management is essential to Civ. Only reason why I play it.

 

[eldar]

With the worker selected, you can hold down the shift key, and then assigned orders. Such as with a worker on an unimproved tile with unimproved tiles around it (step by step):

1. Hold down shift and select farm, for instance.
2. Shift still held down, select road (you'll notice where normally Civ will show you the run-down of the unit selected, a queue will appear with the turns listed).
3. Still with shift held down, use the mouse to "move" the worker to another tile.
4. With shift still held down, repeat to your hearts content.

To make the worker go do his assigned tasks, let up the shift key.

Is this in the manual?! If not it needs to go in Strategy / Tips. Very handy.

The key to working with the Governor are the six 'emphasis' buttons below the 'governor on' button. They do work well. In particular, de-emphasize growth is great, it'll balance food / city size automatically, assign specialists as necessary, and can also be combined with emphasis on hammers or commerce.

It is annoying having to spot cities at max. health or happiness, though, and you still have to zoom to them.

 

[Sadan01]

Is this in the manual?! If not it needs to go in Strategy / Tips. Very handy.

I dont remember reading it in the manual however it is listed somewhere in the Hints & Tips section of the Civilopedia. That's where I got it from.

Who really wants to sit there and read all the tips in the Civilopedia (besides me ) when they could actually be playing Civ?