The higher difficulties SHOULD be about micromanaging; and, well, not fun for most people. I should get whooped at high difficulties both because I tend to fly by the seat of my pants and because I'm not that good to begin with.
To some agree, absolutely, some level of micromanaging is the only way you can beat deity AI (bar cheesing the game).
I do play on Deity myself and usually I know roughly how much micro managing I have to accept to secure the all-important early game, but I still have some "flow" without having to think for too long each turn.
To me though, Dramatic ages takes micromanaging to ridiculous levels, and as in my example with teching cheap techs/civics (and then stopping completely to not go above the threshold) is both so counter-intuitive, and so taxing that it makes the early game a real chore and just loses the "flow" for me.
LIke, you want to make sure you get enough era score, but if possible, not a single point more.
That's sure is a lot of micro managing to achieve within a set turn limit.
People might like micro managing like that and that's perfectly fine, but it's personally not for me.
Btw, while I agree that Dramatic Ages is "harder", it's only so to a point.
As long as you are willing to micro manage hard, I'd say it eventually gets easier, and sometimes a lot easier.
Easier because the AI is perhaps even worse at handling the Dramatic Ages, and sometimes even a Deity AI will simply implode from free cities and a snowball of negative loyalty pressure.
That is also a reason why I feel the Dramatic Ages are a bit cheap because the win sometimes feels less deserved, even if you worked your a** off to secure that Golden Age.
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