I keep forgeting about the faster game speeds, dumb me
I only play on epic, so that's why I first failed to see major impact. That's also due to the stupid decision (IMHO, of course) to scale only worker build rates, research and production costs when you change game speeds, instead of scaling specialists impact too (it's only the overall game speed that should change, not the significance of a specialist. This is the equivalent of keeping the same time for the worker jobs, which don't occur.)
But in this point you are right, in faster speeds the problem scales for the worse.
I don't think your example is extreme, actually I dare to say it has a fair amount of occurrence, but I think the way you put the facts make it sound worst than it really is. See, when you say "a waste of 495 against a waste of only 4" it seems bigger than what it is: 1 turn. So we are back to your first point: in a quick game, 1 turn has significant more meaning than in an epic game, no doubt.
When I replied you about the micro yesterday, I started a game to check if messing with the specialists could give me some advantage. At least on epic, I can assure you that doing all this checking for tech cost and actual research capacity of your civ and managing of the scientists, I saved 4 to 5 turns of every 100. I don't think that's a big reward for microing at that speed. Or maybe I just suck at this
So the bottom line is that I agree with you that it has a significant impact, but only in faster game speeds. And I need to think if fixing the beaker overflow, without balancing everything else that I think needs to be balanced, wouldn't still give an advantage for microing in this case too, perharps even bigger than before.
Cheers.
Yes, I've tried to be careful to emphasise each time that quickspeed is the speed most affected by this micromanagement. I've emphasised that when it's typical to be researching techs in only a few turns each time (e.g. 4 or 5), the effect of saving a turn on a tech is huge.
In the example I detailed, going from 3 to 2 turns was obviously a 50% increase in science production. 15% of that 50 was due to the output of scientists and 35% of the 50 was thanks to minimising beaker waste. Both the 15 and the 35 could vary up and down depending on the circumstances, but the point is to show that it's common for the effect of minimising beaker waste to be greater than the raw effect of scientists. This is extremely unintuitive for the player. It also demonstrates that this sort of micromanagement does not have a small effect. In any game that has micromanagement, it should only be for gaining a small advantage, if any, over those who choose not to use it. Here we have micro which is significant on a strategic level.
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At other posts, again I see the argument being raised that it should be given lower priority than other fixes. It's almost a trivial issue to fix. It's not as if Firaxis are going to say "Ok, we need to fix beaker overflow and will therefore dedicate 30% of the resources for making the next patch to this specific issue".
We've established that it needs to be fixed, and how it needs to be fixed is not terribly difficult (and note it is locked away from modders right now) and that to a large number of the 'challenge' players this is a big issue. With this in mind it makes sense to prioritise it anyway. The only reason I can see for Firaxis really wanting to not prioritise it is if they actually don't intend to change this feature, and for some bizarred reason it is as designed.
