Micro-managing specialists - essential or not?

[FlorbFnarb]

Laptop is DOA, had to move back to a laptop from 2007, which has Civ 4 installed, so I'm rusty.

Is it basically crucial to micromanage things like specialists in every city, plus micromanaging what squares are worked? Is letting that be done automatically just a recipe for a mediocre game? Because I've been playing since Civ I, played the whole series through V including Alpha Centauri, and I admit micromanaging cities has never been fun for me.

Do I just need to suck it up and spend time micromanaging specialists and squares and worker improvements every turn, or is it usually workable to let most of that be automated?

 

[s.bernbaum]

If you let the governor mange your cities, you will get the same results that the "AI"s get, since the programing for the governor is the same as the AI city manager. So, yes you will get mediocre results.

If you want your cities to work well, you will need to micromanage them. You don't need to do every city every turn. As long as you turn off the governors, the city will continue to work as you have set it to do. However, you do need to look at each city whenever it grows to allocate the new population. You also ought to look at all of your cities every few turns to see if you need to change anything, due to developing conditions in relations with the AIs, changes in your civics, new technologies that you have researched, changes in your short term goals, etc.

 

[FlorbFnarb]

Yeesh. Guess I gotta figure out a better workflow then. Past few matches I've worked hard to avoid war for the most part, grow cities as large as I can, but also to expand to as many cities as possible...while letting them be managed (except for construction) automatically.

I also tend to eventually set my workers to auto-improve as well. I did actually see them make some boneheaded decisions - building forts (three next to each other) over luxury resources like a cluster of three...dye, or incense or whatever it was, even though it was on a continent not near any other civs when I was at peace with literally everybody.

Oh well, I guess micromanagement is something I'll have to grit my teeth and get better at. I literally know almost nothing about using specialists, of course.

 

[elitetroops]

The question is, what is a mediocre game and is that enough for you? I'd say the game is probably winnable at immortal without ever changing the tiles worked by your citizens, as long as you take care of specialists and whips yourself. The game will choose the highest yield tiles most of the time. Specialists you need to micromanage yourself, because otherwise you would probably never see a Great Scientist in any game.

Micromanaging workers is much more important than managing citizens. It doesn't matter how well you micromanage cities if they don't have good tiles to work. If they have good tiles to work, they will be assigned automatically.

Growing cities large is usually not ideal, except for your capital. You get much better production by using the whip and keeping them smaller. Growing "as large as I can" usually also involves building a ton of expensive buildings for happiness and health that you are better off without. Learning this part will have a much greater positive effect on your game than intense micromanagement would.

 

[elmurcis]

I use auto-governor for worked tiles all the time (except some situations when I know what is better and computer just can't see ahead). I just use "emphasize production" button 90% of time and almost all cities work best tiles they can (and switch to highest yield when build settlers/workers etc).. And with that you can win deity too
AI only choose Spy instead of scientist for Specialists when possible... that thing I have to micromanage..
But I micromanage every worker - hate situation when hamlet is replaced by workshop... just to build cottage again later (seen that inside Ai teritory for ages)

 

[Seraiel]

The thing that's so hard about micromanaging cities and workers is, that the benefits from it are so small and that they come so much later, often without one even recognizing them.

The benefits are great though, especially the faster the speed. It's a major difference in buildup if a city produces 1 troop every 2-3 turns, or if you rotate 2 workers and time whipping to get to 1 unit / turn, pulling your wardate up to 300-500y earlier, when your targets has much less resistence.

Micro managing maniacs (like me too) are able to build Oxford University in 1T after it became available, when they build-up they unit they do it by 1 unit / turn / city, their cities will be larger because they microed granary-food and food-tiles a.s.o.

You can win up to Prince, all without this, but once you get to Monarch and above, there's no way to get around it. Microing each city whenever it grows is actually a very good rule, as like that, one gets 90% of the important micro-decisions, and to the 10% one comes later, when the city has grown.
On Deity, I go as far as microing every city every turn and that even in games where I have 200 cities, but as said, micro-ma...

 

[Seraiel]

I use auto-governor for worked tiles all the time (except some situations when I know what is better and computer just can't see ahead). I just use "emphasize production" button 90% of time and almost all cities work best tiles they can (and switch to highest yield when build settlers/workers etc).. And with that you can win deity too
AI only choose Spy instead of scientist for Specialists when possible... that thing I have to micromanage..
But I micromanage every worker - hate situation when hamlet is replaced by workshop... just to build cottage again later (seen that inside Ai teritory for ages)

You've won Deity without reloading / replaying with having automization turned on?

Which settings.

 

[Pangaea]

I don't really do much city micro management myself, and am winning regularly on Immortal, and have tried my hand at Deity now, so it's certainly possible I'd say. Absolute Zero on YouTube play Deity and don't micro that much either. He does change tiles and such every so often, but often automate his workers. I do micro workers a lot and try to make sure cities don't work poor tiles. But I don't go through them every turn for example. Try to keep on top of more long term strategic decisions instead, and often that is enough. Microing all cities every turn is probably better, but I play slowly enough as it is, and I think that could be more like work than fun, so I try to not overdo it. There are typically only small changes anyway, when I actually do the full 'tour' of my cities.

So as long as you efficiently use your workers, I'd say it's possible to win up to Immortal. As mentioned above by others, it's more important to make sure the cities have good tiles to work to begin with, and the governor will mostly make good-ish decisions anyway. It's not like they'll be working an unimproved plains tile if there is a cottage available (unless perhaps the city is at happiness max, then the governor sometimes does weird crap to prevent growth).

 

[elmurcis]

You've won Deity without reloading / replaying with having automization turned on?

Which settings.

"Easiest Deity" settings for sure (I'm no near to real Deity masters for sure... I just forget too often too many things...)
Dutch, archipelago, no-tech trading (human has time to do things before AI bonuses "get in game"), Huge, Mara, 17 AI, Domination (with PAlliance help for last 8%), finish date ~1650 AD.

 

[Tatran]

So as long as you efficiently use your workers, I'd say it's possible to win up to Immortal. As mentioned above by others, it's more important to make sure the cities have good tiles to work to begin with, and the governor will mostly make good-ish decisions anyway.

Agree, the civ4 governor is doing a fine job, unlike the civ5 governor.
I only micromanage my cities in the first 2-3 eras. After that I mainly use the production, commerce or the other options focus buttons.
Worker management is far more important.
In most games I've 3 group of worker type, it depends on the construction time,
group of 3 (choppers, roaders), 4 (mines, cottages) and 5 (farmers, plantations).
At marathon speed those improvements will be ready within 2-3 turns.

 

[dutchfire]

Yeah, I usually micromanage until my breakout war. After that it's just too much work.

 

[dohh]

You can win up to Prince, all without this, but once you get to Monarch and above, there's no way to get around it...QUOTE]

Everything is pure gold that You have said about micro, I only disagree with this one. The difficulty level, where micro will be essential lays IMHO at much higher. Before I joined this forum I won most emperor and about one third of immortal games without knowledge of micro and specialist economy or tech beelining.

Ofc games were used to be more challenging, I´d even say more fun. After getting information from this forum, I have no problem with finishing emperor by 1300 Ad and immortal by 1800 ad (I know these dates are nothing compared to pros).

Before starting to use significant amount of micro (including prechopping, that is micro too) I mostly had only a modern war win option, I would not even dare to think about attacking an Immortal opponent with war chariots I knew what elepult was - it was a stack of elephants and catapults that were garrisoned in border city, to reject invasions and to give cottages some time to grow

 

[reddishrecue]

I often like to micromanage priests in temples because once you get that prophet you build a shrine or join city for gpt.

 

[Flipantropo]

But I micromanage every worker - hate situation when hamlet is replaced by workshop... just to build cottage again later (seen that inside Ai teritory for ages)

Theres an option that keeps your automated workers from building over old improvements. Works wonders for me. They can also be ordered not to chop forests.

 

[Pangaea]

Theres an option that keeps your automated workers from building over old improvements. Works wonders for me. They can also be ordered not to chop forests.

Those options are great. However, it drives me up the wall that they keep building forts, even when the resources are already improved, and I only choose Trade Network (or however it's titled).

 

[reddishrecue]

Those options are great. However, it drives me up the wall that they keep building forts, even when the resources are already improved, and I only choose Trade Network (or however it's titled).

Yeah, forts on resources are acceptable before calendar or monarchy but after these technologies are researched, they shouldnt continue to build forts on these luxury tiles. Unfortunately, they still do and dont change their ways that they were programmed to.

 

[Kid R]

Civ is in large part a micromanagement game. So any and all forms of "micro" management in the sense of "attentive, accurate, thorough" management of our empire will make it perform increasingly better than the AI empires. But does that answer whether it's "essential"?

Well clearly it is if you want to get the maximum possible optimum output from your empire. Also is doing all the things Seraiel said, plus just maybe one or two more he hasn't figured out yet! But clearly not everyone has that attention to detail. What might be an interesting question is "how much benefit does specialist micro have compared to say, worker micro?" In other words "if I manage my workers well can I forget about specialists?"

What if we give a micro score "M", calibrated to how much benefit brutal micro of each choice gives you in competing against higher level AIs (who all just take the automatic choices in everything). 1M is 1 difficulty level:

• Workers: 0.5M early game, tapering to 0.1M later
• City worked tiles: 0.4
• Specialists: 0.2, or 0.75 with deep bulb cheese
• Tech choice: 0.75 or 0.25 with trading turned off
• City build choice: 0.75
• City location: 0.1
• Stack attack: 0.4
• Population (slavery/draft): 0.75

E.g. switching around worked city tiles optimally raises your performance by nearly half a difficulty level compared to always letting the city governor do it. All totally subjective of course and dependent on game settings I'm sure people will disagree about a lot of the numbers! Anything else worth mentioning in the list?

With painful (for me) micro I can win sometimes on immortal. But more often I play on monarch or emperor and do fairly light micro. In that sense I consider it "essential" NOT to micro the specialists to keep the game fun and finishable in one sitting!

tl;dr:

I seem to remember a MadScientist roleplay game where he had to take all the auto-choices in everything Anyone know which one that was - I can't guess from the titles in the sample game directory? I wonder what GPs he got in that game...

 

[reddishrecue]

I usually prefered to micro manage priests into great prophets because of the production that you need to produce and the gold that you need to continúe your research from making too many units.

 

[Seraiel]

I usually prefered to micro manage priests into great prophets because of the production that you need to produce and the gold that you need to continúe your research from making too many units.

If you have maintenance problems from units, you aren't conquering fast enough. When I go full rampage, units die so fast at the front that I have only 20 active troops most of the time, even with building from various cities.

 

[reddishrecue]

If you have maintenance problems from units, you aren't conquering fast enough. When I go full rampage, units die so fast at the front that I have only 20 active troops most of the time, even with building from various cities.

Youre probably using financial and many cottages.