Micromanagement....

[WickedWombat]

First off, greetings all! I've stopped my lurkin', and finally got registered on the site! You all provide such good information!

Anyway, I have a question. Currently I'm playing at Emperor, and getting my butt handed to me at every turn. My question is: Do you check every city, every turn, and use the buttons to adjust your production, money, etc.?

I was just curious, since I still auto my workers after awhile (I know I shouldn't)

Thanks in advance!

 

[wcbarney]

Um, no. I check my cities just every so often, but not every single turn. But in my playing style, I only ever have 3 or 4 cities, with dozens of puppets (this is pre-patch, mind you; don't know how it'll turn out later). I, too, play at the Emperor level almost exclusively, although I've won several Immortal games and even a few Diety games. Emperor seems to be the right level of challenge for me while still being fun.

I never, ever automate workers. I used to do so in Civ IV and that's probably one of the reasons I sucked so badly at that game: A few "Dan Quayle" wins at the Prince level before I gave up in disgust.

 

[thadian]

Normally on emperor i win/lose about half my games and i have learned a few tricks that generally worked through all the patches so far, in every civ and probably wont stop working any time soon.

Micromanagement: Doing without overdoing.

I normally build-create about 3 cities. if im isolated or the early AI war's itself i might go up to 5 but when you hit 5, you better be ready for aggression.

In a size 1 city, the default focus is always on food unless your citizens are unhappy. Once a city reaches size 2, i enter it and specialize it.

Every time i complete a build, i enter my city to replace citizens before assiging a new build.

Once things get under way, cities have a small way of normalizing themselves. Once they do, you can just re-check upon growth or build completion.

You can look at your next 2 techs and select every city.

Just look for "waypoint" marks of sorts to quickly rush by them all, and if you set their food you can even try to make them all grow at the same time or finish a certain building/unit on a turn.

I look at how long each of my 5 cities takes to grow and finish a project and sometimes i try to re-assign their citizens so they all complete various tasks on turn X. for example, on turn 80 i might finish 2 monuments, grow 2 cities and build a spearman then reset every city to its next task.


The only problem is that my method doesn't do much to create a long term kill plan but it is full of contengency plans, and ways to achieve a goal in X turns. (i want 4 spearmen and 2 archers in 20 turns. i want 2 libraries in my size 5 cities and my size 2 and 3 city to grow to size 4 in twenty turns.

 

[The_Quasar]

Normally on Emperor I win about half my games, although I'm getting better, and have won at Immortal and Deity too.

I never automate my workers, they do crazy things, and never do things in the right order.

I tend to check and adjust things every few turns, but keep my eye on things if there is a problem. Never leave a city on production too long, or it will starve... I don't think that's intended, but it seems to every time.

 

[tommynt]

I truly wonder why some1 planing to auto his workers is even building them, or even playing civ at all - rather watch a movie or read a book if u dont want play yourself

 

[TPQ]

I usually micro my cities, or at the very least my core cities.

I usually queue up production though.

Manual specialist control is pretty important to getting the most from the cities you control, especially if you have three or four settled cities and numerous puppets. The governors are usually pretty bad at deciding what specialists to assign.

Also, selecting what tiles you want your citizens to work is important too. Again, the governors are not the brightest when it comes to citizen allocation, although they're usually better at it than specialist allocation.

Unless you settled loads of cities, or are playing on the easiest levels, it's always best to micro specialists, citizens and also workers as well. The AI is pretty terrible at all three, or, to put it nicely, humans are able to manage all three much more intelligently than the AI can.

Micro can really make a positive impact on your game if you're willing to do it.

 

[noncognosco]

Just moved up to Emperor level so I have only played three games on Emperor. I never micromanaged cities before and have not since I moved up. I may put a city on production focus while building a wonder or something, but other than that they are on default focus all the time. Won all three games so far without much difficulty.

However, I never automate workers under any circumstances.

 

[bronzeager]

also in the "never automate workers camp." I rarely directly allocate citizens to tiles, though, and just choose the focus that suits the city at that time. Maybe this is why I still play on King. Also, just starting to learn to micro specialists. What is the main purpose here besides popping GPs when you want to? Don't the city focus options also dictate which specialist slots are used?

 

[Randall Turner]

also in the "never automate workers camp." I rarely directly allocate citizens to tiles, though, and just choose the focus that suits the city at that time. Maybe this is why I still play on King. Also, just starting to learn to micro specialists. What is the main purpose here besides popping GPs when you want to? Don't the city focus options also dictate which specialist slots are used?

Yup. Not the ones you might want, though. And we almost always want engineers.

I don't see people suggesting what I thought was "normal" -

1) Pick the "base" focus you want.
2) Go back and manually lock down high-value tiles and appropriate specialists. (ie, for a food focus city, it'll skip a tile that's +6 gold, +1 food, +2 production for a tile that's +2 gold, +2 food, +1 production. The single additional food obviously isn't worth it. Basically, it's too literal.)

Then, just revisit once every long while, or whenever you enter/exit a golden age or finish a new "multiplier" building in that city.

 

[WickedWombat]

I truly wonder why some1 planing to auto his workers is even building them, or even playing civ at all - rather watch a movie or read a book if u dont want play yourself

I know it's laziness on my part, and I will try to break the habit. I love the whole CIV series, but I've always relied too much on the automatic aspects of the game.

 

[WickedWombat]

Thanks to all of you for your advice!! I really appreciate it!

 

[Pac-Dragon]

That's pretty much what I do as well. Most of my cities get set to production focus, then I manually assign food tiles & specialists until the city isn't starving. My only problem is when I do that the early & mid-game is fine and I can produce at a good pace... but by the late game, I'm left with cities that are about half the size of the AI's. Always keeping it on default focus, except in certain situations, tends to result in huge cities by the late game. I have no idea how to figure out the optimal amount of leftover food I should shoot for (assuming plenty of happiness).

 

[WickedWombat]

That's pretty much what I do as well. Most of my cities get set to production focus, then I manually assign food tiles & specialists until the city isn't starving. My only problem is when I do that the early & mid-game is fine and I can produce at a good pace... but by the late game, I'm left with cities that are about half the size of the AI's. Always keeping it on default focus, except in certain situations, tends to result in huge cities by the late game. I have no idea how to figure out the optimal amount of leftover food I should shoot for (assuming plenty of happiness).

City size has been an issue for me too. It seems like everytime I play someone like Catherine, she's always about 3-4x my pop with the same amount of cities.

 

[KungCheops]

I always automate my workers. But it doesn't matter since I'm playing on prince...

I mostly don't care what they do, as long as they don't suicide too often. Once every while I take control of them when I want to do something specific. But personally I don't like it.

PS. Playing cIV (with RoM), I used to play auto turns through all the games just to watch the AI play for me, I like to observe...

 

[WickedWombat]

I always automate my workers. But it doesn't matter since I'm playing on prince...

I mostly don't care what they do, as long as they don't suicide too often. Once every while I take control of them when I want to do something specific. But personally I don't like it.

PS. Playing cIV (with RoM), I used to play auto turns through all the games just to watch the AI play for me, I like to observe...

That's my problem too. At first, up to about IW, I take control of everything! After that though, I just lose interest with the mundane micromanaging of my empire.

I know it won't make me a stellar player, but I just start losing interest in manually controlling everything. It's a hard habit to kick, but I want to start playing better. I'm going to give more manual control a try. Wish me luck!

 

[ColinTH]

When you are on a golden age try and make sure every worker is working gold tiles or to a lesser extent hammer tiles, make it count!

 

[acm2033]

In Civ IV, my success increased dramatically just by manually controlling workers. Then I moved on to manually controlling specialists, then I worked on specializing cities (really the same thing as the specialists).

I guess that's micromanagement, although it just seems "normal" now.

I haven't played Civ V enough to get a good feel for it--there's not nearly as much "stuff" in Civ V as in IV.

 

[WickedWombat]

In Civ IV, my success increased dramatically just by manually controlling workers. Then I moved on to manually controlling specialists, then I worked on specializing cities (really the same thing as the specialists).

I guess that's micromanagement, although it just seems "normal" now.

I haven't played Civ V enough to get a good feel for it--there's not nearly as much "stuff" in Civ V as in IV.

Ohh, CIV IV. I loved that game. Of course, I auto'd alot on that too. I did manage my sliders like a madman, but I didn't even attempt to control specialists. It seemed kinda daunting to me.

 

[squadbroken]

For the most part I manage workers manually. If the game is already decided but I still want to finish I'll often automate workers just so they're doing something and not bothering me.

 

[Polycrates]

Yup. Not the ones you might want, though. And we almost always want engineers.

I don't see people suggesting what I thought was "normal" -

1) Pick the "base" focus you want.
2) Go back and manually lock down high-value tiles and appropriate specialists. (ie, for a food focus city, it'll skip a tile that's +6 gold, +1 food, +2 production for a tile that's +2 gold, +2 food, +1 production. The single additional food obviously isn't worth it. Basically, it's too literal.)

Then, just revisit once every long while, or whenever you enter/exit a golden age or finish a new "multiplier" building in that city.

Yeah I agree completely with this. Although I find the default focus (with perhaps a few tweaks) is generally best for 99% of cities, and I set most of my "focus" just by my choice of improvements. I find the other foci tend to prioritise instant gold/production/whatever too rigidly to the detriment of growth (or by ignoring amazingly good tiles that just don't produce much of the focused resource), and the longer-term payoff of making the city even more productive in its chosen speciality. I mostly only use them briefly when I really need something (usually a wonder) right NOW. The default focus is also quite good for de-emphasising food when you dip into a bit of unhappiness.

Also I never ever EVER automate workers and always do manual specialists (I wish there was some way to make it default to manual specialists).