Some thoughts about micromanagement

Do not abuse of Micromanagement

from Elemental Forums

Note: I have not played the demo yet.

Micromanagement can be interesting and fun if in my point of view if it is not overwhelming. So this thread gives some suggestions regarding micromanagement.

Multiplication of the stuff to manage: Most 4x games seem to put micro management on the cities, the problem is that's the element I would not allow any micromanaging because the amount of cities to manage increase with time making it harder and harder to manage. I remember in Orion 2 refusing to colonize to prevent me from managing new colonies.

Some will say that this can easily be overcome with an artificial intelligence, but I think you always end up doing it manually because of the following rule: "If people can micromanage, they will micromanage". I remember in PTO 2 where tactical battles did not give the same results than the fast resolution battles. So in the end, I ended up watching all the battles to get better results.

What I propose is that micromanagement should be done for elements that does not get multiplied with time. For example, your spell casting or management of your tower/covenant could use some micromanaging because what ever your empire size, you will always have 1 to manage. You could also micromanage your heroes by giving them magical items and leveluping them because you will never exceed more than 3-5 heroes per player.

Harder Adjustment: In Master of magic, you can adjust the amount of farmers VS workers and the taxes. I remember in a game of MOM, in order to destabilise a great empire to try attack him, I decided to cast a famine spell in each of his cities and corrupt all the land tiles around his cities. In therory, he should be lacking of food and his army would have shrunk making him easier to attack. But in practice, nothing happened.

Why, because the players can adjust the amount of food they produce by reducing production. So all the work I did above had the impact of reducing the amount of workers which slowed down it's production. But it never destabilised his army.

So by making players not be able to micromanage a city, it would force the player to react and try finding solutions to the problem which in this case is the lack of food. Here are a few example:

Buy food with gold as 2 for 1: It's penalizing but it can help temporarily.

Improve technology: Increase the farming technology to increase the quality of the output.

Farming: You could have an action like "Trade good", "housing" which convert half your production as food. It paralyse your production for more food.

Raise taxes: You could raise food taxes which could also raise unrest as a price for survival.

So you see, the fact that you cannot simply adjust your production forces you to find different alternative to some temporary or permanent problem.

By the way, In MOO2, I found it so stupid and annoying to constantly shift all the population from research to production to build an new building and when everything was done, shift everybody back to research.

Else, if you really want players to be able to adjust stuff, make sure it is applied globally to the whole empire. For example, raising taxes is something applied globally. In this case you would micromanage your empire rather than micromanaging each city which is better because you will only control 1 empire.

 

 

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Don't  quite agree with all all of it, but there's a legit point at the end   "if you really want players to be able to adjust stuff, make sure it is applied globally to the whole empire. For example, raising taxes is something applied globally. In this case you would micromanage your empire rather than micromanaging each city which is better because you will only control 1 empire."

I like *SOME* city micromanagement, but lots of games overdo it.  Empire / hero management are safer to go wild on.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

As a disclaimer, the current beta is most definitely NOT a demo, the main graphics engine isn't even in yet and most features aren't implemented.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the best micromanagement solution comes from the game Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance, a former tabletop game. You can make only 3 actions each turn, one extra action with one of the artifacts, and IIRC one extra action with a leutenant. Micromanagement is about the same for a huge empire and for a kingdom with only one region.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

small comment but master of magic had bugged spells and growth formula's, alot of the spells didn't work and those that did weren't as intended. Sometimes trying to reduce an enemy city's pop would cause a pop explosion. Still I did like being able to do things one tile at a time, but 'cleanup' spells and 'corrupting' spells would be nice to be able to leave on automatic repeat cast... or similar.

I'm not sure where I stand on micro/macro... I think you need a significant amount of micro for it to not get dull in the skip 20 turns sense... MOO3 was very bad at not letting you do any micromanagement. It was a shame because it had so many nice things but it felt like a game that the computer was playing in another room and I was bugging it by trying to click things. On the other hand I rarely finnish some games because of the late game micro scaling very very badly.

 

What I'd like is for you to give up the ability to micro certain tasks at specific points, in return for increased caps on the number of cities or units or both. 2 cities and army of 20 ---> all micro, 90 cities and the vast legions? turns into large sins of a solar empire style icons representing how much investment and the focus, where you form task forces and how big you want them. Still control heroes and magic though.