I. Hate. Micro. Management.

Send the droid..

Published on December 2, 2005 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

As I get older or at least busier, I have a lot less toleration for micro management. I just don't find it fun. I know lots of people do but I personally hate it. When I play Civilization IV, for instance, those workers go on A (auto improve) right away. And I think it works fine. I'm sure the workers aren't optimal but they're well into the "good enough for me" area.

That said, I've always resisted having any micro management issues resolved by computer AI. That is, I don't like the idea of having some sort of "governor" that is actually an AI doing the work for you. I've never seen a governor AI that can remotely match a good human player.

Instead, we've focused on trying to have cleaner interfaces that allow players to automate what they would do. The most famous example of this (which was considered very innovative back in the original OS/2 version) was the ship and social governors -- tell all planets building X to start building Y.

We've got that in GalCiv II but...I want more. I just don't know yet where to draw the line. One governor going in that's new is the rally point governor. I never used rally points in GalCiv I. Didn't see the "big deal". But now I do. Oh boy do I.

But now that I'm starting to use rally points I find them a pain. What if I want to change which rally point my ships are going to? So we added a "All planets sending ships to rally point X should go to rally point Y". Similarly, we set up one for ships -- all shps currently traveling to rally point X go to rally point Y." (where Y can be a rally point or back home or to stop entirely).

We also finalized on how upgrading ships is going to be done and we basically caved in to simplicity:

You want to upgrade a ship? Fine, it's money and time. There will be a base cost + a cost based on the difference in cost between the original ship and the new one. And there will be a small time penalty between 1 and 4 turns based on how far from your home planet the ship is. You will be able to upgrade individual ships or entire classes of sihps at once.

We were supposed to get Beta 4D out this past week. Unfortunately since this may be one of the last public betas, we wanted to wait until we got the compressed textures in so we could do further compatibility testing.

Comments

singrdave

on Dec 02, 2005

I. Hate. Micro. Management.

You put the periods in the wrong places. That is one whole sentence. What you have aren't even sentences.

Here, let me do it.

Frogboy

on Dec 02, 2005

LOL. Wow, really, they aren't complete sentences?

You. Don't. Get. It. Then.

Lotherius

on Dec 03, 2005

Actually, brad, he was micromanaging you. Get it?

Popup Target

on Dec 03, 2005

Oh, please, he didn't put it in bold 48 point blinking red text, so either he understated it, or he doesn't feel it as strongly as I do *snicker*. Oh, sure, sometimes I get caught up with an idea that would turn into a micromanagement nightmare, but for the most part, most of my suggestions have been to address eliminating micromanagement, and when they aren't in that direction, I realize that it's something that would appeal only to the control freaks.

Every once in a while, I think back to my period of temporary insanity when I was planning out my own 4X space game. You want to see a lack of micromanagement? I was planning on not even dealing with individual improvements or ships. The ruler didn't deal with anything smaller than a fleet when it came to combat, and social improvements were going to be on the order of "spend X amount improving the manufacturing infrastructure of planet X."

From what I've seen, GC2 potentially adds some micromanagement over GC1 (planet management is more complicated, for example), but the devs are doing the best they can to streamline that. I assume that the biggest glitches causing colony micromanagement are bugs. Come to think of it, would the devs in this thread care to confirm that these are glitches?

1) Advanced Market Centers don't upgrade to Trade Centers. I believe this is because the XML file specifies that Trade Centers upgrade Market Centers, not Advanced Market centers. I altered my XML file to correct this, and my colony development is much smoother now.

2) Same issue with Research Centers not upgrading to Research Academies. Research Academies upgrade Research Labs. I'm not even sure we have Research Labs in GC2, doesn't it go Basic Lab/Xeno Lab/Research Center? or maybe there is a Research Lab after Xeno.

3) The Trade Center, at a 15% econ bonus, seems to be the best econ upgrade. Banking centers are only 12%, but come later in the tech tree. I'm not at all sure about Stock Markets, as they have multiple bonuses, but I've never played around with them to make sure that all the bonuses work. Only one (the morale bonus) displays.

4) The Orbital Terraformer is a pain, since it doesn't dequeue any tile improvements that are already queeued up. This means that I either do all the tile improvements the hard way despite building the OT, or I go to every PQ11+ planet and dequeue the tile improvements by hand.

Other than converting my home world over from research to econ at some point, and converting everything over to production from research when I'm ready to go to war for the last time, these are the only things that cause me to micromanage my planets at all. GC1 planetary governors were nice, but they just wouldn't work in a GC2 environment.

I do have an idea for reducing ship design micromanagement, but it's a long-haul idea, wouldn't help at all for a single game. I also think we need combat notifications, especially if we lost the fight, because it's harder to track combat in GC2 than GC1, not sure why. All I know is that I keep having transports land on planets that I KNOW I had defenders at, and I never even saw ships get close to that planet. I

ProudCanadian

on Dec 03, 2005

The Rally Point options sound great. I hated rally points in GC1. Maybe I missed something, but I couldn't find a way in GC1 to just MOVE an existing Rally Point. The outcome I wanted was "everything pointing at Rally Point X should continue as usual, but I am moving the location of Rally Point X". It sounds like the new features will let me do that.

Glavius

on Dec 03, 2005

Meow?

I completely agree. Something's broken somewhere it seems to be way to dificult to get ships where I need them.

Frogboy

on Dec 03, 2005

Ooh, I like the idea of moving a rallypoint. What would you envision the UI for that?

Popup Target

on Dec 03, 2005

I really need to work on my communication skills, I had suggested this in the same message that I suggested the rallypoint governor, suggesting the governor as an alternative to moving rally points

Come to think of it, you didn't notice the rally point governor idea until a few posts later either. I think the fact that I'm far too capable of writing painfully long posts works against me most of the time.

Ways to move a rally point, I'll let you decide the feasibility/desireability.

1) Click and drag. The biggest catch is, if someone tried to scroll the map by clicking and dragging, but started on a square with a rallypoint in it, we've blown the principle of least astonishment. Click-and-drag alternative two: since right-clicking is used to send ships to the point clicked on, you could right-click-and-drag the rally point. Click-and-Drag sounds like a major pain for moving it a long distance, however.

2) On the window that lets you rename/disband/change type of a rally point, add a "move" button, at which point clicking anywhere on the map or minimap moves the rally point to that location. Not as convenient as item one, but since this isn't something you'll be doing as often as scrolling the map, I don't think that's a major issue.

Oh, on the subject of rally points, remember when I mentioned that if you've zoomed out far enough that you got icons instead of ships that placing a rallypoint often resulted in a rallypoint above and to the left of where you clicked? Turns out, that isn't restricted to when you're zoomed that far out. I'm not sure if it's a constant factor or a scaling issue, but the farther out you're zoomed, the closer to the bottom right of the square you have to be in order to place the rally point. I haven't noticed this behavior with anything else (moving ships, etc), but I haven't thoroughly tested for it.

I'm gonna shut up now before I make yet another post that noone reads because their eyes glaze over.

tinplated

on Dec 03, 2005

2) On the window that lets you rename/disband/change type of a rally point, add a "move" button, at which point clicking anywhere on the map or minimap moves the rally point to that location. Not as convenient as item one, but since this isn't something you'll be doing as often as scrolling the map, I don't think that's a major issue.

Yeah, that would be clearer and less likely to "whoopise" things up. Not that I ever make misteaks, of cousre.

Jab

on Dec 03, 2005

I don't mind micro management in small doses. Such as a game like Rise of nations where resources never dissappear so once you got them you don't need to constantly look after them. I think the point where it gets to much would be when your force to become an accountant, where you need to look at every little detail across alot of screens.

You know people who measure that by upgrading this this and this they get a 3.67% damage increase.

Ugleb

on Dec 05, 2005

My thinking exactly, it seems to me the simplest execution and easy to use.

On a slightly different note, does anyone else find it hugely annoying to try and select a ship in the same square as a rally point? I keep clicking on the rally point when I'm trying to select the ship to give it an order.

Lord_StarPilot

on Dec 05, 2005

I hate Micro-Management as well.

Indeed, Civ4's automating workers has reduced MM in that game so much, that you can now play a full game in just a few hours (if you go all peaceful) to one long night (if you toss in a few wars of elinimation). Much better.

I look forward to these useful changes in GC2.

Astax

on Dec 09, 2005

I wouldnt suggest putting workers on automate till end of the game :/ They build too many farms at the start.

Regardless the problem is that micromanagement will always be superior. Most people who say they hate micro-management do not infact hate micromanagement, they micro manage jsut fine at the begining of a given game but as the game draws on they reach their threash-hold, upon which they switch to macro management because micro doesnt seem worth it anymore. Problem is each person ahs a different thresh-hold, you can try to figure out the optimal thresh-hold but you will never code one in to satisfy everyone.

Also all automated fuctions aren't written to consider time that has passed in the game. Or for that matter what strategy a person is persuing. To give you an example out of civ4, workers seem to follow same pattern regardless weather Im a warmonger, or a builder. Builder will usually want more farms to grow his cities, while warmonger will want mroe production and then commerce to support larger army. The automated worker will not see which strategy you are persuing and it won't adapt. That's why Im usually forced to put in x amount of cottages and mines before I automate. That's not so bad for me because while I am considering choices for the small population of the city, I'm within my micro-management tresh-hold. I usually pass it ocne I have more improvements then there are citizens to work all tiles and I dont feel like being creative coming up with things for the workers to do for citizens I dont yet have.

So there in lies the challange. When making anything automated, dare I say it it may be necessary to give more than one option. That way the worker that is blind to the larger plan will be able to follow through with course of action that will be most beneficial and complementary tot he way you wish to run your empire.

James Sterrett

on Dec 11, 2005

I'm thrilled to hear that Stardock will be adding the following functionality to the Diplomacy screen's Trade function....

- When I open the mini-window for Cash, it will have a button to lock either slider in place. Personally, I'd tend to lock it at 20 months. GalCiv will remember what I last used for this setting with a given race.

- The mini-window window will have a button labelled something like "Best Deal". This will set any non-locked slider to the Best Deal possible with the current proposed trade and locked slider settings. If both sliders are unlocked, it will maximize for most cash over time, choosing the smallest length of time if it has to choose (most per month).

This would greatly reduce the amount of tedium in trading stuff; no more twiddling settings back and forth and back and forth.....!

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