Allowing for global strategies

I find micromanaging to be entertaining in the start of a game, annoying at best by midgame, and an utter pain in the rear by the end of a game. What I do not like is how many games have a somewhat linear amount of microing... ie, when you build more forces you may have slightly reduced microing per unit, but overall a huge increase in microing required. Something I would consider a nice addition would be something on the order of a micro stamp... Record yourself doing an action, such as queueing up structures to build, then play back that action automaticly when you tell it to...

In SoaSE, as I steamrolled through a large number of enemy planets, I found myself annoyed at how for each and every planet I had to click all the upgrade stuff, and then build the planetary defenses. These actions were very repeatable, and thus became a chore. Noone wants to take time out of their grand invasion to micromanage the finances of their newly conquered city/planet in a way that could easily be done by simple AI.

Having said that, however, I enjoy macroing in the begining of the game. If we were able to do a micro action once, then an AI look at what you did and be able to do it after that point, it would really help. Say for example, in Elemental, you just finished building your second city and get its production and such all sorted out... You then go to set the trade settings. After setting the trade settings between your two cities, you play for a little while. You then decide to build your third city. After setting up your city, you go to the trade menu expecting to spend a minute setting up an identical or nearly identical trade setting for the new city. Lo and behold! The game set up your city's trade just like you set up the trade for your second city, saving you a large amount of microing in the third, fourth, fifth, ect cities you build. A possible negative to this would be if you wanted to set up a city with very different settings, for example an isolated fort in the middle of enemy territory. You would not want your trade wagons full of goods crossing hostile territory, as the enemy would capture the caravans for their own profit. To prevent this, a single confirmation button could be set up, which confirms whether or not you use the settings the game automaticly set up for the city.

That's a great analysis, alway!  I enjoy micromanagement on a small scale and toward the beginning of the game, but as it progresses, it becomes too burdensome.  I was trying to think of a good way to express this, and here's what I came up with:

So, as you move over time into the different phases of this 4X gam, your enjoyment of micro-management tasks lessens as you acquire more resources (and probably also because you're repeating the same task over and over).  Why?  It's hard to formulate a global strategy or implement it well when you're bogged down by operational tasks.

Probably a good way to look at things:

• Early game = operational tasks (setting up your base, exploring, aquiring resources)
• Mid game = implementing a strategy with all your resources and continue to develop them
• Late game = Abandon improving and resource aquisition and focus on dealing a final victory blow (or become defeated)

Unless Elemental will turn this tradition on its head, the devs need to focus on tools that will carry out micro-management and instead allow you to determine a global strategy.  Another concept- think of it like you are progressively being promoted from manager to CEO.  Your vision changes.

One cool idea- what if later in the game you could acquire "heroes" that simply managed this stuff?  They could even have their own AI on how effective they were at these sorts of things, but I'd be willing to turn my empire over to one of these guys if the AI was good enough, I had really good reports on their success, and could still micro-manage when necessary.

Some really good stuff in this thread.