[0.61] Too much micro management

I've been finding that the amount of micro management that I need to do to play is killing the fun for me. I find that there are many things that I waste time and mouse clicks on that could be improved.

1. Governors for planets. I find that I usually follow a pattern when developing my planets. I follow that pattern for nearly all my planets. I've done it enough times that I don't think there is much need for me to be doing it myself anymore if I could somehow program an AI to follow that pattern. Its not that complex, specialize the planet for manufacturing, research, or economics, grow population, keep morale high.

2. Improve planet projects. I find that planet projects to be undesirable and problematic to use. Some are worse or more problematic to use than others. For instance, the population growth planet project is only useful for a limited amount of time. Due to the none existent options to control project, it does not turn itself off when there is not point in having it (like using a population growth project when the population is at max).

3. Ship management. The game requires too much attention to be given to the management of ships. You can't tell ships to do stuff with hot keys. There is no option for standing orders. You can't ignore idle ships. On the plus side, the guard command seems to have got changed at some point so it does not wake when enemy ships are nearby.

4. Ship yard management. The game doesn't allow for repeat builds yet, or allow you save and add groups of ships to build. I find too much time is wasted on returning to the ship yard to add more ships to the queue. When I do do that, I tend to build a whole bunch of the same ships since I find it a pain to go looking for a variety of ships to add to the queue.

5. Too much United Planets. The UP shows up too often. Once I'm in control, I quickly nab all the UP actions that I want, but then I run out and have to pick something to vote on anyways. I pick something that I don't want and vote against it. On top of that, some UP vote things expire over time, so I have to remember to check in on what I have to renew. I find that the game plays better with UP off (that should say something).

6. The AI asks for peace too frequently. If you are overwhelming them, they will ask for peace every turn. If you don't have the means to finish them off quickly, this can become a pain. It would be much appreciated if you could turn away their ambassadors, or enable surrendering.

7. Can't quickly empty planet tiles. When you conquer a new world, you have to make the decision of what to keep. For me, it is often to destroy everything and start over (since the AI can't build well). The process of destroying planet improvements is not smooth. I recall that in GalCiv 2, I could delete a planet improvement by pressing the delete key on the keyboard, but there is no equivalent for GalCiv 3. If you wanted to destroy something, you had to select the tile and then find the button on the user interface to destroy it. If the planet improvement was upgrading, then you had to cancel the upgrading (which is a little different) before you can destroy the improvement. I would like it if I could use the delete key to destroy the planet improvement and any upgrading in progress. Extra points if it could automatically select a new planet improvement.

8. Governors for starbases. Like with planets, I tend to follow a process that I think gets best results for my starbases. As such, I don't think I should need to manually select every upgrade that my starbase needs. I just need to make a list of everything that I want, and what order I want them in. Then I just need to worry about getting enough constructors to my starbases. It would be very nice if I could save these lists so that I could reuse them between games.

23,463 views 12 replies
Reply #1 Top

Not sure how much of this got adressed in beta 4 but Good post!

Reply #2 Top

I haven't had time to check everything out, but I don't think we got much for micromanagement.

We got a fast assembler planet improvement for the Yor. Its kinda half way between a project and a planet improvement. When finished, nothing gets built on the surface, but when it is done the population will be 5 units larger than it was before. It unfortunately costs 101 points to build, so it is not as efficient as the assembly project (it yields 1 pop per 20 manufacturing instead of 1 per 10 with assembly), and it does not benefit from synthetic growth bonuses (making it even less efficient). It however, can be rush bought, and the production queue will eventually empty (thus making the game ask for input instead of continuing to produce the assembly project despite being no longer being needed).

Also, I think the assemlby project got nerfed. I think it used to be (1 pop per 10 manufacturing) +1 pop, but is now 1 pop per 10 manufacturing with a minimum of 1.

Reply #3 Top

Points taken, but some players like the micro-management.

 

I would suggest putting an option in "game options" to minimize the micro-managing.

 

That way everyone is happy :)

Reply #4 Top

Quoting DivineWrath, reply 2

Also, I think the assemlby project got nerfed. I think it used to be (1 pop per 10 manufacturing) +1 pop, but is now 1 pop per 10 manufacturing with a minimum of 1.

umm you're aware that the term nerfed means weakened right?

because the assembly project got so much of a boost its game-breakingly overpowered 

1) turn 1 set assembly, set manufacturing 100% set military 99%. pump out one colony ship with 3 pop every three turns

when those ships land, set assembly, get up to 8 pop in 5 turns

if you start building colony ships in less then 3 turns simply lower the number of colonists to leave 8 on Iconia even pumping out 1 colony ship per turn you can keep Iconias population at 8 and still upgrade a newly colonized world to 8 pop in seven turns

 

if you really want to expand build a shipyard on some of your planets and begin sending more colony ships

on an immense map you could probobly colonize 1/2 to 3/4 of the map before the rest of the players knew what was going on

Reply #5 Top

Quoting androshalforc, reply 4

umm you're aware that the term nerfed means weakened right?

because the assembly project got so much of a boost its game-breakingly overpowered



Yes, I know what nerfed means. I used it because I think that it got weaker, not stronger.

Hmm... I could be wrong. I couldn't find my previous notes. Let me check again. I was sure that it was 1 pop per 10 manufacturing... No wait, it used to 0.2 population per 10 manufacturing. I guess that I was mistaken.

Maybe it was the fast assembly half project thing that confused me. It costs 101 and gives you 5 population, so 1 pop per 20.

Reply #6 Top


I've been finding that the amount of micro management that I need to do to play is killing the fun for me. I find that there are many things that I waste time and mouse clicks on that could be improved.
(...)

The micro is part of the fun for me, but I still agree with almost everything on the list. There is a line between micro and tedium, and most of the items on this list fall into the tedium category for me. Fortunately they all seem like polish points that could be addressed with relative ease, and without dramatically altering or removing intended functionality.

I do disagree with #5, though; The UP is one of my favorite features, I just think it needs more content.

Reply #7 Top

I really like micro too. But I find Op's post to be a pertinent subject even though the title might rather have been ''Too much unneeded tedium''

 

For me good micro is stuff like the ability to tweak my production wheel for every planet. I do it a lot in early game to help my strategy but at the same time it is not mandatory to do it.

Bad micro is having to purge my ship build list of unwanted models everytime a new war tech is developped.

Reply #8 Top

Judging from Galciv 2, I think confidence is very high  that most or all of the OPs points, which are good ones, will be addressed.   I have been playing Galciv 2 (back and forth with GC3) as part of the Community Update project (I think I actually caught one minor bug! lol)  It has pretty decent tools for managing stuff.   I hope that there will be, eventually, even better stuff in GC3.

 

Reply #9 Top

1) Sorry, but GalCiv suffers from lack of HotKeys.

2)  Movement should be shift click able movement like starcraft (1+9 movement points).   Scouts/Explorer ships can't scan anomalies so movement should reign. Also help prevent L and V movement moronic movements by default.

3) AND... scouts/Explorers should upgrade to Survey ships.... now warrior ships!

Reply #10 Top

While I agree with all the individual points outlined, I fear as a whole, they lead to a game where you are racing around the map trying to do 20 things in 5 seconds. That's not the kind of game I want, and, again, while I agree with all the individual points presented, would be rather upset if too much development time were spent trying to turn the game from a marathon to a sprint. 

Reply #11 Top

Quoting thenewteddy, reply 10

While I agree with all the individual points outlined, I fear as a whole, they lead to a game where you are racing around the map trying to do 20 things in 5 seconds. That's not the kind of game I want, and, again, while I agree with all the individual points presented, would be rather upset if too much development time were spent trying to turn the game from a marathon to a sprint. 

Well, what he is describing is an RTS type interface.   GalCiv is not RTS.   That doesn't mean his ideas are worthless, however.   It is nice to be able to tailor one's environment to one's taste.

As far as hot keys in Galciv 2, there is 

https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Keyboard_shortcuts

Now I don't see how to lasso units and give a group move command or ID, but that, to me, doesn't seem necessary.   I use the governor and rally points to group stuff into fleets, etc. and it works well already.   You can even rename rally points, starbases, etc.

 

Reply #12 Top

The one hot key I want is not there...ctrl+S to quick save.