sure, the problem is not having some MM to do, the problem is when some tasks become too repetitives and must be done several times in a turn (check cities warehouses for each city, check each caravans will be able to unload all it transport etc...).

MM is interesting as long as it needs reflexion ; once its just a question of patience and endurance it becomes painfull to me.

one last thing : you say its not time restrain, you're right... but not totally. When you need more than 1 hour to play a single turn, time becomes an issue.

To a compulsory microer and completionist like myself, too many sliders and too much microing is a death sentance. It doesn't matter that it's my own fault, I get bored out of my skull after a while!

GalCiv2 was a bit too heavy on that side, I'd like to see some moderation. I want them to take that extra step back and ask themselves "do we need this?" and "does this really add something?".

It's a bit like the issue with the combat in the game. I loathe the idea of there being (Esp. real-time) tactical combat. One could argue that "you don't have too, theres always auto-resolve, quit wining faggot" - but that's not the point. The point is that no matter what, auto-resolve is unlikely to EVER be as efficient as actually going in and play the battle yourself.

I can see my priests charging in when they run out of spells already. Or my archers trying to flank a bear. Or any out of a hundred possible things that will have me hitting the screen screaming murder.

Maybe not hundreds of no-input turns, but I'd *really* love to have a hundred years go by with nothing significant happening. Ludicrously large maps deserver ludicrously long timelines.

That's pretty much my take on it, except I have a masochist streak which has kept me playing Immense maps in GC2. But then I don't max out the habitable planets nor do I try to squeeze every possible BC and/or score point out of a game. So I don't like that much MM pain.

I've also never experienced or read about a really sweet system of governors (AI assitants). But that doesn't mean the goal is unreasonable. GC2 strikes many of us as having some trule advanced AIs for the major civs. I'm kind of hoping that Elemental will be Stardock's chance to put some of that skill (codebase) to work helping players delegate micromangement with better success than any of us have seen so far. (That's part of what I'm thinking about when I clamor for the game to include officer/administrator units.)

In my dreams I'm waiting for a game where (micro)management will scale to the current size of your empires/army.

A tribal chief managing 1 city certainly doesn't have the same problems as the king of an 'half-world' empire.

I think this could be achieve using a sort of 'civics' system (refering to the civics in civilization) where the parameters you can act on are decided by your current civic ; newer civics unlocking new area of management and leaving some old ones to an 'automated' system.

I have not played GC2 enough, but I always had that sensation that as my empire grows, I dont want to loose time anymore to optimize each city/planet (it's fun when you got a couple of them though). Yet when I come to the higher AI levels or MP I cant just 'play partially', I want to optimize everything I can, everywhere... it drives me crazy and often I get discouraged at that point

No, but at the same time I don't want to be stuck going through every single city in an empire every single turn to make sure everything is 'optimized'.

I agree, I expect about the same as Civ 4 when it comes to micro in this game.  Civ 4 has so much micro it makes my eyes bleed, but then it doesn't because its not a TBS strategy game.  And even then Civ 4 had a few automated things that are about as good as you can get.  Like the automated explore or workers, what really else could you do ?  Sure, it angered me when workers cut down all my trees, but you could turn that off, and the rest of it was pretty reasonable.  Build roads, build pastures, build farms, I  shouldn't have to micro all that (I do anyway, but the automated works well enough).  My explorers would explore everything, but they didn't do anything stupid like go half way around the world for what is obviously a 1x1 space of unexplored when they could go through the continent sized ithmus that obviously has stuff on it (Sins has done things like that, where there is 1 planet that is on the other side of my known galaxy, and they go for that one when they should be going for cluster of planets near them to explore.  Its been fixed though I think)

In terms of the sliders, again I think it shouldn't be a problem as long as you arn't FORCED to use them by having pre-defined pre-sets and stuff like that.   

Ron Lugge: It's funny that there are different opinions on exactly what micro and macromanagement really is.

StarCraft people associate macromanagement with unit production, building structures and researching upgrades while micromanagement to them is commanding your army.

I hope that it will simply be fun and have a strong UI.

As far as micro goes, the part I find the worst is when I am focusing on a military attack/invasion, and yet I still have to deal with just as many economic problems requiring microing as I would without a military invasion going on. In GalCiv2, I like the largest sized maps (epic wars ftw). It isn't to bad in peacetime, since I am merely upgrading planets and managing research, but in times of war I have to deal with planet upgrades, manage research, mess around with ship production, gather the newly created ships into fleets, move the fleets off to attack, and often times play around with the budget since my military spending causes my money to drop like a rock.

IMO it would be best if a player has to do relatively the same number of things per turn. Empty turns are boring, huge turns filled with 500 things to do are overwhelming. Hopefully Elemental will have some really nice governors, since due to its 64 bit capability (and therefore its ability to use up to 18000 petabytes or so of RAM) we will be able to make maps of sizes previously unheard of and civilizations on those maps which will require a huge amount of management.

I'd rather see that be a result of playstyle worked out through a highly flexible core engine and UI. What you describe as a weakness of GC2 is something that I really like about it, but then I don't do war wins. When wars happen, whether I started them or not, I *expect* things to get a lot harder and messier than they are during peacetime.

This is my ideal configuration of economy I'll like to have in this game.  Hope Frogboy will look at it!!

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When you find a Iron resources, you build "Mining Camp 1" to harvest Iron at the rate of 10 Iron per Month.  The "Mining Camp 1" can stockpile up to 100 iron resources only; when 100 iron is reached, production is ceased temporarily until the iron is either 1) distributed to nearest Hamlet or 2) caravanned

Pls keep in mind that the RMG or map maker will decide how much Iron this tile has.  If it only has a total of 200, production ceases on the 20 month.

Hamlet, in some way is very similar to "Mining Camp 1".  Hamlet produces 1 human per month; it has max human population of 100.  Hamlet also acts as stockpile of all kind of material, be it Iron, Wood, Food, Life energy, Death Energy, or whatever.  For sake of simplicity, the max of everything here is 100 units.  It will receive the resources  distribution in 10-tile radius automatically since Turn 1, without player's involvement.  Map maker can stockpile any kind of material to the hamlet, up to 100 unit limit.  If 100 units are stored, the nearby mines will stop producing.

The end result is that this Halmet A has Iron production of 10 Iron per month received from the “mining camp 1” and various resources nearby.

The map maker/player can distribute all kind of production from Hamlet A to Village B, if they want.  For Village B, it has a stockpile limit of 1000 units of everything, including human & material resources.  Say Village B already has Iron mine producing 50 Iron per month, map maker/player can ask Halmet A to distribute a total of 10 Iron & 1 human per month to Village B.  Then in this Village B, you can produce 2 paladin per month, which costs 30 Iron, 1 human, 10 wood, 40 gold coins & 10 labor unit.  When a player want to train/buy 10 paladins, the game will automatically calculates that this Village B can only produce 2 Paladins per month max.  But this is already more productive then Hamlet A, which has a rate of 1/3 Paladin per month max (if we consider Iron only)

When multiple units are being produced (e.g. sharing the wood resources), player adjust sliders to determine exactly how many Paladins or Trebuchets are produced per month.

In case of emergency, a player can always micro-manage & caravan all the stockpiled Iron from the Hamlet A and/or "Mining Camp 1".  Caravan can also be used for diplomacy or being robbed etc.

To define 'nearby' mentioned above, I'll say it is a continuous chain  of resources.  Say if Hamlet A is now occupied by your opponent, Village B will no longer receive its Iron but the mining camp 1 will still keep stockpiling to 100 Iron unit (until your opponent take it, or you caravan it away)  Its Paladin production rate will drop right away. 

The neat thing is all newly produced Paladin can also be vectored to another village.  Any unit produced in that month will travel to its vectored town on the map at month end;  grouped separately depending on their movement speed.

To sumarize, all material/units are vectored as designated by mapmaker, or micromanaged by the player.  I've not mentioned attrition yet, but it should be there.

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The stuff above is intimately related to the player-designed units.  I'll not like to micromanage how many horse, sword, wand, shield etc there is in which village.   I hope what I described will find an audience.

For example, the game comes with a Dark Knight unit; it costs 20 Iron, 1 undead, 20 wood, 50 gold coins and 0 labor; and requires the Horse Riding Technology.  It will have ATT 20, DEF 15, Damage 15, HP 200 and various fighting skills.

However, I want to make a customized a Dark Paladin unit that can cast all Death Magic level 1 spell.  I go to the customize screen & use the Dark Knight as template.  It will say "Death Magic level 1 spell" costs extra 15 Death Energy, -10% HP, -10% ATT and extra 20% gold; requires Death Magic 1 Technology. 

Once I playtest a while I want to change how the Dark Paladin work, I can say add the "Spell Range +1" ability, it'll then cost 100% more (Death) Energy and minus additional 20% ATT.  Or I'll like to put in extra armor, so its DEF increases by 20%, but then it'll requires the "Armory 2" technology.

The developer will need to find a way mathematically & organically calculate how an Undead, a horse will costs that much, and has certain ability.   And how the AI will use a customized unit is maybe quite difficult!

I would like to know a few things regarding the training/equipment system..

Would it be possible for me to train soldiers without equipment, and then equip them later with proper equipment? If that is so, what stops me from simply doing that very thing?

Could I train units post-formation? If I have an army at my gates, and I scramble all my ressources to build properly equipped (but green) troops, I win the battle. Could I then spend time training the surviving units while they are already present on the map?

What stops me from just training equipmentless soldiers on the map until I have elite soldiers, and simply equip them with proper weapons later on?

If I discover Technological Training Gizmo X (ex: Fire Magic Training for soldiers). Could I send my already trained and equipped team of knights to Hogwart to have them trained in the use of magic? What about my King?

This reminds me of Stronghold where you have to get grain, build a mall, bakery etc. Could be turned into an sim game..

Gawd this game sounds perfect. I absolutely cannot wait to check this out. I really want to play a Stardock-made game other than GalCiv2 (which I love dearly).

Keep it up Stardock, this is aweosme stuff.