4X Do you love/hate micromanagement in 4X?

[Grimwulf]

Can't remember a single strategy game with good automated micro. When you let AI make decisions for you, it's usually because you don't care anymore.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Can't remember a single strategy game with good automated micro. When you let AI make decisions for you, it's usually because you don't care anymore.

Pretty much.
As others have said, it's not about hating or loving micromanagement it's that the alternative is almost always worse

 

[adddeed]

My recurring problem with 4x games is that they scale poorly. The early game often suffers from a lack of meaningful decisions to make, while the late game becomes bogged down in a morass of inconsequential decisions. This is because the range of available decisions never actually changes to reflect the scale of the player's empire.

Edit: Wut Damned Registrations said. Beat me to it.

Can anyone recommend games where you make meaningful decisions as opposed the to inconsequential ones? Im thinking a game like Age of Wonders which is warfare oriented.

 

[Norfleet]

Can't remember a single strategy game with good automated micro. When you let AI make decisions for you, it's usually because you don't care anymore.

Well, there are strategy games where the AI does specific aspects of micromanagement tolerably. Every so often, if the scope is narrow enough, the AI governor actually makes the right decisions and you allow him to do his thing, generally because you've restricted enough of his behaviors that it has become a linear algebra problem, probably to produce you more foods, or beakers, or hammers, without actually leaving it up to him to produce any units for you, because the AI can never into producing units.

 

[Grimwulf]

tolerably

Exactly what I said before. The moment you stop playing on the edge and become content with tolerably - you pretty much don't give a fuck.[/QUOTE]

 

[Damned Registrations]

My recurring problem with 4x games is that they scale poorly. The early game often suffers from a lack of meaningful decisions to make, while the late game becomes bogged down in a morass of inconsequential decisions. This is because the range of available decisions never actually changes to reflect the scale of the player's empire.

Edit: Wut Damned Registrations said. Beat me to it.

Can anyone recommend games where you make meaningful decisions as opposed the to inconsequential ones? Im thinking a game like Age of Wonders which is warfare oriented.

I would say the decisions you make in a game of AI Wars are very meaningful.

 

[Norfleet]

Exactly what I said before. The moment you stop playing on the edge and become content with tolerably - you pretty much don't give a fuck.

That's not quite true, since my definition of "tolerably" is "at least as good as I would do it". I expect a machine to be capable of doing better than me, but if it can at least do as well as I can, this is tolerable.

 

[kyrub]

The more micromanagement I get in my life, the less I like to lose my time with it in games.
(seeing the tendency, I will end back with the chess)

 

[TigerKnee]

Like it at the start of a 4X.

Once you get a 50+ pile city (or colony or whatever) sprawl, it just gets tedious - especially if you've essentially won the game already because the enemy have no idea how to team up to pose a threat to you and are just going through the motions of a military victory.

And then a related problem is that normally the AI is so retarded that you can never just let them automate those building etc tasks because it's highly likely they'll do something moronic and cause you to grasp defeat from the hands of victory

 

[Johannes]

Like it at the start of a 4X.

Once you get a 50+ pile city (or colony or whatever) sprawl, it just gets tedious - especially if you've essentially won the game already because the enemy have no idea how to team up to pose a threat to you and are just going through the motions of a military victory.

And then a related problem is that normally the AI is so retarded that you can never just let them automate those building etc tasks because it's highly likely they'll do something moronic and cause you to grasp defeat from the hands of victory

That's more a problem of victory conditions than anything else. A way to limit the micro from getting too tedious, is to limit the empire size one's likely to have during a game. Of course the game size should be adjustable, too.

 

[Turisas]

Kinda have to like it, since governor AI is always so goddamn retarded with its decisions.

 

[Destroid]

I think MMO3 is a bad example of "no micromanagement" game. What they did was automation instead of abstracting things. They gave tools to both micromanage every single thing and tons of AI helpers to automate the process...

What's the point of first detaily simulating something and then automating it? Why implement something the player can't use (unless the player accepts micromanagement hell)? It should be abstracted in my opinion.
Take a look at Majesty for example, you don't have an option to "manually move around a hero", no they move on themselves. What you as the player do is working on a higher level (giving incentives to the AI heroes and building infrastructure).

Don't give the player tools to automate boring parts of the game, don't implement these boring parts in the first place

Simulation vs abstraction. Dwarf Fortress wouldn't be the same if it was heavily abstracted (maybe it would be better, but not the same). If you want to play some heavily abstracted 4x games, try some 4x style boardgames.

 

[Borelli]

In Civilization/SMAC games i micromanage every single worker/former from the start to the rest of the game. I simply cannot accept anything less. But usually i dislike repetitive and superficial micromanagement.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It occurs to me that the tedium of the 'mop up' phase in 4x games could be pretty much eliminated if you could just automate the fucking soldiers as well as the workers. I wouldn't really mind having to manage my 50 city empire if it meant that the 13 unit stacks I was cranking out every single turn were each flying off to capture a city on their own instead of me having to individually order all those units to gather up and move through enemy territory to the proper city and capture it in pretty much the same way the AI would have done anyways.

 

[MoLAoS]

I think most game devs just suck at strategy and that's why their automations blow. They just don't consider all the necessary things. Most people are terrible at explaining their own decision making processes if they aren't trained to deconstruct them in a specific field. Also they are afraid to push away dumb people who automate wrong.

As far as the mop up phase, perhaps the game should eliminate the need for such a phase at all, on top of having better automation. Or the player, in single player at least, could just decide they won and stop.

I despise abstraction in games, because its always 3 levels too high. It almost means games can't replicate their inspiration well because the abstraction leaves shit out. Its fine if you don't care about the theme but so irritating if the game epically fails to stay true to the setting because of badly done abstraction.

 

[xrm1]

Simulation vs abstraction. Dwarf Fortress wouldn't be the same if it was heavily abstracted (maybe it would be better, but not the same). If you want to play some heavily abstracted 4x games, try some 4x style boardgames.

DFhack features like workflow and autolabor that automate tedious and brainless tasks like making sure that there's always enough barrels or beds produced or reassigning your 50 idling dwarfes to low skill jobs that need to get done make it so much better though.

Can anyone recommend games where you make meaningful decisions as opposed the to inconsequential ones? Im thinking a game like Age of Wonders which is warfare oriented.

Warmongering in Civ5 on deity, lots of micro but all decisions (and all game systems) matter because you're so far behind.

I think most game devs just suck at strategy and that's why their automations blow. They just don't consider all the necessary things. Most people are terrible at explaining their own decision making processes if they aren't trained to deconstruct them in a specific field. Also they are afraid to push away dumb people who automate wrong.

I guess that's because they're so busy trying to get their game to the market and don't have the time or manpower to play around with their systems until they know what's optimal.

 

[MoLAoS]

I guess that's because they're so busy trying to get their game to the market and don't have the time or manpower to play around with their systems until they know what's optimal.

The financial benefit of a functioning AI probably outweighs the time spent adding it unless you are stupid and can't design good AI.

 

[baturinsky]

Can't remember a single strategy game with good automated micro. When you let AI make decisions for you, it's usually because you don't care anymore.

The Guild?

 

[Norfleet]

The Guild?

I can't say I recall the Guild having good AI automation. That's pretty much a textbook case of "do this for me because I don't care anymore", where you've blobbed the map and are focusing on making war, and are willing to tolerate having the industries you used to get to that point operating at relatively poor efficiency because your empire is now funded by war booty taken from the holdings of other dynasties rather than your native production.

Even then, you tend to maintain a solid grip on your military industries, like making sure sufficient Faust Elixir is produced to keep YOU alive and sufficient weaponry is produced to arm your soldiers, so that you can sack, loot, pillage, and murder all that oppose you in an immortal reign of terror. Or am I playing it wrong?

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Make good AI for 4x micromanagement and it'd be a good backdrop for a sandboxxy RPG. Take a revamped MOO2 and have several AI's battling for Orion in the background, while yourself, a struggling privateer, explores the galactic neighborhood and does quests. The "simulation" running in the background would allow for dynamic wars and events to spice up the universe. The quests and character stats would help to balance the randomness of what hapens in the univers.

Why do I bring this up? Because adventure/rpg space games always seem to be static in nature. The wars, if there're any, are scripted or preplanned somehow. Nothing much happens which surprises you, at least, once the plot is done. It's not that interesting things can't emerge from AI's or non-scripted processes, but that game creators don't usually allow it or pursue it.

Game creators definitely can create interesting plots and events. Just seems they fail to create truly immersing worlds because they don't allow the cpu enough freedom. Part of this is because the AI is unappealing. If something isn't premade, it's usually uninteresting. This is the result of neglect and also just simply cpu's and memory might not be adaquate enough yet.

 

[Norfleet]

Make good AI for 4x micromanagement and it'd be a good backdrop for a sandboxxy RPG. Take a revamped MOO2 and have several AI's battling for Orion in the background, while yourself, a struggling privateer, explores the galactic neighborhood and does quests. The "simulation" running in the background would allow for dynamic wars and events to spice up the universe. The quests and character stats would help to balance the randomness of what hapens in the univers.

I think that was the concept behind "Drox Operative", although the 4X underlying it was fairly bare. As with all RPGs, you tend to quickly become OP and start causing mass destruction by accident. The Last Federation also has a similar scheme, where you are, again, one guy in the backdrop of a 4X.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Make good AI for 4x micromanagement and it'd be a good backdrop for a sandboxxy RPG. Take a revamped MOO2 and have several AI's battling for Orion in the background, while yourself, a struggling privateer, explores the galactic neighborhood and does quests. The "simulation" running in the background would allow for dynamic wars and events to spice up the universe. The quests and character stats would help to balance the randomness of what hapens in the univers.

I think that was the concept behind "Drox Operative", although the 4X underlying it was fairly bare. As with all RPGs, you tend to quickly become OP and start causing mass destruction by accident. The Last Federation also has a similar scheme, where you are, again, one guy in the backdrop of a 4X.

You make me think of something else. I bolded what did it. See, it's hard enough to do just a 4x, but to do a 4x AND an adventure/rpg space-sim elite-hybrid is a whole other ballgame. And this is before all of the cpu/memory/system constraints you must heed. Moire than likely compromise have ot be made to do both in the same executable.

But a good AI for micromanagement would be a great start. The microamngement would be the detail in the universe which the player can see unfold in front of them. The large scale features would be like "Race X is at war with Race Y." It depends on a solid AI at the core.

Because it's all random it might sometimes fail to interest teh plaeyr. This is where teh quest and character progression come in. Just because AI is good, doesn't mean we can completley dpend on it to make things interesting.

But I suppose all this will happen anturally. Capable AI and emergent gameplay is hapening more oftenin games. It's probably afucjntion of developer interest, gamer interest and the abilty of computers to meet the systme requirments. What we're concerning ourselvs here with is very system demanding. The larger the numberso marbles whichthe cpu can proces the more cpaable it'll be to do this. Obviously, if the system can process it, we just need to make the software. They both rely on each other.

 

[baturinsky]

Make good AI for 4x micromanagement and it'd be a good backdrop for a sandboxxy RPG. Take a revamped MOO2 and have several AI's battling for Orion in the background, while yourself, a struggling privateer, explores the galactic neighborhood and does quests. The "simulation" running in the background would allow for dynamic wars and events to spice up the universe. The quests and character stats would help to balance the randomness of what hapens in the univers.

Why do I bring this up? Because adventure/rpg space games always seem to be static in nature. The wars, if there're any, are scripted or preplanned somehow. Nothing much happens which surprises you, at least, once the plot is done. It's not that interesting things can't emerge from AI's or non-scripted processes, but that game creators don't usually allow it or pursue it.

Game creators definitely can create interesting plots and events. Just seems they fail to create truly immersing worlds because they don't allow the cpu enough freedom. Part of this is because the AI is unappealing. If something isn't premade, it's usually uninteresting. This is the result of neglect and also just simply cpu's and memory might not be adaquate enough yet.

Some games do it, such as SMirates! and Space Rangers 1/2. Problem is to figure right scale in everything. Scale of time, scale of your effect on things.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

adventure/rpg space games

What are these? I can't recall any such game. Can you drop some examples?

 

[KoolNoodles]

I have to say I love it, because in the end I'd prefer micro and lots of shit to do, to nothing at all going on. Is it annoying as balls? Yeah you bet, but usually most games that can be micro-heavy, the micro can be ignored. You can mico the hell out of the stupid attrition movement bug in Eu4, but does it really matter? Nah. You can micro the hell out of every single city in Civ4, but really you only need to focus on a handful. You can micro every bit out of a blood economy in Dominions4, with patrols, collecting slaves, leaving slaves, adding up totals needed, calculating unrest, etc. but you don't have to get everything right to get most things right.

The list goes on.