SEIV can have a lot of micromanagement, but they have a lot of time saving shortcuts - saving build queues, waypoints, etc. Overall the micromanagement was never a game killer for me. Do you remember what specifically you had problems with?
I agree with Alneyan, the base game is somewhat constrained (like life-draining weapons, wrathful skies, can be in dom2).
The SEIV AI can be dumb, but because the ai can be modded to an extent (illwinter: hint hint
) you can find many mods that improve the sp aspect as well.
I havn't played seiv awhile but I really liked the devnull mod. I don't think people use that anymore, though.