Automation vs Micromanagement

[quantum_mechani]

Pnakotus said:

This is a serious issue for me because single player is lame and MP is absolutely ruined by some of my friends micro-ing the *** out of everything. 80% of players have ~30 sec turns unless something fun is happening; the other 20% can go on far longer doing various mundane tasks that provide a long term benefit, but which take forever to constantly supervise. In my view, MP is the heart of the game and would be far better by reducing micro as much as possible. That sort of fiddly, time consuming task has no place in a computer game.

I agree, the best way to combat this problem I've found is to use small maps. That said, I don't know if I would like a game where the average turn was 30 seconds...

[Arralen]

I agree, there's no point in maintaining interest in Dom3 - at least for you.

Dominions can't - and shouldn't, as it isn't designed in such a way from ground up - be played in 30-second-turns in midgame and later.

If you want a real time strategy game, go and buy such. Dominions started out as (and still mostly is) an email-game. And as it is a "grand strategy"-game, IMNSHO this should change too much.

On the other hand, there are some MM tasks that could be made easier. Think you didn't mention them, as patrolling and preaching isn't problematic:
patrolling - well, in Dom1 it was feasable to patrol every province to balance out growth, unrest and heavy taxation. You're not meant to do this in Dom2.
preaching - where's the problem with preaching? You set a priest to preach, that's it.

What would be nice and helpful:

• "move-to" orders
• auto-repeat on production queues
• "produce-to" redirection
• "sitesearching(spell)" and
• maybe"sitesearching(mov)", but the last one could turn ou too dangerous for your mages.

Edited: I forgot: The fastest-playing Dom2 blitz games on earth you'll find on the dominions IRC channel, on Saturday and Sundays. I've seen turn that lasted not more than 5 seconds, in general turn-around-time is 3..10 minutes.

[Chazar]

I agree that turns already on maps the size like Karan tend to drown in micromanaging, but I also realize that it is my own fault to satisfy the urge for minmaxing every tiny bit, although it kills the fun...

However, automized preaching is there in the form of temples, and the priests are necessary to allow directed domininon pushing - which is one of the game's essentials.

Nevertheless, there is some room of improvement to reduce micromanaging, in addition to the good points that have been said here so far, I think that these would be useful:

• cumulative scouting: A scout's report should take into account the previous turn, so improve. It is just plain stupid to write these things down by pen and paper!
• fog of war is fine, but the game should still recall the last scoutings for me, marked as outdated.
• sticky notes/color codes for commanders
• common tactical setup for armies starting from different provinces and hiding of colocated troops which I do not want to participate.
• Something that prevents the "search the hammer/pathbooster game" with respect to forging

I think the second and third item, as well as far reaching move-to's could be nicely handled by structuring commanders and their troops into groups of commanders, regardless of their position on the map (i.e. a group of commanders might be located in several provinces)