Robbie.Price

Join Date 04/2007

+12

Multiple Micromanagment levels

One thing i've been thinking about for a TBS game is the possibiltiy of having mulitple levels of micromanagment avalible.

When you start a new game you choose things, in GC it was random events on or off, how large the galaxy is, difficulty /skill levels of the opponents. . . ect.

I am thinking it should be possible, and benificial to have multiple avalible levels of micromanagement, as a choise when you start a map. The important thing would be that different levels of micromangment wouldn't make the game easier or harder. there would be no 'bonus score' for playing a game of the highest micromanagment. Some player are microphiles and some microphobes; no game can truely satify both if it only has one micromangment model.

So I suggest letting elemental have 3 - 4 micromanagment levels, each additional level opens up new mining options, or reasearch trees.

For example the lowest micromangment would have all minerals be collected automatically at a central bank, and distributed automatical (and instantaniously) to all cities that need them. No alloys would exist, an iron sword is an iron sword. Fog of war would be automaticly reveiled out to X distance from towns/mines armies

add a level of micromanagement and caravans's come into existance, minerals are made in one place and shipped, cities have individual store houses with stock which gets used and compleated. possibly simple alloy reasearch to make iron + adimantium bonused swords. Fog of war needs troops stationed to maintain, troops are there to patrol, troops on a mine also 'see' the full caravan route from the mine, since they are 'deployed' along it protecting it.

The top highest level of micromangment would have users worrying about how many caravans there are on which routes, protecting those caravans from raid/attack. cities would have standing demand for certain resourse as they grow, (just maintaining size requires so much iron/gold/silver per turn, cities that loose these minimums would shrink or pay less taxes till supply was re-established) Fog of war communicaton delayed, Troops far from your city send back fog of war data the next turn, unless you dedicate resourse to fast communication's for that troop, armies must be given orders on what to do if they encounter enemies and can't be given orders because they are out of communication, troops must be set to partrolling both caravane routes and mines, Spoiles of War must be carried with the army back to your civilization before they become avalible. whatever.

The higher the micromanagement level the more bonuses you can squeese out of if, and the more statifaction microphiles can get out of handleing every peice. lower levels take less thought and make for easier fun games for winding down after work mindlessly.

what do people think, would it be interesting/worth while to be able to choose when starting a game just how much micromanagment that map will expect of the user?

Best wishes all,

Robbie price

EDIT, Quick note, At lower levels of micromangment it's not the case that the AI is 'doing the complex stuff for you' the complex stuff just wouldn't exist, you wouldn't get the benifits or complexity for free. Like playing Civilizations Revolutions for the DS, vs Civilization 4 for the PC, differnt expieriances, but in this case one game.

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Sounds like a lot of work for the devs. Still, I see no problem with it from the gameplay perspective, so if they have the time, it could make some people pretty happy...

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That could be cool but I think it would be alot of work for the devs...

Edit: Dang... Scoutdog beat me to it...

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I'm just going to echo what Scoutdog and Sarudak have already said: it's a good idea from a customizability perspective, but it would mean the devs have to design, test and bugfix that many different systems, rather than just one. And personally I'd rather they put the time and effort that would take into more important things, such as complex systems with amazing UIs that minimize micromanagement, and make what micro remains relatively painless.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I'd like to see the game guts always expect the same amount of micromanagement--lots. Rather than choose an MM level at game start, I want to be able to do something like zooming in and zooming out only have the micro tasks be what moves from high-res to highly-abstracted. Through the course of a single, long game of GC2 I can find myself wishing that I had finer controls on this or that for these few turns and wishing I had trustworthy AIs to delegate to for long stretches of relatively uneventful turns.

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One thing I would like to see from an MM perspective is an AI that can recognise when something big is going on, and not only ping it, but automatically cut any automation in that area for the player.

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Making multiple systems the way you described it is as others have mentioned a development nightmare, and not practical if they ever want to release the game.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting Scoutdog,

reply 5

Oh, yes, please, indeed.

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Goodmorning all;

Quoting Tridus,

reply 6

It'd be more realistic to have a MM option where some things are simply hidden from you if you want it on simple. The AI governor can take over and automate stuff like town development, tax rates, combining resources, etc. You'd then not see that stuff, but it's actually going on still.

Making multiple systems the way you described it is as others have mentioned a development nightmare, and not practical if they ever want to release the game.

The problem i have with this is that the "if you have something so complex that you want the AI to do it for you . . . it shouldn't be that complex in the first place" people still will feal that they are not playing a game built for them. they are playing a game crippled for thier ammusment.

If you read frogboys post on player added mods and exponentially complex chains of supplies to build bigger and better creatures ad-infinitum, you get the fealing that just turning that all over to the AI is somewhat of a copout.

What i'm proposing is seperated levels.

There is a big war going on over Camp 1 vers Camp 2 vers Camp 3 economic models. with Camp 1 being super micro, Camp 2 being no micro and camp 3 being various inbetweeners (and camp 4 being a differnt camp 3 that doesn't seam to be overly popular... correct me if i'm wrong).

The thing is if you make camp 1. it's easy enough to render it into camp 2, or something less encumbering. (all MRs are everywhere in a omniexistent warehouse, stuff is instantly transported to where it's needed, infinite storage.).

Yes it adds a significant ammount of work for the developers . . . but if they are setting out to make Camp 1 a reality the ammount of additional work to make one or two simpler versions also work is only a small fraction. (In general proper balancing increases in dificutly as a semi N! ((N)* (N-1) * (N-2)) {N = number of reasourses + rules for manipulating resoureses} [how many handshakes can a group exchange without two people shakings hands twice]) if you simplify the game removing some resourses everything becomes that much more easy to balance.

Also if they follow this path, then they can make a Camp '1 STAR!!' Supper over the top micromanagement for the supreamly detail oriented personality, and not piss/scare anybody off that it's too much micromanagement.

lastly just having the opening choice opens up the possibilty to for modders to mod each seperately, yielding mods build for low micro and mods for high micro and beyond.

Anyway that's what i was hopeing to convay, more so

Best wishes all

Robbie Price

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Quoting Robbie.Price,

reply 8

Goodmorning all;
Yes it adds a significant ammount of work for the developers . . . but if they are setting out to make Camp 1 a reality the ammount of additional work to make one or two simpler versions also work is only a small fraction. (In general proper balancing increases in dificutly as a semi N! ((N)* (N-1) * (N-2)) {N = number of reasourses + rules for manipulating resoureses} [how many handshakes can a group exchange without two people shakings hands twice]) if you simplify the game removing some resourses everything becomes that much more easy to balance.

It doesn't just add a significant amount of work for the developers, it adds an unreasonable amount of work. It effectively amounts to making many different games. It isn't just about balancing, it's about implementation. They have to design each individual 'level' as separate games (because everything will be affected by altering the game so fundamentally), and then go and actually code them in. And then at the end they have to make sure that all modes are the game they actually want to make.

I'd much rather they just put in the effort to make a complicated system so that the people who want to can micro their hearts away all the time can, but with good enough automation that others can let the automation do its thing 95% of the time and only step in now and then when/if things get hairy or they want to do something specific, and good enough UI so that when they do have to step in it isn't painful. I think that's a better solution that will result in a better game, for less (though still considerable) work.

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In general, I am against the idea in OP and reasons are similar to other posters said.   I am against micro, I am against AI governor type automation.   I am more interested macro-management.

I like to micro everything when my empire is small. Is there a way to micro everything when my empire is huge by clever use of UI? I am proposing a questing system for city (or it is also a demand based econ/production) that might allow exactly that.

Gamer quests a city concerned to build 10 Bear Calvary units. The game will know automatically what buildings will be needed. (There will be option to disallow building buildings, which will then means the units are shipped there instead)   The game will queue these buildings automatically, and then the 10 units.    Multiple city quests can also be queued in LIFO basis. Whenever a building/unit is created or a city quest is completed, the game notify gamer via his event log.
When you have a huge empire, you mico manage by making these city quests. The UI allows you to reuse the quests you’ve built to group of cities.

Gamer can assign similar quests to his heroes.   Some example of quests are:
1.    Explore FOW, notify gamer via the log when it see danger/new city etc.
2.    Gather 100 bears, or 20 level 1 units from gamers’ city, then rally them all to a specific place
3.    Capture/Defend/Sentry a specific city/mine etc
4.    Patrol area, etc etc.
The hero will write entries to gamers’ event log whenever the quest succeed/fail or see something interesting.

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This would be appreciated. Of course, it would need my "significance alarm" to stop quests before they get out of control or are forgotten. I'm just worried about someone forgetting to casncel a quest, then realising they have 7,000 spearmen when everyone else is making Pegasus riders.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

At lower levels of micromangment it's not the case that the AI is 'doing the complex stuff for you' the complex stuff just wouldn't exist, you wouldn't get the benifits or complexity for free. Like playing Civilizations Revolutions for the DS, vs Civilization 4 for the PC, differnt expieriances, but in this case one game.

I would be against this. It would be a lot of work to code, balance, and write AIs to be able to handle this. I would rather see the effort go towards other things.

Sammual

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Goodmorning all;

The problem i have with this is that the "if you have something so complex that you want the AI to do it for you . . . it shouldn't be that complex in the first place" people still will feal that they are not playing a game built for them. they are playing a game crippled for thier ammusment.

If you read frogboys post on player added mods and exponentially complex chains of supplies to build bigger and better creatures ad-infinitum, you get the fealing that just turning that all over to the AI is somewhat of a copout.

That's true. I guess the issue is that in this case not everybody wants the AI to do those things. I want a complex economic model. I like micro (within reason). I want camp 3 basically as it is. So for me, it's not something that I want the AI doing.

It is a cop-out in your case, but it's also a method that is fairly feasable. The AI already has to be able to handle this stuff because the AI players have to handle it. Letting the AI do it for you and removing that aspect from the UI does make a simpler experience for you. The AI will hook up your resources, combine them, and get them to places. All you have to do is use and trade them.

What i'm proposing is seperated levels.

There is a big war going on over Camp 1 vers Camp 2 vers Camp 3 economic models. with Camp 1 being super micro, Camp 2 being no micro and camp 3 being various inbetweeners (and camp 4 being a differnt camp 3 that doesn't seam to be overly popular... correct me if i'm wrong).

The thing is if you make camp 1. it's easy enough to render it into camp 2, or something less encumbering. (all MRs are everywhere in a omniexistent warehouse, stuff is instantly transported to where it's needed, infinite storage.).

Yes it adds a significant ammount of work for the developers . . . but if they are setting out to make Camp 1 a reality the ammount of additional work to make one or two simpler versions also work is only a small fraction. (In general proper balancing increases in dificutly as a semi N! ((N)* (N-1) * (N-2)) {N = number of reasourses + rules for manipulating resoureses} [how many handshakes can a group exchange without two people shakings hands twice]) if you simplify the game removing some resourses everything becomes that much more easy to balance.

Also if they follow this path, then they can make a Camp '1 STAR!!' Supper over the top micromanagement for the supreamly detail oriented personality, and not piss/scare anybody off that it's too much micromanagement.

Well, we don't agree on how complex it is to do. I suppose some aspects of it would be fairly doable, like having a simplified model where resources hook to everywhere at once and produce infinite supplies.

I think it's a good idea. I don't think its something they can realistically do in the time frame avialable. If they can do it, great!

edit - wtf quotes?

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Quoting GW Swicord,

reply 7

Oh, yes, please, indeed.

There is a comma between all the words in that sentence .

Quoting Tridus,

reply 13

edit - wtf quotes?

I'm actually starting to suspect that Robbie.Price's name is responsible for breaking our quotes. Every time I try to quote him it just fails, but I don't have trouble quoting other people. Maybe the '.' in his name is the culprit? SD should look into this.

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I'm actually starting to suspect that Robbie.Price's name is responsible for breaking our quotes.

I'm sorry guys, My name was never ment to cause so much harm.

:- D

I now somewhat prefer my AI -Human interface model which allows you to control to a very fine degree what that AI will do for you. . . . But even then some people will see this AI talking as just different higher scale micromangement, It's stll micromanagment after all.

I still think Elemental will be able to please a much broader audiance if it has a second playable balanced simpler economic model for the less OC gamers of the world.

I myself am a microphile but I respect the people who don't want to have to work to have fun.

Take care. Peace.

Robbie Price

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Well, good automation goes a long way to cleaning up micro. I suppose you could set up the AI to manage the finer points of an economy. If you still hold the reins on the finer stuff, I don't think that it would have much screwup potential.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 14

... There is a comma between all the words in that sentence . ...

Well...it's not a sentence

Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 14

... I'm actually starting to suspect that Robbie.Price's name is responsible for breaking our quotes. Every time I try to quote him it just fails, but I don't have trouble quoting other people. Maybe the '.' in his name is the culprit? SD should look into this.

Sounds like a Forum Issues post waiting to happen.

Edit: Wait-wait. My steel-sieve of a mind finally let me remember that I had a huge hassle some vague while back when a forum change made the periods in my old username (G.W. Swicord) a problem and they had to go. Robbie registered with Stardock over two years ago, and I can't remember how long ago the 'period problem' forum change happened. If it was before April 2007, Robbie might have found a bug in new-user registration.

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the quote button hasn't worked for me in a while either, but I assumed it was some update conflicting with google chrome. I have not complained about it much because I just take it to be the price for using chrome rather than firefox. (I've tried to switch back, but I'm addicted to the address bar functions of chrome, not to mention the quality tab functions. I miss not-chrome's bookmark management though)

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It works 100% fine for me, but I use Firefox.

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Quoting landisaurus,

reply 18

The quote button broke for me too when I updated to Safari 4 a few days ago

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Yea I'm using Safari 4 as well Pigeonpigeon. i've just given up on quoting for the time being.

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The "Quote"-button works fine for me, on Firefox.
Quoting in itself, though.. that's just broken for everyone, isn't it?

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psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

I just do it manually, and make people actually think to figure out who's being quoted. The populace doesn't exercise their brains nearly enough, so every little bit helps to keep the atrophied mush from liquifying completely.

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