Concerned about tedious micromanagement like in AoW: Shadow Magic

No your not the only one of this opinion. I expect that larger maps will have more micromanagement. That said I'm normally against delegating micromanagement aspects to the AI and I like playing larger games in a 4x tbs game. I actually like micromanagement (one of the things that drew me to this game) and I kind of take the view that if it's so much it becomes tedius than I'll just play a smaller map.

I understand the aversion to late game micromangement, but AoW:SM? Seriously? That game was definitely one of the least annoying in terms of city management. The only complaint I had was the short queue, which is easily fixed. You barely ever have to worry about unrest and you don't have to worry about micromanaging plots.

Let me tell you what happens when you simplify and automate things much more than that. You create an abomination like Master of Orion 3 that looks great on paper, but simply isn't any fun to play.

Ozmono has the right idea about playing smaller maps. Playing big maps is fun, but it gets to a point where you are either wasting huge amounts of time microing everything or you might as well be playing a smaller map since most everything is automated anyways. Just for the record my favorite RTS is Supreme Commander, the macromanagement king, so I have no aversion to doing things on larger scales.

Unless there is zero micromanagement in city management, large maps will inevitably have more of it then small maps (since they have more cities).

Unfortunately, as mentioned by other people, everything being so automated that the player has nothing to do winds up not being a lot of fun either. This will put a constraint on the map sizes that you will likely want to use.

Actually that depends on the map. In a realistic map going from one city to another would take some traveling, therefore a good map IMO is one without too many cities.... And yet most map makers in AOW insisted in crowding the map with cities, and you where able to go from one city to another in less than one turn. Of course when you have 250+ cities to deal with, the game ends up being quite annoying.

MoM can be quite a chore as well when it reaches late-game stages.  90% of the time is spent watching those silly animations that pop up when each city finishes what it is building and choosing a new building/unit for that city.

The solution, of course, is robust build queues that can be named, saved and applied to cities both singly and in groups via a flexible multiple city management screen.

The tedium of micromanagement is really not a game design issue at all, merely a user interface design issue. The creators of MoO3 did not realize this and unfortunately that game is the tragic result.

I guess the other major issue with MoM, for those with optimization-OCD (like my friend) is the problem of waste. All excess production, food and research when the current task completes is wasted. This is quite simple to deal with using a carryover system.

I think ChongLi hits it on the head with the comment regarding Optimization. Many players enjoy optimizing their play experience, it's like how first person shooter players enjoy shooting monsters in the face. Just as too many monsters gets repetitive, too much micro can be boring.

I think the best kind of micromanagement is where you can spend a longer time on fewer, more important acts, as opposed to dozens of meaningless "Build an upgrade to this bank" no-brainers.

I had high hopes that the addition of Planetary Governors in GalCiv2 would work like this, but it didn't quite work out that way. Here's hoping Elemental includes something clean and simple along these lines.

The optimization thing is not such a big deal for me because I tend to role-play more than I think about a score or winning or whatever. But I love playing the largest maps that my computer can handle, and I appreciate every little thing that can help me avoid performing tens (or potentially hundreds) of uninteresting tasks that are all based on a 'single' decision, e.g. upgrading something.

Eh lot of micro in AoW:SM? Try Dominions 3. MP Pbem games on large maps. When you had shitload of provinces, it took 3-5 hours to complete 1 turn. It was insane. I think that Elemental will be lot more micro friendly.