How is the micromanagement in 2.2.3/4?

[Roddo]

There's a ton of new buildings, most of which you'll never build because they are not needed. By the time you get the upgraded planetary capital amenity related work is irrelevant, because the most efective way of employing LARGE amount of pops in a densenly populated planet is making them clerks and clerks already produce more than enough amenities.
It's a self-solving problem.


edit: that is if you are not gestald.

 

[Dr. B]

OP here, thanks for great feedback everybody.

I am mildly shocked, the required micromanagement must be overwhelming once the empire grows a bit. This is horrible for a strategy game (imho).

There has to be dev team plans to streamline planet/job management and AI better than now, so the player is not particularly handicapped for a hands-off approach?

 

[sillyrobot]

OP here, thanks for great feedback everybody.

I am mildly shocked, the required micromanagement must be overwhelming once the empire grows a bit. This is horrible for a strategy game (imho).

There has to be dev team plans to streamline planet/job management and AI better than now, so the player is not particularly handicapped for a hands-off approach?

It's my hope, but not my expectation.

 

[Chthon]

There's a ton of new buildings, most of which you'll never build because they are not needed. By the time you get the upgraded planetary capital amenity related work is irrelevant, because the most efective way of employing LARGE amount of pops in a densenly populated planet is making them clerks and clerks already produce more than enough amenities.
It's a self-solving problem.


edit: that is if you are not gestald.

I don't see the amenities created by holotheatres, temples, or the population growth buildings to be the main draw of them. The main draw is their other benefits.

Holotheatre: A second source of unity that you can spam.
Temples: Also creates unity for religious empires.
Population growth buildings: help grow population faster of course.

 

[Roddo]

Well, if you like playing automated games that's just fine. I personally don't mind micro, it's just the constant micro what bothers me.

edit:

But theaters ARE amenity buildings, the fact the produce a second resource is just the norm being applied to them. They are even TERRIBLE buildings because they require an input of consumer goods to function, which you can totally bypass with clerks.


edit 2:
My point being, by the time I'm on late game micro becomes a chore in which I try to find the most efficient way of employing an ever-increasing amount of useless pops.
So far, the best "solutions" I've found to this is spamming comertial zones and enacting utopian abundance.

 

[James_K]

I think a lot of the "micro" problem is actually a UI issue - the game doesn't properly notify you when a planet has overcrowding, unemployment or negative amenities.

In my experience, the mental load of managing my empire spikes up once I get more planets than I can see on one screen in the outliner. At that point you have to constantly scroll through your outliner to check if you need to build on any of your planets.

The solution is to add notifications for when a planet gains unemployment, overcrowding or negative amenities. That would make it unnecessary to check the outliner all the time - you could ignore a planet until the game told you it needed attention.

Here's a suggestion thread I created on the topic:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-about-unemployment-and-overcrowding.1140554/

 

[Rhym3z]

I think a lot of the "micro" problem is actually a UI issue - the game doesn't properly notify you when a planet has overcrowding, unemployment or negative amenities.

In my experience, the mental load of managing my empire spikes up once I get more planets than I can see on one screen in the outliner. At that point you have to constantly scroll through your outliner to check if you need to build on any of your planets.

The solution is to add notifications for when a planet gains unemployment, overcrowding or negative amenities. That would make it unnecessary to check the outliner all the time - you could ignore a planet until the game told you it needed attention.

Here's a suggestion thread I created on the topic:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-about-unemployment-and-overcrowding.1140554/

While their at it, it would be nice to get a notification when a planet decision has stopped

 

[maxp779]

It's as tedious as ever and still very present in 2.2.3/4

As others have said there is much room to improve though so hopefully after performance and game breaking bugs are fixed Paradox will focus on making Stellaris as fun as it was previously without all the tedious mundane exponentially increasing micro.

I really don't understand why they did what they did to sectors. There is no way I could conquer the galaxy now and constantly have to send resources to all those sectors lol, it's just not viable.

 

[maxp779]

Thankfully Le Guin removed a lot of micro which is rather refreshing.
However it introduced ai issues with sectose etc.
These issues are fixed with the glavious ai mod from the steam workshop though, which I recommend everyone to get.

I'd like some of what you've been smoking lol. Micro increased drastically.

 

[~Robbie]

OP here, thanks for great feedback everybody.

I am mildly shocked, the required micromanagement must be overwhelming once the empire grows a bit. This is horrible for a strategy game (imho).

There has to be dev team plans to streamline planet/job management and AI better than now, so the player is not particularly handicapped for a hands-off approach?

There's been no communication that what you're describing is the case. A major goal of this update was, by their own words, to decrease micromanagement, and it has increased it drastically. Not sure what got lost in translation from concept to execution, but it seems like this is the direction they want the game to go in for the forseeable future.

At any rate, if they are planning on reducing micro, they haven't shared those plans.

 

[AlanC9]

My point being, by the time I'm on late game micro becomes a chore in which I try to find the most efficient way of employing an ever-increasing amount of useless pops.
So far, the best "solutions" I've found to this is spamming comertial zones and enacting utopian abundance.

Yeah, those are the two best ways late-game. Although running UA is the opposite of micro.

What kind of galaxies are you playing in? By that late in the game I'm selling alloys and buying zro just to avoid throwing the stuff out.

 

[Mastikator]

There's been no communication that what you're describing is the case. A major goal of this update was, by their own words, to decrease micromanagement, and it has increased it drastically. Not sure what got lost in translation from concept to execution, but it seems like this is the direction they want the game to go in for the forseeable future.

At any rate, if they are planning on reducing micro, they haven't shared those plans.

To decrease mindless micromanagement. You don't just go by a planet and sweep upgrade everything, you don't just go through all your planets and do five hundred upgrades for every single new building technology you research.
But you do have to keep a constant eye on everything which gets overwhelming if you get to 20+ planets since you can't just queue up upgrades and plans in advance.

What makes things kinda bad in the long run is that pops don't stop growing but you can get to a point where you prefer that it does. The game actually severely punishes you if you let the planets go the way it would intuitively work.

This scenario has happened in almost every game I've played. I get a planet to a all districts spent, I don't want to urbanize since the planet generates base resources that I need so I just leave it at 0 housing left 0 jobs left.
When the next pop shows up it's unmeployed and homeless but the migration is weaker than growth so a new pop will show up.
By the time a third pop shows up the planets starts getting "Den of criminality" events even though crime was at 0% and stability was 60/70+ prior to these events. I basically had no choice but to either
1) implement destabilizing decisions
2) constantly resettle

There was no option to subsidize migration, if I expel overpopulation they leave my empire. There is just no good options for planets that are finished with development.

So you're forced to constantly babysit planets that in previous versions would've been fine to leave. You want to be able to leave a planet alone without it imploding. Attention and time are finite player resources, don't make the player waste time and attention on babysitting.

 

[AlanC9]

There's been no communication that what you're describing is the case. A major goal of this update was, by their own words, to decrease micromanagement, and it has increased it drastically. Not sure what got lost in translation from concept to execution, but it seems like this is the direction they want the game to go in for the forseeable future.

At any rate, if they are planning on reducing micro, they haven't shared those plans.

I think that what they wanted to reduce was pointless upgrading, not micro per se. Probably a bit of miscommunication involved.

 

[Roddo]

Yeah, those are the two best ways late-game. Although running UA is the opposite of micro.

What kind of galaxies are you playing in? By that late in the game I'm selling alloys and buying zro just to avoid throwing the stuff out.

Always play huge (1000) galaxies. My current playthroughs are terrible sluggish so right now I'm just... waiting for the sun to shine again onto my will to return to them.
I'll probably just dich the saves later on, as tends to happen.

By the time a third pop shows up the planets starts getting "Den of criminality" events even though crime was at 0% and stability was 60/70+ prior to these events. I basically had no choice but to either

What kind of empire are you running? Authoritarian? What stability do you have?
Cause I never even got near to those numbers... I had 0 crime on every planet since day one and I'm pretty sure I'm not the most efficient player out there so I tend to think the system is just unbalanced.
I'm afraid I'll never see any of those events simply because I need to play a different way or something.

 

[Chthon]

Well, if you like playing automated games that's just fine. I personally don't mind micro, it's just the constant micro what bothers me.

edit:

But theaters ARE amenity buildings, the fact the produce a second resource is just the norm being applied to them. They are even TERRIBLE buildings because they require an input of consumer goods to function, which you can totally bypass with clerks.


edit 2:
My point being, by the time I'm on late game micro becomes a chore in which I try to find the most efficient way of employing an ever-increasing amount of useless pops.
So far, the best "solutions" I've found to this is spamming comertial zones and enacting utopian abundance.

Theaters are both amenities and unity.
Anything that employs clerks are both amenities and trade.

If you want more unity go with theatres, if you want more trade, go with clerks. Otherwise if you just want amenities, you go with clerks.

As I said, Theaters are the ONLY spamable unity building. The ONLY one. If you want a ton of unity, that's what it's there for, the amenities are just a side effect.

 

[Chthon]

There was no option to subsidize migration, if I expel overpopulation they leave my empire. There is just no good options for planets that are finished with development.

So you're forced to constantly babysit planets that in previous versions would've been fine to leave. You want to be able to leave a planet alone without it imploding. Attention and time are finite player resources, don't make the player waste time and attention on babysitting.

There's no way to subsidize emigration, but immigration you can. The 100 consumer goods decision does just that. Emigration is supposed to happen automatically, but I would lobby that the push to emigrate should be stronger as available housing is less than 2, and jobs are less than 1, rather than currently where it starts once either goes negative. People subconsciously don't like having those "Unemployment" or "Overpopulated" icons on the screen on a fully complete colony, though it's normal at that point. I'd satisfy them by just making people more willing to leave before it gets to that point.

 

[Roddo]

Theaters are both amenities and unity.
Anything that employs clerks are both amenities and trade.

If you want more unity go with theatres, if you want more trade, go with clerks. Otherwise if you just want amenities, you go with clerks.

As I said, Theaters are the ONLY spamable unity building. The ONLY one. If you want a ton of unity, that's what it's there for, the amenities are just a side effect.

It is, and if you want to spam unity well... that's a way I guess. I tend to just give up on them and only use the Autochthon Monument, which is WAY better than it at producing unity. But since it's not spammable, and I tend to not care that much for unity...

 

[Mastikator]

There's no way to subsidize emigration, but immigration you can. The 100 consumer goods decision does just that. Emigration is supposed to happen automatically, but I would lobby that the push to emigrate should be stronger as available housing is less than 2, and jobs are less than 1, rather than currently where it starts once either goes negative. People subconsciously don't like having those "Unemployment" or "Overpopulated" icons on the screen on a fully complete colony, though it's normal at that point. I'd satisfy them by just making people more willing to leave before it gets to that point.

It's not about subconsious dislike. I told you. A scum of hive an villainy. Every time. My planets overpopulate indefintely and bad events keep happening on all my planets, it reduces stability, overall output and leads to devastation, criminal outbreak and riots.

Yeah I can leave it for a year or two, but if I go to war I literally don't have the time to constantly manage 10+ planets from slowly imploding AND play the war game. It feels more like I'm babysitting a suicidal toddler more than running an interstellar empire. There needs to be a decision you place on a planet that effectively says "this planet is done, growth may not exceed emigration"

 

[Retry]

Well, if you like playing automated games that's just fine. I personally don't mind micro, it's just the constant micro what bothers me.

edit:

But theaters ARE amenity buildings, the fact the produce a second resource is just the norm being applied to them. They are even TERRIBLE buildings because they require an input of consumer goods to function, which you can totally bypass with clerks.


edit 2:
My point being, by the time I'm on late game micro becomes a chore in which I try to find the most efficient way of employing an ever-increasing amount of useless pops.
So far, the best "solutions" I've found to this is spamming comertial zones and enacting utopian abundance.

I found Theatres to be useful in my most recent game with a Repugnant species, and in the early game in general. Clerks don't pay for more than themselves for a while on all but ideal planets for quite a while. But you still want to colonize planets for that pop growth and raw resource deposits, you can get a mildly profitable mining colonies even on tomb worlds pretty early, even if running a bit narrow on the margins, but the profit margins improve a lot with the resource and habitability techs.

Gene clinics can do okay for a standard empire's mining colonies, but they're tech locked and Repugnant species's malus can mean you really need that extra amenities to not go non-negative.

Theaters are both amenities and unity.
Anything that employs clerks are both amenities and trade.

If you want more unity go with theatres, if you want more trade, go with clerks. Otherwise if you just want amenities, you go with clerks.

As I said, Theaters are the ONLY spamable unity building. The ONLY one. If you want a ton of unity, that's what it's there for, the amenities are just a side effect.

+4/+8 unity for a single theatre is a rather paltry sum, certainly not worth spamming. I'd like to note that trade value has a policy to convert a fraction of trade to unity, and with certain civics other buildings become just as good or better than theatres for unity in terms of "spammable unity", (Police State, but especially Technocracy, since it's a building you're gonna be making anyway, and that unity output is just a secondary effect.

 

[Wolfgang I]

Always play huge (1000) galaxies. My current playthroughs are terrible sluggish so right now I'm just... waiting for the sun to shine again onto my will to return to them.
I'll probably just dich the saves later on, as tends to happen.



What kind of empire are you running? Authoritarian? What stability do you have?
Cause I never even got near to those numbers... I had 0 crime on every planet since day one and I'm pretty sure I'm not the most efficient player out there so I tend to think the system is just unbalanced.
I'm afraid I'll never see any of those events simply because I need to play a different way or something.

These events happen at 0 crime if you have enough unemployed pops. If you have a 100 planets and stack a lot of pop growth bonuses it will happen all the time if you forget to resettle pops for a year or two.