province auto management

[matlegob]

Hello,

first thanks for this great game!!! a lot a excellent ideas are in it, as the great decadence/culture !!!

The only thing that seems to not work very well is the auto management of the province: when I put on the auto building, a lot of regions stays without building anything!!!

[Demetrios_of_Messene]

Did you double check that there are available slots?

Sometimes AI decides not to build anything right-away, but it should start building next turn or so.

(Also I hope that you did not misunderstand the auto-population button with the auto-build. Just saying trying to cover most possibilities)

[LDiCesare]

I tried using this, the ai will shuffle pop but apparently not build anything on first turn at least.
Afterwards, it is not optimal to build in every region at the same time.

[matlegob]

Yes I have double check that there were free slots and that the AI do not build anything

sometime I have no building at all by the Ai in one entire province...

[saitotoshimasa]

it seems that nearly nobody plays the game for a longer time...
the province auto management doesnt works and this is a big big problem. in the later game the game is nearly unplayable, because of the extrem micromanagment, you habe to build in every litte region, that needs 95% of the playtime and makes poor fun, bigger empires are to intensive work... decadence is no problem with my rhodos game, but to many regions and provinces and auto management doesnt works corektly.

i hope a patch will solve this problem!

saito

[saitotoshimasa]

my solution is now, to edit the game so that there is a big big loyalty and i didnt need to build anything in the later game... but thats cheating and is bad and booring

[matlegob]

Yes there is a big problem in auto management for the culture/loyalty option

the IA do not keep the loyalty very hight (50) and do not build culture buiding

[LDiCesare]

I play long games, and indeed the endgame is full of micromanagement.
I don't think automation would help solve it for me, but I think there are several UI elements that could be made better:

First, auto management UI would really be better if each of the 2 series of buttons told you what it is supposed to do (population or buildings).

Second, building stuff in provinces optimally requires a ton of micro because of the way extra infrastructure is distributed.
If we could queue a list of buildings, in order, in a province, and have the program prioritize the first building, and then order the next ones when the first one is complete or when they wouldn't compete with it, it would save a lot of time. For example I can build an amphitheatre and a naumachia. Both take 2 turns. If I do one then the next, it takes 4 turns. But actually, I get tons of leftover infrastructure in both provinces. As a result, I order the amphitheatre. Next turn, I also order the naumachia. On turn 2, I get my amphitheatre, and on turn 3 the anumachia thanks to painful micro.
If the game rules were changed so that piled up infra was shared across the whole province, it would make things even better.

Third, automated warnings when a province or a region not belonging to a province become idle would be welcome. Unfortunately in the case of provinces, you still get leftover infrastructure forcing you to micromanage every single region every turn if you want to be optimal.

[LDiCesare]

The automated build options are really opaque and hard to understand.
Also, why does the ai build nothing at times? It seems to shun buildings that increase decadence, even when they would be welcome (noble gardens for instance), or expensive ones (prison, no downside).

It would be nice to be able to write one's own build queues, so instead of picking the purple building, including the trash ones, the ai would pick the first available building that's in your list.

[melm]

I agree that micro-management is tedious in this game. My current one becomes piling purple buildings to control the loyalty. Money, manpower or metal is not an issue for now. The meta in late game is kind of "conquer, building enough purple to control loyalty(decadence), continue conquering". Nothing else. But if I use auto-management for the above meta, I can't trust that AI won't build purple with decadence point. If I check every time what AI builds, then it's about the same as I do it myself.

[Josey Wales]

I also agree with many of the comments above, when you get to the late game micromanagement of each region is tedious and auto management at the provincial level is too hands off. You end up having to decide between 2 boring options.

One idea I have been mulling over is to restructure the whole Region & Province set up.

To summarise;

Regions can only build tier 1 buildings and military units. Decadence is low and loyalty is generally high due to local regional governance that looks after the locals.

Provinces can build province wide tier 2 buildings and military units. Buildings would be centralised at the province level in the same way military units are. You basically select a province wide building program instead of having access to individual region building selections.

For example you could build at the Province level a trade hub building program which builds a trading centre in each landlocked region and a trading port in each coastal region. Also a Province would generate some Legacy.

To offset these benefits, Provinces would increase decadence and citizen loyalty in regions further from the Provincial Capital would suffer a loyalty reduction to simulate remote centralised governance.

You could take it one step further and be able to form a Country if you owned over 50% of the Provinces in a given geographic area eg The Britonnic Islands or the Germanic provinces.

A Country would allow powerful tier 3 building programs rolled out across all of the constituent Provinces. More powerful military units can be accessed with a further buff to Legacy. However decadence would be higher still and citizen loyalty lower in regions further from the capital to reflect even greater levels of centralised governance.

In addition this could be a sliding scale so that you could devolve a Country into its constituent Provinces or a Province into its constituent Regions to help stave off revolt or regression should all other measures fail.

[LDiCesare]

What you propose is a completely different game. It also doesn't address the question about what happens when you lose part of a province? If you have only 1 region left, what happens? Do you keep the extra buildings?
Having a single queue per province doesn't really reduce the micro.
I like the current system behind the UI. The problem is just a problem of letting you go quickly to the places your decisions are needed, and let you take them once. Having a "next idle provinceless region or province" and sending you directly to that region or province screen would solve most of the issues.
I really think the rest would be fixed by having decent queueing (build this building in a region first then this one instead of having to wait 2 turns to give the second order) and having customisable queues rather than the fixed category-queues.

[13obo]

LDiCesare, just a quick workaround for your issue of missing "next idle region" button is to go to the "Regions" tab from the ledger, which shows all the buildings your regions are producing on the right.

I use this regularly to set my building queues quickly and review if all regions are producing.

[Josey Wales]

LDiCesare thank you for the feedback.

It will change some of the game mechanics but it is only bringing across to Provincial building and population control what the game already does for building military units. It avoids micromanaging dozens of regions by allowing a central point of control to assign population to tasks at the Provincial level and issue building programs to all of the regions. You would still have 6 randomised building programs you could select from covering all of the 6 building categories, you would just select it at the Province level and the AI would build the relevant structures in all of the constituent regions.

An example would be 'Farms & Fields' building program. Once selected it would take several turns to complete and the AI would build say wheat farms in the plains regions of the province, land clearances in the forested regions, sheep pastures in the hills and drainage in the marshes. After that was complete the player could select another building program, there would be no queueing and thereby no predictability keeping in line with the developers vision of moving away from how other grand strategy games approach building.

The region would keep whatever was built in it from the building programs even if the rest of the Province fell to an enemy. However it would no longer be able to access Provincial building programs but instead would have to build Regional (lower quality) buildings in the same way that in the games current build a non Provincial Region cannot build a Provincial military unit.

One thing this would affect is trade, but when you auto assign building in a Province in the current build you're not managing trade anyway. The trading mini game is only fun during the beginning to mid game. Having a large empire means that sussing out which goods are available for what bonuses for which regions is such a chore that it's easier just to auto assign a Province to money making and increase your income that way.

And if this still seemed like too much micromanagement for a huge empire, then the option to form Provinces into even more centralised entities, Countries, would solve that...at a cost of course!

[LDiCesare]

LDiCesare, just a quick workaround for your issue of missing "next idle region" button is to go to the "Regions" tab from the ledger, which shows all the buildings your regions are producing on the right.

I use this regularly to set my building queues quickly and review if all regions are producing.

I own 377 regions in my current game. I do that but that's not really practical.
It's particularly not easy to scan through all provinces to see if one of them has only idle slots.

It will change some of the game mechanics but it is only bringing across to Provincial building and population control what the game already does for building military units. It avoids micromanaging dozens of regions by allowing a central point of control to assign population to tasks at the Provincial level and issue building programs to all of the regions. You would still have 6 randomised building programs you could select from covering all of the 6 building categories, you would just select it at the Province level and the AI would build the relevant structures in all of the constituent regions.

I get your point now. Basically, you're limiting the choices in a province to a single choice instead of one per region. I'm pretty sure I want to be able to micromanage each region in the early game. I want military buildings in the capital and not in other regions for example. What you're describing essentially boils down to reducing the number of regions to the number of provinces. It doesn't solve the fact you still have to look for them by scrolling the ledger all the time, and you get less to scroll at the cost of less control.

[Josey Wales]

I get your point now. Basically, you're limiting the choices in a province to a single choice instead of one per region. I'm pretty sure I want to be able to micromanage each region in the early game. I want military buildings in the capital and not in other regions for example

Essentially yes, once you'd formed a Province you'd click on a Province and have 6 building choices, 1 for each of the categories. You wouldn't be able to access individual regions to build in them anymore unless you 'devolved' the Province.

An example of building programs for Food production alone could be;

Farms,Fields & Salt building program - builds Salt mines, salt marshes, hemp fields, land clearances & flax fields in the appropriate regions

Animal Husbandry building program - builds Ranches, Studs, Sheep Pens & Goat Pens

Gathering building program - builds fishing boats, hunters lodges & foragers lodges

Processing & distribution - build granaries, farmers markets, mills and seed storage

Irrigation - builds wells, drainage & irrigation ditches

If any of these buildings had already been built in a region before it had been formed into part of a Province, the existing building would be upgraded to a tier II improved version. If the building does not currently exist in a region, the tier I version would be built until the build program came around again in which case it could be upgraded to tier II.

As well as the building programs there would be specific buildings that can only be built in the Provincial capital e.g. Tier II military buildings or some of the more prominent cultural & economic buildings such as a Provincial bank or Grand temple and these would convey a benefit to a Province as a whole. Of course if the Provincial capital fell, you would lose the buildings built there, but in the regions you would keep the buildings created as one of the building programs. Of course the Provincial capital buildings would cycle around with the building programs so that on any given turn you would still have 6 choices for the province, 1 for each category but some of those categories may be offering a building program and the others may be offering a Provincial capital building.

The balance between managing a large game of multiple regions and micromanaging each region is a difficult one and the sweet spot for this balancing point will vary from player to player and playthrough to playthrough. I think it can be agreed that at somepoint micromanaging every region in a large game becomes dull and that the current alternative of the auto-management system is also dull.

I don't have a definitive answer as to at what point a player is incentivised to move away from micromanaging every region to claiming the benefits of controlling a Province as a single entity in the way I have envisaged in my recent posts, I believe it would be different for everyone and there would no doubt be some balancing required and likely preferences that could be setup in the options menu.

What you're describing essentially boils down to reducing the number of regions to the number of provinces. It doesn't solve the fact you still have to look for them by scrolling the ledger all the time, and you get less to scroll at the cost of less control.

Well yes again, but I like your idea of notifications for idle Provinces and Non provincial Regions. These ideas don't need to be mutually exclusive and could work together.

The most involved part would be reworking trade and this does indeed require re-working because as it stands, as soon as you automate the buildings being built in a Province you basically stop playing the trading minigame for those constituent Regions.