Micromanagement

[Tye The Czar]

I'm wondering if this version of Glest has less micromanagement. Micromanagement is the biggest barrier for me when playing RTS games in general. And I found a great article on explaining why: http://gamasutra.com/features/20060823/goetz_01.shtml
It's such a shame that developers still think that micromanagement is necessary for RTS's.
And if you guys don't plan on reducing micro anytime, would there be any tips to make my experience more enjoyable?

[modman]

Glest is a bit different than all of the Civilization series.  There are definately less things to control in the first place.  Secondly, Glest games are far shorter than Civ games (unless you try to lose in Civ and play a big Glest map; but on average, my previous statement holds).

[Tye The Czar]

Glest is a bit different than all of the Civilization series.  There are definately less things to control in the first place.  Secondly, Glest games are far shorter than Civ games (unless you try to lose in Civ and play a big Glest map; but on average, my previous statement holds).

Civ != RTS. I mean RTS like Starcraft and C&C. Not turn-based games.

[modman]

That's what I'm trying to say!  An RTS can have less features to toy with because you have to constantly monitor them.  Civ has way more things to pay attention to because it can do that with turn-based play.

[John.d.h]

In answer to the original post: No, this version doesn't seem to have anything new in that regard.  Now, onto the topic of micromanagement.

While Modman is right, it's still a major pain in the ass sometimes to have to micromanage so much.  It's really the only thing I hate about most RTS games.  That's why I prefer games that have a "build menu", instead of having to select the individual worker and then telling him what to build.  This would also be handy because it would save the trouble of scrolling over to the worker and scrolling back over to where you want the building to be.  It's a lot easier to just say "I want a Barracks right here", and then have it automatically send out a worker to construct it.  Also, clicking on a gold mine and telling it to assign five workers, which the castle would automatically build, would streamline things.  One of the things I like about Star Trek Armada --I've suggested this before-- is that the units have two stances that make them somewhat automated: Recon (which makes the unit fly around revealing more of the map) and Search&Destroy (which makes the unit fly around and destroy things).  For me, scouting is one of the most tedious parts of an RTS and it takes away from your ability to build up an adequate base --since you're too focused on ordering around your scout-- and these two stances help a lot.  Besides, the AI can build up a base and do recon at the same time, so why can't I?  While I'm not suggesting a drastic overhaul of the engine or anything, and you could still do everything the old way if you wanted to (I don't believe in sacrificing control for the sake of convenience), a few extra features could improve the gameplay a lot in this area.

• Be able to build buildings, research technologies, and recruit units without selecting a unit/building first
• Select a resource and pick how many workers should be assigned to it
• Automated scouting

The only problem I can see (besides actually implementing this system) would be that it would add a little bit of clutter to the interface, but there could be an option to collapse the build menu when it's not in use, and then bring it back up with a hotkey or by moving the mouse to that area of the screen, so the options could look something like this:


and something like the following could be shown when selecting a resource:


This might be more suitable for the GAE board.

[Tye The Czar]

Wow.
I love how much detail you went into.

[gameboy]

I like the idea above, but some poeple like to have more control over their units.
I reponse to build menu, you should be able to specify which worker(or group) to send when building a building, so the computer doesn't choose a random worker, becuase sometimes it might choose a worker who's harvesting gold when your running low on gold and that could have a huge impact on your economy.
The build menu could also show which building you have built and give access to their abilities, so you can set an upgrade to be researched from the build menu itself.

[hailstone]

Globulation2's gameplay guidelines state they are against micromanagement so it might be interesting to see what they have done.

[Tye The Czar]

I read their design document on that. Though it seemed complicated, I'm hopeful to see the fruit of the dev's labor.

[John.d.h]

Globulation2's gameplay guidelines state they are against micromanagement so it might be interesting to see what they have done.

Ah yes!  I was actually thinking of this game when I said the thing about the resources but I couldn't think of the name.  This is pretty much exactly what I was talking about.  Also, in addition (or perhaps instead) of having the number of workers being assigned located on the resource itself (I don't remember if you even CAN select the resources in Glest), you could have it next to your resource list at the top of the screen.  Just click plus or minus to change the number of workers/initiates harvesting resources or to increase the number of livestock you have.  Energy sources would probably still have to be built manually until the AI is improved, since it might not know where to put it without getting in the way.

I like the idea above, but some poeple like to have more control over their units.
I reponse to build menu, you should be able to specify which worker(or group) to send when building a building, so the computer doesn't choose a random worker, becuase sometimes it might choose a worker who's harvesting gold when your running low on gold and that could have a huge impact on your economy.

Of course you should still be able to do things the old way if you want.  Like I said, I don't believe in sacrificing control for convenience, so the new way would be an ADDITION to the old way, not a replacement.  Also, it should pick an idle worker first if you have one in the area.

The build menu could also show which building you have built and give access to their abilities, so you can set an upgrade to be researched from the build menu itself.

Good idea!  I was thinking of having three different menus (buildings, technologies, units) but your way sounds like it could work too.  You could also have units on the build menu as well.  It would basically be like having a small tech tree diagram on your screen from which you could direct your production.  My only concerns with including regular units (i.e. anything other than buildings and technologies) are that it could get a little too cluttered and that you might have several different Barracks scattered across the map and you only want to recruit from a specific one (in which case you'd have to do it the old way, by selecting that barracks and telling it to produce a unit).  Maybe that could be another option for the build menu: Include units? Y/N.

Here's what I think part of the build menu could look like, showing that you have one Summoner's Guild and three Summoners and that Ancient Summoning is available for research.  Following that is my expanded list of options for the build menu.
                       

[Tye The Czar]

YOU SIR! ARE GENIUS. We should try to team up with a competent coder (I'm still learning about game design & programming) to make a mod or add-on.

[John.d.h]

I think a new user interface would be a discussion better suited for the GAE board.  The GAE team would probably have a good idea of how to implement this.

[PolitikerNEU]

I think the kind of micromanagmant "Select units and to stuff with it" is not really good too, but I think a somehow different approach than John.d.h's would be better.

At first, I don't think it is a very good idea to make the default build menu look like a tech tree because most of the times it is not necessary to know where to build a unit as long as you can build it - and then a tree is IMHO waste of space (However, a seperate "interactive" tech-tree would be nice - especially for beginners)

Basically I think it would be good to not only display abilities/buildable structures etc. all units you selected can do but display abilities any unit you have selected can do (or rather: abilities that can be done with the selected unit, especially if it is not yours) and sometimes it is good to display even abilities of units you don't have selected (i.e. AOE-Damage-Abilities).

Therefore, any icons now can have two functions: Select and Build/Use. In order to distinguish between them, One part (i.e. the left upper could be used for selecting, the right bottom for building/using), of course the specified part should be highlighted on hovering:
Standard icon (Sorry for the shitty icons, I am the opposite of an artist):

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[img]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/205/sampleicon.png[/img]Icon with selection highlight

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[img]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5015/sampleiconselect.png[/img]Icon with building highlight:

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[img]http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/5103/sampleiconbuild.png[/img]
Maybe there should be two numbers on each icon: One (on the left upper side) to indicate how many objects there are (number of units and buildings, number of useable abilities) and another how many are currently being built (for units and buildings), how many are researched (for upgrades) and how many are used (for abilities).

Because it may be hard to hit the right corner and sometimes you need only to select and build something, there should be options (maybe changeable via hotkey) on what is done when clicking:
 - Only selecting
 - Only building/using
 - Mixed: Abilities and upgrades are used and built, units and buildings selected (maybe useful when attacking)
 - Both: Both is acitivated

Of course still the "right" corner of the icon should be highlighted because otherwise that would lead to misclicks.

I think it would be good to organize all the icons and unit information (and maybe, if there is still enough space, the minimap) in a single column on the right (or the left) which would have the advantage that less had to be rendered:

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[img]http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7944/showallunits.png[/img]On the top there could be information of the current selection like
 * Health and Energy-Points
 * Abilities of the selection
etc.
Then all the other researches, units, abilities etc. icons come, maybe grouped. Because most tech trees contain more icons than it is possible to display, a "priority-system" should be used to decide what to show:
Maybe the default for this should be (from top to lowest priority)
 * Currently selected units, buildings etc.
 * Abilities of the currently selected units, buildings etc and units that can be built by the selected units
 * Abilities which can be used on the selection
 * "Global" abilities (if implemented)
 * Units, buildings on the screen
 * Abilities usable by units on the screen and units that can be built by the units on the screen, especially abilities usable on units on the current screen
 * All other units, buildings, abilities etc.

Examples of what that would mean:
 - If you select a ressource, top priority items would be harvest the ressource
 - If you select an enemy unit, top priority items would be "attack" and use abilities on this unit
 - If you select an own unit, top priority items would be all that is currently displayed
 - If you select nothing but view a fight, top priority items would be abilities you could use on the enemy and your units
 - If you select nothing but are in your town (no enemy in sight), top priority items would be your units, buildings and researches

I think that would reduce micromanagement quite a bit, but I think this would also be rather hard to implement.

Another note: Hotkeys and filtering is very important in current strategy games. Using such an Interface, it will occur often that a single shortcut does not unambiguously identify a single action. In that case, a "filtering" algorithm is used: All abilities/units etc. that do not match the hotkey are hidden/darkened out and additional hotkeys for the filtered units are displayed on the icon.
A certain ability is selected if only one ability/unit etc. is left in a "priorty group" (Selected units, units visible on the screen, all units)
If multiple abilities/units etc are filtered at the time of "clicking", all of them are executed (if possible) and for a short time the highlighting used when hovering over the icons is displayed to notify which actions have been done.

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[img]http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/4424/sampleiconhotkey.png[/img]This could be useful if you assign multiple hotkeys to each ability like giving every AOE-Damage-Ability a certain shortcut so the user can simply press this key and cast all AOE-Damage-Abilities he can cast at one time.
If no clicking-mode (see above) is selected, the user has to press another key to specify which usage is prefered: Selecting, Building/Using or "Mixed"

[hailstone]

Thanks for all the pictures. Where/when does the build icons come in? I think instead of clicking a small icon in an even smaller space, perhaps have one click to select (if you're meaning manually build) and another click to automatically build, the same for hotkeys.

You gave me another idea, a global health bar. Using your example of 55/100, you wouldn't want to attack because overall you only have half health for you entire army. Possibly exclude buildings or even have a separate bar for them.

In my view hotkeys and mouse for icons should not be forced to be mixed. You should be able to use all hotkeys or all mouse without problems.

[PolitikerNEU]

Hmm ... with "select" I meant: Select all units of this unit type (while "build" means: For units, build one unit, for buildings that you have to choose where you want the building to be). For buildings, it would be good to be able to build them with double click, but I think it should always be required to define where you want to have the building. For units, however, this is a problem since most time you want to build many units - and then you have to double click for each unit you want to build - so you have to click very often. A solution for this could be that for units, if you tripple-click on them, another window appers where you can enter the amount of units you want to build. In this input widget you could be able to scrool with your mouse wheel so you don't have to use the keyboard.
However, double clicking has the major disadvantage of that sometimes you are too slow to double click and you select some random stuff - a problem that does not occur if you only need to single click.

In Fact in my idea there is just a single icon which you can use to select all units of that kind (or, if you have this kind of unit in your selection, all units of this kind in your selection) if you click on the top left; if you click the same icon on the bottom right, you can build a unit of that type - that's why I thought different highlights would be good (to show which is what you will do with the icon).

Maybe I was not very clear describing my idea, but I at least think that in my idea you could use the mouse alone - what do you think cannot be done using the mouse alone? Using all hotkeys, however, is a problem - but I don't think this can be easily solved as currently (nearly?) no strategy game is playable without mouse.

The global healthbar is a wonderful idea, but I think this could be expanded. In many strategy games, you can define unit groups - you could just show global information about your unit groups e.g. above of the unit information like health bar. If the two default unit groups are non-worker-units and buildings, you would have this global health bar:

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[img]http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7414/unitgroup.png[/img]
I have updated the initial image too to show the "expanding" and unify some stuff.

[daniel.santos]

wow! lots of good stuff here!  I haven't gotten a chance to read this whole thread yet, but I did want to note that GAE has two small features that help to reduce micromanagement, though nothing on the scale of what's proposed here.  These features have had mixed feedback, so they are not options in the glestadv.ini file.

• Auto-repair -- when enabled idle units who are able to repair a damaged unit within their LOS will automatically order themsevles to do so.
• Auto-return -- when enabled, units will automatically return after auto-attacking or auto-repairing.  I don't like this feature much because it eliminates the need for a "guard" command, so I have it disabled by default.  What is changed on this between GAE and Glest when auto-return is disabled, however, is that units auto-attacking will stop once all threats have left their LOS (or been nullified) rather than all continuing to the location where the enemy unit was first sighted.