Slashdot Mirror
Real-Time Strategy Games - Too Many Clicks?
simoniker writes "A new Gamasutra article asks provocatively in its synopsis: 'Could games like Civilization benefit from putting their interfaces on a diet? Can a player control too many objects at once in a strategy game?' Are RTS titles too UI-intensive? The author notes: 'Even for a Civ addict like me, the game isn't much fun after about 1800. Too many clicks. I counted the clicks, mouse movements, and keystrokes that it took me to get through one move of Civilization III in the year 1848. Many hours later, when that turn was done, I'd counted 422 mouse clicks, 352 mouse movements, 290 key presses, 23 wheel scrolls, and 18 screen pans to scroll the screen.'"
From TFA: ...
I was attempting to construct a railway line connecting the north end to the south end of my civilization.
[Snip]
I needed to assign about a hundred workers to building the railway line in order to get it built before being overrun. For each worker, I had to click on it once to bring it into focus; then type 'g' to begin a movement, scroll to its starting point on the railway line, and click again. Later, when it reached that point, I would have to type "ctrl-r" to build a railroad, scroll to the end of that unit's portion of the railway, and click again. That's three mouse movements, three keystrokes, and three mouse clicks per unit. I tried to keep the workers in groups of three, although this was possible only about half the time. So it probably took me 600 clicks, keystrokes, and scrolls to build that railway.
Imagine if I'd been able to say that I wanted to build a railroad, click on its start, and click on its end. The computer would then have directed workers, as they became available, to work on sections of the railway. The entire railroad could have been constructed with the same amount of supervision that it took me to direct one worker.
Yeah, imagine that, it's called Civ4. You can direct one worker to build it, you can direct a dozen.
But again we go to TFA:
You may wonder why I'm talking about Civ III, when Civ IV has been out for months. I never bought Civ IV. I'd been waiting and hoping for a more playable Civ. What finally arrived was a Civ that takes just as many clicks, but with a new animated 3D UI.
Yeah...
In CIv4 you can automate most actions and take a hands-off approach and focus on the general direction of your empire. More and more I play my games by automating construction in my non-critical cities, I let workers build improvements automatically, I make choices as to what crucial structures will be built where, but the mundane, repetitive clicking can be mostly done away with.
Point is, the choice to make detail decisions is entirely yours. I don't think it's a UI problem when you choose to build dozens of cities, hundereds of units, and then micro-manage them all. Especially when the UI of the game in question (CIV III) is several years old. Imagine that, UIs evolve!
What's next, a 6 page article on powertoys for Windows 95 and why they don't increase productivity?
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
...I still play Total Annihilation. The interface is simple and easy (although there are many, many multiplayer commands you should learn). I think I typically count 2 mouse clicks to launch an attack, maybe a click and a keystroke, and rarely will I exceed 200 mouse clicks in a single skirmish.
Palm trees and 8
You should better count your legs/head/hand/fingers movement when you go shopping.
When you get the number, maybe using a PC won't be so bad at all.
Sorry. It's just not.
But, Civ 4 is a lot better than Civ 3 in terms of opportunites for less clicking and scrolling. I really don't see the point in bitching about the interface of a ~5 year old game...
Civilization is not a Real Time Strategy game, it is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) Turn Based Strategy game. Turn Based games like Civ do tend to have a lot more micro-management than RTS titles, but either does require quite a bit of mouse work. That said, is there any viable alternative?
I was under the impression the Civilisation games are turn based strategy rather than real time strategy games? If the article is about RTS' in general then I can't see the problem, it's usually click to select a unit or click and drag to select multiple. Click on screen to either move, attack or perform an action on whatever is under the cursor then just click maybe a builder unit then menus to choose what to build then click to build it. Most RTS games automate resource gathering even so you don't need to make units do that usually, short of making units launch attacks and decide what to build for you hence automating the game so there's no point playing I can't see how the number of clicks can be reduced. This article seems more like a complaint about Civilisation's UI than RTS games in general.
Civ and Civ2 were turn-based and NOT RTS. Isn't Civ3 the same? I can only assume it is so this summary isn't making much sense...
I wouldn't say that's a lot for an RTS; a good War3 player seems to have, on average, 100+ actions per minute.
I cant count the games of starcraft I've lost because I couldnt activate all the unit abilities quickly enough through the hotkeys and such ....
It would be nice if RTS's had some meta-level "ai strategy for my own stuff" setting, so that you could set your units to auto-use the killer special abilities (or whatever) while patroling on guard duty instead of the default wimpy attacks (or whatever)
Ya know something... this article opened my eyes. Before I get carpal tunnel, I'm going to uninstall my RTS games and load back on Diablo! Weee!!
Click... click... click... click... click... click... click... click... click... click...
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
lol!
422 mouse clicks is much?! Go watch the APM for say Grubby in WC3 or whatever korean in Starcraft and then come back and talk about the amount of actions. Thought their games really ARE RTS, isn't Civilization turn based?
For a second there, I swear it said "too many chicks". There was a new tab opened to www.ebgames.com before I even had the chance to reparse!
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Uhhh...are people buying the game and having fun? If so, then I think it's safe to say that the number of clicks is just fine.
If it's too many clicks for you personally, then maybe you should go play a different game. I know it's hard to believe, but you as an individual are not the intended market for every developer out there.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
If you get exhausted just from moving your fingers to click and push buttons, then I think you aren't going to be too happy when you hear about the Nintendo Wii's control scheme. What America really needs is a gaming console that lets you control your games simply by chewing food and drinking soda.
Why do people always want to dumb down games? RTS and games based around the general idea are always going to be complex and require you to do a lot of clicking, it's in their nature and always will be. These games are liked and designed by the same sort of people, they want to be able to control every little detail and they don't mind if you don't because yo can have your other games.
Sounds to me like the article writer needs to pick up Advance wars or Super robot taisen games. Both are turn based strategy and in at least SRW's case you sort out your units in menus between missions and then "ingame" you only have to pick it you want to use a special ability, where your units move and what attacks/how they respond to being attacked.
But then this is comming from a guy who struggles to keep track of his economy in RTS games, so maybe I'm not seeing the bigger picture and just "accept I'm not great at everything", but that doesn't mean I want to change things so I'm better.
I like muppets.
Civ is a prime example of a game that is NOT real-time strategy. It is a turn-based strategy game.
Just FYI. I do agree that there are too many clicks in RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft, and even Rise of Nations.
What are the alternatives, then? Remove all that detail? Oh, I know: How about a big red button that says "apply your human ingenuity in the most optimal way possible". (It would be a big button.) That would certainly save you a lot of mouse clicks. Yeah, that may be what the next generation of strategy games will look like, but I'd rather play Civ.
If it takes someone "many hours" to play a single turn in any turn-based game, I would imagine that it's not just the game itself that has a problem.
Also, like it has been mentioned above, Civ IV made many improvements upon it's predecessor aside from the improved graphics engine. These include, but are not limited to, more tile improvements, more unique units such as great philosophers, engineers, artists, and merchants, addition game modes, expandable mini-map, and better worker until control and automation.
Looking at screenshots usually isn't a good way to gauge how many technical improvements have been made.
Blerg.
"422 mouse clicks, 352 mouse movements, 290 key presses, 23 wheel scrolls, and 18 screen pans to scroll the screen"
Grand. So the 18 screen pans weren't controlled by the 422 mouse clicks, 352 mouse movements, 290 key presses or 23 wheel scrolls?
My Mind Is Rewired. Is Yours?
Pick one data point. Make sure it's outdated and unrepresentative. Base it on subjective criteria.
Seriously the article could have been summarized like this:
"There's this one real-time strategy game, except it's a turn based game, and it requires too many clicks per turn once the game is sufficiently advanced. Except this problem was mitigated in the next version. Therefore, RTS games require too many clicks."
I used to consider RTS games to be among my top favorite genres, maybe even #1. But it's gotten to the point where they're ruled by the twitch gamers, just like FPS games (which have been among my least favorite genres). WC3 is the main RTS I play right now, and in normal games I really suck bad. So I tend to end up playing custom games, mostly Tower Defence maps.
The problem I have is that the RT is overruling the S - the Real Time nature of the game means that you don't have enough time to work on a long-term strategy, because you have to defend against immediate threats. But because multi-player is such an important feature to have in mass-market games, it's hard to do away with Real Time, because Turn Based Strategy games are more difficult to correctly implement multiplayer, not on a technical level, but on a "pleases most players" level - you don't want to allow one player to slow down the game for all the other players, but you don't want to rush anyone, either. Also, Turn Based Strategy seem to have this "obsolete/inferior" rap going against them compared with Real Time Strategy, which they really don't deserve.
I really liked how Majesty removed the twitch-gamer advantage, by removing the low-level control of individual units. I'd probably play Majesty more than WC3, except that WC3 is more popular with my friends.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
This guy does make a valid, albeit somewhat cryptic point.
In RTS games, more buttons/icons/commands are notorious for generating low ratings and sales due to the steep difficulty curve. But for FPS games, players are always trying to bend the rules by doing backwards flying cartwheels for an extra edge. They'd have no problem if you threw in a bunch of new, acrobatic keypresses. Fighter games, too. Maybe it's dependent on the gamer?
SupCom for all those Total Annihilation lovers, where you can issue orders and forget about the units doing them, because you know they'll get executed.
This game will remove the arcade out of RTS. Check out the trailer or the E3 presentation.
I guess I too click too much while playing RTS's! I guess I'll stop liking them now, even though I've loved them for so long. I mean, there's no way I can love something that makes me click so much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinia_(computer_ga me)
:)
Simple but still a fucking bore to control.
I hope games consoles like the Wii simplify this. Mouse clicks turn to buttons etc. but you can do everything you'd ever want with a mouse. I think waving a pointer or using a stylus just seems easier.. I *LOVE* playing RTS games with my Wacom, it's so much friendlier selecting units that way
I'd like to ask any complainers: where exactly do you see the fun in strategy games, if not in conceiving and executing elaborate and detailed strategies? What sort of a real player complains about the tedium of building an efficient railroad network for transporting troops and goods, when exactly such logistical advantages often mean the difference between victory and defeat?
That's exactly the issue. Coming up with a strategy = fun. The question is, how high-level are your orders going to be?
If implementing your strategy involves moving individual workers and ships one square at a time, then I'm sorry, but no normal person will enjoy that. Even having "go there" orders doesn't necessarily help. In the old versions of Civ I used to play, you couldn't group units, so you couldn't just say "send these 25 workers to Athens and these 25 to Thermopylae", you had to issue 50 separate orders to units. That's not fun. It doesn't give you any more strategic options, it just makes you click a lot.
Similarly, in the versions of Civ I played, there were only two ways to build a railway. If you wanted a specific route, you had to build it manually: tell a worker to build a railway on the square it was on, wait for it to finish, move it to the next square, repeat. Alternatively, you could tell it to build a railway from where it was to some other place, but then you lost control of the route and it would build it somewhere stupid and take twice as long as it should have. What you couldn't do was tell a unit to go to a certain point, then from there build a railway via a specific route to some other point. So you either had to give up strategic control, or you had to click a lot.
Nobody's saying they want games dumbed down. They just want smoother interfaces that make it easier for you to tell the game what your strategy is and how you want it implemented, without forcing you to perform every single step yourself.
Lay off. For some people, mouserobic exercise is the only exercise they get!
Logan Smith
Heaven forbid computer gamers actaully get a little physical excersise. Instead of complaining about how to make video games easier, go outside, get some sun, read a book.
Voice_of_all_reason, I don't know how you do it but you seem to be stalking the same AC that posted the "Bill Gates, 1995" comment. Unless you're into 6ft tall rugby playing englishmen I suggest you reconsider your course of action.
:D
My original, and rather flippant point, was why all the complaining about key presses and mouse clicking when you've got to do a lot more in most other game genres. If I wanted to write it out long-hand I'd have considered logging in
Destroyed many a good Logitech mouse playing Tie Fighter. But I am qualified to fly any craft in the Imperial Fleet!
Anyone ever play it with a joystick?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Seriously, I like an occaisional RTS game but also sometimes am annoyed by the low level granularity. Is there an RTS with some sort of rule scripting interface? I haven't played in a few years but something like:
"Build railroad to point x then transfer workers to building mine and refinery" might work.
Or how about an economically driven interface like subsidize workers with salary $X for railroad work ad when complete, change to subsidy $Y for mining work and let each worker decide where to put in the effort. Sort of an ecomnomic simulation.
Any info on this?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yeah but this also adds to the level of intensity. Would you just rather click....then wait a few hours for something to happen?
Giving a game more options and allowing you to control more things and how things works gives the game a much different feel that a typical RTS. It can also change the outcome greatly when you have more options.
It keeps you on your feet.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Bliz even lowered the army size from 200 in StarCraft to 90 in WC3 (and now 100 in TFT). They noted that with the giant army size the game tended to resolve to campers that would attack with a mass, and circumvented most of the tactical aspect of the game.
Also, at least with WC3, the game is not won completely by the speed of your mouse clicks. The best player tend to have the highest APM's, but is not always the case. Tactics and Strategy still play a huge role.
And as you waste your life playing a game like WC3 (or a FPS for that matter) your speed tends to go up. Play more!!!! ;-)
Go complain about an actual RTS like Rise of Nations or Command and Conquer, or go back to playing with your barbies.
1) Civ is not an RTS game. RT stands for "Real-Time." Civ is most certainly turn-based and not real-time in any way whatsoever. That right there is enough to make me discard the article... if you don't know the difference between a real-time and a turn-based game, you shouldn't be writing gaming articles.
2) Many people like micro-management. I'm not one of them personally, but I have a unique and innovative solution: I don't buy games that require a lot of micro-management!
Comment of the year
Because I hate the clicking so much, I play smaller maps and give them a few more AI players (and put resources on "balanced" so there's one iron/bronze/oil/etc per player). Really, controlling about 5-6 cities is about the level of micromanagement I like. I finished a whole game last night in a couple hours (Space Race victory in 2005; almost won by domination). With 10-20 cities (standard map), you really need automation in order to make the game fun.
The traditional problem with strategy games is late game there's just too many units/cities. Limiting map size limits the latter variable which limits the former.
The most interesting approach I've seen to micro was Crusader King where you larger landowners gain titles and are forced to delegate land to vassals or else their empire becomes inefficient. Of course, vassals can revolt/etc but it's a great way to own half of europe without a lot of micro as your controlling 15 dukes rather than 80 pieces of land. It makes the automation aspect part of the game rather than trying to build a wizard around it which I appreciate.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
As an avide gamer, I like the fast pace that some of the RTS games offer. I really don't mind having to click 1M times during a game. I play C&C Generals & Zero Hour and it amazes my buddies when I have a base built and ready to go in under 5 minutes. I have no problem with clicking a million times to do stuff. In fact, the more clicks the better.
"But, Civ 4 is a lot better than Civ 3 in terms of opportunites for less clicking and scrolling. I really don't see the point in bitching about the interface of a ~5 year old game..."
Yeah. Let's bitch about something that's still in beta.
Ok, I did just finish re-reading Ender's Game, but it's quite amazing that the book was copyrighted in 1977, and it basically describes what we now consider RTS games (among other things we now think commonplace like "the nets", the children's "desk", etc). Anyway:
As a commander, Ender has a level of control from individual ships up through the entire fleet. He has trained his toon leaders to follow guidance and think on their own. He can give quick verbal commands. I think if it were pulled off (as hard as it would be), that would be the ultimate RTS. It's not about who can click fastest and group units properly, it's about STRATEGY, right? Anything that gets in the way of that should be taken out of the game or streamlined.
no comment
First things first, and said by others: Civ is an example of a TBS, not an RTS. While he doesn't explicitly come out and say that Civ is an RTS, he conflates the two by then launching into UI issues with RTSes. Complaining about Civ because it has too many clicks is like complaining about a database because it has too many datapoints. Why? Civ's a game where you're in control of a whole empire. Rome wasn't built in one click and lots of automation (which, honestly, one could argue would have made the city better designed, but also likely lacking a lot of charm). The problem with the "rule of seven" in a game such as Civ is that you end up with an overly ambitions, poorly executed disaster like Master of Orion III--everything was abstracted to a level where it was "easy" to maintain an empire, "easy" to play a game with turns lasting fewer than 5 minutes, and still ostensibly being in the true vein of TBS games. One had all the data of the game available within five mouse-clicks, but you could just as easily ignore it and click on the "next turn" button. Problem was, it wasn't very fun--and it wasn't just the case of poor execution. When you have so much automation, the game almost gets dumbed-down, almost too simplistic in its interface and presentation to the player. There is a lack of fine-grained control, as most of the more powerful and useful tools become so hidden or not even shown (like some OSes...). Instead of recognizing that increasing production in one region will cause cascade effects that may lead to unhappiness in three other regions, lessened treasuries, and bad research, because it's so "intuitive" and "helpful", the pull-this-lever type simplicity obscures that sort of insight into the mechanics of the game. Now, admittely, this is where the issue lies--what's fun for one isn't fun for others; honestly, I admit that I've played Civ for so long that all the keyboard shortcuts are placed into my memory, and this mouse-click UI problem he thinks exists, I don't think is even an issue. He might well enjoy a game like MOO3; if so, I'll send him my copy.
Personally I set up good governors and let them run the city, I can get by with around 10 mouse clicks, and one screen pan. Or I use the Go to function.
If you have to micromanage everything however you're milage will definatly vary, but that's a choice, not a part of the game.
Why is he panning? There's a map. 3000+ mouse clicks, 290 key presses? Is it just me or does he just seem to be trying to rack up the number of things he's doing to make a point.
And as stated a Civ game isn't RTS. RTS need a much faster UI system than Civilization.
Y'know, this whole life thing, its like all I ever get done doing is breathing in, then breathing out. And what the hell's with this locomotion? You mean I gotta put one foot in front of the other how many times?
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
Yes, this wasn't his point (though it was an argument he made for his case, though a very very bad one), but I think the old geezer is missing the reason why the young whippersnappers are better than him in RTSes: they practice. The koreans who excel in Starcraft aren't 14 nor full of testosterone - they practice. Seems like the kids are doing 3 clicks a second? Try figuring out the keyboard commands, and you might get why. If you can't be bothered to learn how to play a new game, whether it's bowling or Total Annihilation, you won't get to see the finer nuances of strategy in that game. And even more case in point - once you've played a game like Starcraft enough, the way you think about it becomes similar to the way he describes chess masters thinking about their game.
Oh, and Civ isn't an RTS.
Because I'm at work, I've not RTFA. From what I'm seeing here it's not so great.
BUT, I'm a BIG RTS fan and I have some observations. To date, my favorite RTS is Total Annihilation (which is about to be re-born as Supreme Commander). This game did everything possible to make the U.I. user-friendly: you can select all units of one type or class with a simple keystroke, attacking can be very automated or very pinpointed at single units, you could queque up up to 100 units (or more?) to be built by a factory, units could follow waypoints, etc.
CONTRAST THIS with Starcraft (Starcrap to me). You are NOT ALLOWED to queue > 5 units from a factory. This game is a click-fest with clicking cream on top. I hated it to the point I uninstalled it and sold my copy.
If I were to make a RTS, I would start from the UI that TA used, and try to improve it. Many game makers forget how many keys are on the keyboard and how powerful that can be. Sure it may slightly increase the learning curve, but it will make the overall user experience much better in the end.
What makes Civ enjoyable is the strategy, but all those clicks the article complains about is about tactics. Deciding how many workers to assign to building a railroad is strategy, telling each worker how to get to the building site is tactics. Figuring out the best way to transport a hundred units to another continent is strategy, actually trasporting them is tactics. The computer can not do strategy, but it can do tactics. In fact, it can do tactics a million times better and faster than any human. Your "human ingenuity" of applying your limited resources in the most optimal way possible is vastly inferior to the computer's. You can not keep track of all details simultaneously, the computer can. You are not going to model different allocation strategies and pick the optimal one, the computer will. Face it, the computer will always win at micromanagement; it's what the computer is for, and when you try to do the computer's job, it is no fun at all, being mechanical, tedious, and unrewarding.
...he didn't call Civilization III a RTS game.
His comment was:
Overclick isn't limited to Civilization. Real-time strategy games will leave you with even worse carpal tunnel.
There are no mentions in the rest of the article about Real-time.
It's just a poor title for the summary.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
..playing is way too much work!
I find war in civ3 a real drag until about 1800. After that, you get railroads, fask moving units, and so on, which really simplifies things.
Remember where you are. Most /.ers won't get it.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein
Remember these games? They fall under the real-time strategy games of course, and definately reduce the amount of movement you have to do in order to actually play it. I mean, I can get money if I have a good sized treasury right next to a good set of gems with at least one imp.
Your dungeon heart is under attack!
Empathetic-- 94% You tend to walk in someone else's shoes a hundred miles before pointing a finger.
Wow, not only am I surprised at the number of people who got modded +5 Interesting/Insightful/etc for pointing out that Civ4 isn't an RTS, merely because these same people only read the /. summary instead of TFA, I'm even more surprised at the number of moderators that didn't RTFA and gave those +1 Interesting/Insightful/etc points. People, RTFA. Nowhere in the article does it mention that Civ 4 is an RTS. If you RTFA, you would've saw this:
/., or someone else already mentioned this, then I retract my case.
"Overclick isn't limited to Civilization. Real-time strategy games will leave you with even worse carpal tunnel."
Oh yeah, shit, how could I be so stupid? Looks like the submitter didn't RTFA himself! You would think that the author of a Gamasutra article would know about what genre of games he's playing before writing an article up, no? Oh yeah, it looks like he does!
Note: if the original author of the article altered the article itself after the story was posted on
Just pop in a movie. That's what 4 clicks for about 2 hrs. of entertainment. If that still burns too many calories, call your mom down to the basement and have her put it on for you.
I abuse commas, I cannot help myself.
That after making Alpha Centauri (released Jan 99) and putting in full automation there for workers, cities, etc. That they didn't do the same in Civ 3 (October 01) when it was made by the same company under a similar engine.
At that points virtually all of these games became tedious and boring...for me, anyway. I really loved Starcraft, Sim City, Civilization, etc. But I won't play them anymore other than briefly for nostalgic value and when I do I get annoyed straight away by the bottleneck of the UI.
What, your first response wasn't dorky enough, you had to tack on this extremely unfunny addendum?
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
'Could games like Civilization benefit from putting their interfaces on a diet?
Simple answer, "Yes, move along."
He mentions Civ 3.
Civilization's developers, Firaxis, streamlined the game significantly for Civ4. As the developers themselves felt that, for all the flexibility, it could use a UI/click count diet, the answer's clearly "yes."
It's kind of like waiting until six months after an election in which a new President is elected and asking, "Is the country ready for a change from the policies of [the last administration]?"
I didn't think the campaigns were terrible so much as that they were of wildly uneven difficulty. The easy but time-consuming ones were more irritating than the difficult ones.
Second, the sections called "Objects don't have to be objects" and "On-line vs. off-line control" present what I think are some viable alternatives.
Very few of the people who posted seem to have read the article. For instance, I didn't say Civ was a RTS game.
Yes, I was unfair to Civ IV. I feel bad about that. All I did was download the demo and play it for a few hours. I didn't see any evidence of the sophisticated UI that people spoke about here. It might have been there, but it wasn't obvious. I really should have played longer, but my 3-year-old computer wasn't powerful enough to keep up with the animation, so I gave up.
But pointing out that unit automation is BETTER in Civ 4 is beside the point. I'm arguing that unit control, at all, is not necessary. That's why I felt I'd played Civ IV enough once I'd convinced myself it still had a unit-based UI. I'm arguing for a radically different user interface. Units are there to accomplish tasks. In a game with hundreds of units, you're typically only focused on a few tasks per turn. If you have a task-based interface instead of a unit-based interface, you could accomplish that task with fewer clicks. No one seems to have understood this. It isn't just delegation. It isn't about grouping units together, or adding waypoints (tho both are good things). I'm saying you could control what happens to almost the same level of detail, by re-conceptualizing the user interface, organizing it around tasks rather than around units. You could still point out the specific points to defend, the specific places to build your cities, the points where roads begin and end - but without choosing which units do the work. The computer can allocate them. It's much better at that sort of stuff than you are.
Some people like micromanagement. Fine. Let micromanagement be a game option. But the point of section on the Rule of 7 is that micromanagement makes you a less competent manager. You are playing a dumber game when you micromanage. I'm surprised that players don't show more interest in doing things the way the military does, and that they seem to think they know more about effective command than the military does. I'm surprised to hear people saying that letting a player focus on strategy, instead of stopping his helicopters from chasing the enemy when they run out of ammunition (C&C), is "dumbing down" the game. I take the opposite point of view - the strategy game is the thinking person's game. Setting priorities and planning tasks or large actions is strategy. Moving individual units is tactics.
Finally, the article was about a lot of other things besides Civ. It has a bunch of concepts in there - UI profiling, work calculations, theoretical efficiency, off-line orders and opening up the AI to the player - that are a lot more important than how good Civ 3 or Civ 4's UI is. I said, without giving details, that it's possible to calculate how near a UI is to its theoretical optimum - that's a radical claim, with significant implications going far beyond computer games; you'd think someone would challenge it. Or wonder how efficient a strategy game UI could be, or how you'd go about measuring that. But nobody seems to be paying any attention to those things. Most replies are from people who are hurt because they think I insulted a game that they like. I wish I could have avoided this by writing about a game that nobody played, or that everybody hated, but I couldn't. Get over it, and see the big picture.