The Problem with Counter based Design

[MrBiscuits]

Speeding up movement does not reduce micromanagement. The units already move automatically towards any destination unless they have to board a boat.

Deciding which unit goes where and using the boat to transport them is what's causing micromanagement to occur and you can't get rid of the former and need instant travel like Earth Gate for the latter. (Unless we add a new movement order that allows the unit to call your boats, board them and keep moving which is both very hard to implement and a pain to use since it might reassign orders on boats you wanted to use manually)

Organizing units into stacks to travel together is the other micromanagement heavy part which you can't avoid as single units get attacked and killed while moving. Movement speed doesn't help with that, in fact it makes things worse as enemies will be able to attack you from further away and are harder to intercept/detect.

Having 2 movement roads on your territory would be helpful for making stacks faster without units getting picked off by wandering enemies. It would also avoid the need for boats to speed up movement if you can just use roads across your lands. And it would speed up the end game, which can currently get bogged down into a long war of attrition.

The AI can't move troops as well as the player, but they already have a solution to that, which is to have huge production and mana bonuses, so it evens itself out.

I don't understand why the AI wouldn't be able to use an Earth Gate type spell to solve some of their logistics problems though, that would seem to solve both problems doesn't it?

Sea travel is frustrating because one successful black sleep or a couple of lightning bolts on a ship can take out all 9 units. 

I really don't understand how movement speed has anything to do with micromanagement. It helps WINNING, it does not help reducing micromanagement. We want the exact opposite.

Winning helps micromanagement by making the late game faster which is when most of the micromanagement occurs.

[Seravy]

Winning helps micromanagement by making the late game faster which is when most of the micromanagement occurs.

So might as well just make it a rule that whoever has more military forces on turn 180 wins the game instantly. Oh, that helps the AI win, not the human player?
It doesn't matter, as long as it reduces micromanagement!

Yes, winning reduces micromanagement, and no we should never use that to solve the problem.

[zitro1987]

I think some of the concern is that you cant reliably move units and stackbuilding and rallying units within your own territory because AI likes to pick these individual units off rather pointlessly. The solution is either to micromanage all the logistics to strategically avoid these mini battles, or speed up roads in your territory for easier time doing the above tasks

[MrBiscuits]

Winning helps micromanagement by making the late game faster which is when most of the micromanagement occurs.

So might as well just make it a rule that whoever has more military forces on turn 180 wins the game instantly. Oh, that helps the AI win, not the human player?
It doesn't matter, as long as it reduces micromanagement!

Yes, winning reduces micromanagement, and no we should never use that to solve the problem.

Ok a better way of putting it is that getting troops to the front line faster helps resolve battles faster and also avoid long wars of attrition, which would help reduce micromanagement over the course of the game.

I think some of the concern is that you cant reliably move units and stackbuilding and rallying units within your own territory because AI likes to pick these individual units off rather pointlessly. The solution is either to micromanage all the logistics to strategically avoid these mini battles, or speed up roads in your territory for easier time doing the above tasks

Yes you've worded it a lot better than me. You can't just use rallying points in your territory to gather stacks, as all the AIs are swarming your territory attacking each new units as they get built.

You may as well build spearmen and just get a free spell to cast at the enemy stacks as they attack each turn.

[zitro1987]

Yes you've worded it a lot better than me. You can't just use rallying points in your territory to gather stacks, as all the AIs are swarming your territory attacking each new units as they get built.

You may as well build spearmen and just get a free spell to cast at the enemy stacks as they attack each turn.

and you confirmed the problem i mentioned. AI should prioritize retreating and regrouping stacks instead of annoyingly camping scattered units (sometimes blocking your paths). I suspect the current approach is the ‘smartest’ on a technical sense, but is it fun?

It makes no logical sense and is counterintuitive for an enemy to camp in hostile territory. Hurts the immersion a bit. The logical move is to group, wait for reinforcements and/or retreat.

Note: the latest patch adding auto combat features did make this less of an irritant.

[Anskiy]

I think zitro is onto something. I don't think the AI stacking armies next to your cities is particularly immersive, nor does it make for good gameplay. If I were to do that next to an AI, they would rightfully get pissed off and warn me, eventually mounting attacks on my stacks. I think the AI should mostly stick to their continent, and only move a few good stacks around for treasure hunting if they aren't hostile.

[MrBiscuits]

Yes you've worded it a lot better than me. You can't just use rallying points in your territory to gather stacks, as all the AIs are swarming your territory attacking each new units as they get built.

You may as well build spearmen and just get a free spell to cast at the enemy stacks as they attack each turn.

and you confirmed the problem i mentioned. AI should prioritize retreating and regrouping stacks instead of annoyingly camping scattered units (sometimes blocking your paths). I suspect the current approach is the ‘smartest’ on a technical sense, but is it fun?

It makes no logical sense and is counterintuitive for an enemy to camp in hostile territory. Hurts the immersion a bit. The logical move is to group, wait for reinforcements and/or retreat.

Yes I don't really understand the limitations of the AI, but trying to get your units into a stack while negotiating a carpet of other wizard units all over your territory (some that you have a wizards pact with and can't attack them to clear the route either) is very time consuming.

As an aside, in some TBS they allow units from different players to share a tile if they are not at war, which would help a little.

Note: the latest patch adding auto combat features did make this less of an irritant.

For me the logistics of moving units is the boring part and the battles the interesting bit, so something that automates the battles is not really a solution for me.

[massone]

Yes you've worded it a lot better than me. You can't just use rallying points in your territory to gather stacks, as all the AIs are swarming your territory attacking each new units as they get built.

You may as well build spearmen and just get a free spell to cast at the enemy stacks as they attack each turn.

I would've agreed if you were talking about neutral/allied troops blocking your way, but I have to disagree with ENEMY AI swarming your territory being a problem.

If the enemy is swarming you and picking off all your units before you can group them, aren't they playing well and leveraging their advantage in quantity? If you don't want to be bogged down in attrition wars then the answer is to look for a better strategy where you won't be bothered by this. Destroy their field units, produce your troops somewhere else, or build your armies before you get into a war with them.

I also don't think the end game is bogged down by wars of attrition at all. If that's happening, it's something about the specific strategy you're using that's causing it. The end game should typically be a contest of doom stacks capable of taking cities. 

Regardless I think the speed of troop movement is already quite fast in the end game for high movement strategies.

Sea travel is frustrating because one successful black sleep or a couple of lightning bolts on a ship can take out all 9 units. 

I find that to be a delightful feature. The same weakness applies to the AI, which you can take advantage of, and there are also many ways to mitigate it. It makes water-walking units and dominance of the oceans far more strategically important, and introduces vulnerability to improperly protected but otherwise invincible heroes too. It also increases the utility of the Destiny spell as Warships are among the most powerful Destiny units available with the highest base HP in the game. Life also happens to be the Realm that relies the most on Normal units and transporting them, so this is a great dynamic.

[jhsidi]

Regarding enemies swarming your territory, it's easy to deal with if they're an enemy. But I'd agree it becomes problematic for non-enemies and allies.

I feel like there's some nuance of AI that makes it better or worse in certain places. I play some games where it's not an issue...

In other games, or just in certain landmasses, the AI fills every damn tile with micro stacks of trash units and I literally can't move my armies around. It's quite annoying, to the point that it might be a considerable improvement to the game if it didn't happen, but as far as I understand Seravy's posts on the topic it's just a side effect of all the AI routing and stacking mechanisms and might be quite difficult to actually solve.

[Seravy]

I feel like there's some nuance of AI that makes it better or worse in certain places. I play some games where it's not an issue...
In other games, or just in certain landmasses, the AI fills every damn tile with micro stacks of trash units and I literally can't move my armies around.

The AI has a thing called a "Main Action Continent".
They can only have one of these picked on each plane at a time.
If the one they picked ran out of valid targets but has at least one stack with 8 or more units, (if not then the units will gather into a stack so it's only a matter of time) they pick another such continent.

If you see a lot of units on your continent, it was the one last picked by that AI and either they haven't picked another yet (they still see something they can attack, or failed to have a 8+ stack to even try), or there is no other continent to pick (AI isn't at war and lairs are already gone) or the AI would like to leave but has no ships to do so (another AI killed them).
Failing to build a 8+ stack shouldn't happen in general, but can if the path is blocked, for example by your units or cities. However as long as they don't have one, they assume they're still gathering forces and won't try to change the Main Action Continent.

Another contributing factor is what race the AI actually plays, a Klackon player will have several times more units in the game than someone playing High Elves.