posted 04-04-99 01:42 AM ET            

While on the subject of dubious "player-aids" I must say that I find some players infatuation for the build queues to be most confusing. Again, it is probably just my play style, but I found myself spending more time both planning future production runs and then changing when the inevitable emergency came up or when tech advances led to a reprioritization of builds. I like to run my empire, especially in the early years, very leanly and waste no time or production getting my infrastructure built. I don't know how well that strategy will work in multi-player (see many of the TI threads in the forum for a continuing debate on this.) However, in single player, it has worked very well for me.

One thing that helps to reduce the tedium of the micromanagement in production and base operations is to set your warning preferences to flag you for just about everything built. That way, at the beginning of the turn when you have your newly produced units and facilities come on line you get a pop-up screen, go to the base in question, immediately change production for the next item (I never stockpile energy) to whatever best fills the current need, or master plan if you have one, repeat as necessary. Even when your empire is large and you're accelerating production on things, if you do this often enough you can cover the majority of your micromanagement tasks in five minutes or less.

Another thing that I do is set the game to hold at the end of turn. That's when I do the complimentary portion of my base management. That is, I check for imminent drone riots (hate to see angry workers), resource adjustments from recent terraforming, etc.

Have fun and Walk with Planet.