Planetary governors? GC1 had four of them and you could assign a planet to use any one of the four, or none at all. With the planetary maps of GC2, planetary governors becomes much more problematical. The assignment of buildings to tiles that had the matching bonuses is very important, and is a reason I was fearful of using them. I should have tried it to see if they would work well. I just took a cursory look at what GC2 has, and it looks like you can create an infinite number of planetary governors, and, of course, you can assign any plant to use any governor or not as you wish.

Being able to filter the list of colonies instead of just sorting it would be really helpful.  Maybe I want to see just colonies that are specialised in research, or the ones which haven't been specialised yet, or the ones which are in danger of flipping to another civ.

I've always simply used the sorting options in the planet list. The ones with larger production and research were the ones that mattered and were likely the ones that had such planet features.

If you think GCII system is overly complicated, check this out

This map is a class 17 planet because it has 17 cities. Each will have a population percentage.

Also you can build space farming sectors (hexagons) outside the radius, but it cannot overlap water and cannot overlap cities.

Say hello the the city grid, each city has a grid to them, which you designate the houses, businesses and industries. Tools will help make this process quick and easy!

industries is your military production and your social production and cost money to run

houses will determine your max population and you tax them generating income

businesses will milk peoples money increasing the cash you gain even further.

also you can plop down research plots, but they will drain the cities income

designate a wonder in any given sector.

choose to build a star port in a city

 fortify cities with defenses and set up anti air to weaken enemies air superiority or the planet

everything left over will be given to you in billion credits. As your city evolves you may gain/lose credits depending on the limitations the planet has and which areas have been developed every time you hit the turn button. 

This will exterminate a need for a slider, but complex enough that you can manage and keep up with the growth by building farms. You will get notices if a location is starving because the farms can't handle the populations demands.

yes, too much detail does kill it... in fact this micromanagement would ruin multi-player, don't get me wrong but you should be thankful there is a slider to begin with, what I am trying to get at is can you come up with a better idea then a simple slider? It doesn't seem to take too much time and it is perfect for a game of this scale.

Good to see the debate continued here. Better empire colony management screens would help manage your empire better. Perhaps a useful modification could be to include a map in this screen to see where the colony is located on the galaxy map. I tend to forget the name/location of colonies, particulary if you play the game in large intervals.

A mystic wood with a communication tree that can call pirates to enslave your citizens? And you don't know of it before it happens, of course.

Guess what, I updated the model, you know something like this has potential, its like a mini simplified turn based city simulator, except you don't have to bother looking at them every turn, you just designate what you want in areas using tools and I assure you it has great potential.

The only acceptation is the wonders and farms. everything would about these cities would be self developing as you advance your technology.

I think that we need to differentiate between 'micro' and 'busy work'

I don't think people mind micro managmeent, as this is an important part of the strategy and maximizing your resources and efficiencies.

What people do not like is 'busy work'. I feel that people don't necessarily want 'automation' in terms of an AI doing stuff for you. But more 'batch management'. How do I mass upgrade ships/colonies. How do I pump out my 'default Death Patrol fleet' from a colony. How can I easily change my empire's priorities from a single location?

Micro isn't the issue imho.

Well, it is for me. The ideal management of a colony would be choosing the type of development (type of the governor) and a slider to set the colony's budget priority. This would tell the budget how much money it can throw at that colony.

Anything beyond this is micromanagement that is an issue for me.

Speaking about games with tens of colonies or more, naturally.