I agree, but this topic was discussed to death already. This isn't going to change, like many of the deep gameplay issues that have been discussed on these forums.

I think that part that is tiresome about it is remembering when you need to make changes to planets.  For example, you get access to some new terraforming tech, so on a research or wealth planet you go and change your slider around so you can terraform a tile, and then place down another building.  This means you have to take it off of its focus, and then after X number of turns (dependent on your overall production capacity, which varies on damn near every planet) you have to *remember to change it back*.  This means you are *constantly* checking on every planet, worrying that you forgot.  This is the part that I find very tiresome and stressful.

Perhaps a solution would be to allow for the player to make a change to the wheel, but then have it conditionally change for you.  If you could say "This focus for now, when this building is done change to this focus".  Then you are still making the same overall decisions, you're just able to do them *at the same time*, removing the necessity of checking on every damn planet every damn turn to make sure they are balanced just right.  

I don't even know why this wheel exists in the first place. It doesn't add to the game's depth, and I'm even quite convinced it removes a lot...

I really dislike how when you use the commands interface to update ship production from an old version to a new version on shipyards that are building ships on repeat it will just queue a single ship of the new design and then continue creating the old design.  I am specifically telling you that if you are building THIS ship, you should now build THIS ship.  So if you are building ship A on repeat, it is only natural that if I tell you to stop building ship A and instead build ship B that I want you to build ship B on *repeat*.

 Silly game.

Also, what's up with auto naming of ships and the 'update to newest design' button?  When I start a new game and make a different constructor it names it the M3.  If I build my own special ship and name it the "Test ship", or the "Test ship M1", it will never auto increment the name for me.  Never.  But if I put a single constructor module on a ship it will try making it the Constructor M4, or whatever the next number would be.  If I build a ship, it should just call it the M1.  If I 'use design' on an existing ship, it should call it the M2.  Why is that hard?

And this 'update to newest design' button is just broken, it doesn't ever do what I expect it to do.  If I manually create a ship and manually name it the M1 (as again in the previous paragraph I mentioned that it won't do it for me), and then I get new tech and click 'use design' on my existing M1 and create a new ship that I manually name the M2, I cannot use the 'use newest design' button.  It will sometimes update it to a completely different ship, like a colony or constructor ship.  Please!  Go from the M1 to the M2!  

and if they didn't put all that tinkering stuff in the game ....."WTF, I can't do this and I can't do that ..what a dumbed down game ..what's wrong with those people and they charged me x amount of dollars for this dumbed down piece of crap." People always complain no matter which way the developers decide to go.

Honestly you can get good results by setting one of these patterns once for each planet never touching the wheel

Global (Manu/Research) 

50/50 Manu/Research - Research Planet - since you are setting your global to this you don't have to edit this. 

50/50 Manu/Wealth - Wealth Planet

100 Manu - Production - Production Planet

Leave social/military at 50/50. (or 100 military and just disable the shipyard when you are building your planet)

Set a social project to expend your social points when nothing is in the queue. 

If you have a shipyard and it's running it will consume your allocation for manufacturing. You can disable the shipyard if you need to build improvements on your planets. 

This will help cut down the micro for people that are bothered by it. 

Just to chime in. 

I am having LOADS of fun. I typically spend 2 to 5 hours weeknights and 16 or more weekends playing Excessive and Insane maps. I do play on Rare/Rare which dramatically limits the amount of planets you end up having. I personally love it this way. For me life is rare and and habitable planets should be a treat to find regardless of type. On insane maps with common planets but rare habitability, I will go through 5 or 7 systems before I get one I can settle. 

The Micro is part of the game and always has been. Again, personally I like it as it gives me more control over my empire on a per planet basis. We will get governors soon which may help you so you can enjoy the game. The 'wheel' was a breakthrough in design from the old sliders we had in GCII. I love it as it represents your three choices and breakdowns better. 

{Fun!}

Governors will be free and part of the patches coming up. 

The AI does control the sliders as in my current game the 1st powered player went from being low on research  and matching me or exceeding me on economy and production, to in one turn being high on research and much lower than me on both production and economy.  The only way to change that in one turn would be to adjust sliders   Good for the AI.

I'm right with Larsenex on this one, I'd rather have too much micro (that I can choose to use) then not enough.  So I love that Stardock puts this amount of micro-management into the game so I have the option to adjust the sliders on a planet basis if I want.

On the other hand if you don't want to use those options then don't use the following options.  The game is not dependent on them.

• The production/economic/research wheel.  (just leave at the default setting 33% for all.)
• The Diplomatic Screen.  (Never go into that screen, don't trade or check stats at all.)
• The Ship Designer.  (Don't need it, use game generated ships.)
• Shipyard view (selecting your ship building que).  [Already just go to govenors and choose to build any ship you want for all ship yards.]

Once the govenors are in then you won't have to do the following either.

• Enter the planet build screen.  (Just set your govenor for planet building and you're set.)

I am using the planet wheel in an empire with >100 planets.  I take each planet through three stages, beginning, mid-development, and possible specialization.  I set up the beginning with max production and a short build list.  When the planet gets back to me, I look more closely at its terrain and decide what should go where.  The planet wheel gets set to follow the imperial wheel.  It will stay there until late game when I will extreme specialize a several key worlds and set those planet wheels accordingly. This is working for me so far.

I expect more advanced multilevel management options and look forward to them.  I will put to the devs that I have some high expectations that there will be some significant and creative work in this area.  As I get braver about how big an empire I can work with, I want the tools to do it with.  I expect the UI to be my friend and the AI to be my enemy, not the other way around.

Some players have to play as efficiently as they can, and when they learn of a new way to play they can't NOT play that way anymore.  Saying "Just don't do that" doesn't work.

As long as whatever solution does not compromise my game experience of being able to micromanage then I have no issues.  I just don't want the micro capability removed just because some find it a burden.

My issue isn't with detailed controls, its that ultimately the detailed controls don't mean much. The gradual slider doesn't actually have a lot of benefit. The way optimizing works in GalCiv3 its almost always best to go with extremes.

Build a science world, go max prod to build your labs, then go max science. You are rarely really adjusting your planets or using the power of the slider, because its just not that useful to overall gameplay.