Templates are a must ... Instead of putting each citizen in their working area one by one, you just create a template that says something like "half the manpower in the farm and the rest evenly distributed". You get things done in one click instead of 20 clicks if you have 20 manpower ....

Yes, and build queues are another big one. You should be able to create many different build queues and save them in a list and then apply any queue from the list to any city you like. The queues should also be "smart" in that they automatically adjust to different races with missing buildings as well as cities that may already have some of the buildings listed in the queue.

Another big one is the total elimination of waste. All excess production/food/research/whatever should carry over when the current project has completed. There should be absolutely no need to constantly adjust things to try and avoid excesses/waste - it adds no strategic value to the game, just mindless busywork.

The last big micromanagement-reducing feature I'd like to see is a super-robust empire management screen where all cities are listed and can be sorted in many different ways (name, population, production, research, gold output, happiness etc.) and can have their build queues and templates changed without leaving the screen.

It would be interesting to play around with the idea of being able to group cities into mega-cities or regions so that they could be managed as a block - essentially showing their combined resources and handling them like a single unit with several build centers. 

I can see this handled in two major ways:

1. The cities stay as individual units except for the purposes of management.  Essentially you just link a few cities together and they all take you to the same management page.

2. There could be a set of rules to actually convert several nearby cities into a 'mega-city' to be actually combined in some way in game terms. In this way, you could run your cities individually when you only have a 5 city empire but start grouping cities up when you have 30 cities.

Or really, anything that brings the game closer to Master of Orion II.

In the Rise of Mankind mod ... later versions of settlers, aka colonists and pioneers, would build a new city with some basic buildings already in place.

The mod adds many more buildings and units ... so its just basic infrastructure, although getting a city automatically to that point makes it immediately useful to a degree ... instead of being a useless stretch of land with a flag on top.

One other thing I will mention however, is that large empires naturally have corruption ... I would like to think a player's refusal to continue maximization micromanagement is a nice portrayal.

If someone has only a few cities vs someone with Many, Many cities ... the advantage of having less micro goes to the smaller, more hardy nation ... rather than the gargantua of Population-stan. Or muchoLandistan.

Sure turns could take longer, would take longer in SP if someone really felt the need, but thats what turn timers are for in MP. by the way, I would like a clock turn timer option for multiplayer (its usually a must have) ... Civ 4 has a good turn timer model for it to be based upon. especially how turn 0 is quite long (you see where you start) and then turn 1-50 are fairly fast (early boring-ness) and then the turn timer slowly grows by a few seconds each decade, or something, so by turn 150 or so your at a full minute or something.

Having options for how fast the timer is ... is another good option. Civ 4 has these timers, although imo slow timers aren't needed as much, just normal, fast, and blazing ... but yea. Timers ... are a good thing. (if you have too much micro you are usually winning anyways)

now back on topic, I do think that more fun, graphical, interfaces are a must. As well as a way to respectfully automate the process. For instance, if I have a huge empire and want *stuff* but don't care in what order, I can have auto governors do stuff with at least 50% efficiency of what I would normally be able.

Also, think about this ... Sovereigns (and possibly nobles) will be able to vastly speed up the infrastructuring processes of a city, so all you really need to focus on is where the sovereign is (if your doing a builder style, for instance).

now back off topic-> its really nice how Sovereign Death leads to defeat ... on multiplayer at least, because theoretically its that "final decisive battle" mentality where people would use their sovereign, and if you lose that your kind of out of the game anyways.

Although ... I would like an OBSERVE option after you are defeated ... which enables vision of EVERYTHING all the players are doing, but disables chat. IDK ... im sure hosts can use disgression about kicking Observers which are used to cheat, although I think it would be really nice if player x was defeated, to be able to see the war unfold between y and z if he so desired.

agreed

1. Civ IV                                                      1. Morrowind

2. Rome: Total War/ Medieval2: Total War      2. Mass Effect

3. Assasin's Creed                                        3. Galactic Civ II

a list of bests along parallel lines of thought. From an aesthetic perspective. No article from one list of 3 is meant to be less important than an article from the other list of 3. As in they are non-convergent trains of thought, even if there is no inherent pattern.

I think as long as Micromanagement is intuitive, its fine. Any micromanagement, more than likely, will devolve into the same basic steps, along several possible strategies, a billion times over.

A good micro system makes it fun for a beginning player, the first time around. If I feel like im reading an instruction manual, with all wall-of-text in-game, of course it will be boring and make the micro even more of a problem. If it is intuitive, graphical, (possibly slider based), and FUN, then the micro will become FAR less of a problem simply for the merit of not being a chore, at least on a good day. If something is a chore even when Im really into the details of a game, then something is wrong. This is why the micro should look fun/cool, and be entertaining to an extent.

Maybe management of cities can be done in 3 development stages.  1st stage detail out Soverign city(say have 3 cities with lots of details) 2nd stage your city structures, units, etc become templates for other cities which become automated for growth.  So you still increase your holdings, tax base, whatever comes next.  You don't need a settler unit.  Cities grow over time scale slider.  This would allow for grabbing useful stuff off a menu, with time delays for units, magic, etc that can be accessed empire control page.  3rd stage could have various effects, options(random or not)for cities.  City gets-Assassins Guild which spawns special assassin units, Famine % of population within city drops along with attendant production capabilities,  Tech breakthrough, etc.  So basically at beginning of game you micromanage every aspect, with mid to end game being less about micromanaging cities and more about strategy involving magic, troop movements, trying to control areas of map that are important, quest and dungeon exploration etc.