Combat
Detailed management of units in combat aims to maximize damage given to enemy units and minimize damage to the player's units. For standard combat units the most common techniques are: grouping units into formations, for example to keep lightly-armored shooters behind and protected by more heavily-armored melee units; concentrating the fire of all ranged units on one target and then a second, etc., to destroy threats as fast as possible; withdrawing seriously damaged units from combat, if repairing / healing them is cheaper than replacing them; "dancing" units that have taken some damage out of enemy weapons range and then back into combat once the enemy have locked on to another target; using military tactics such as flanking and counterattacks; exploiting nontransitive ("circle of death" or "rock-paper-scissors") power relationships between units; using cheap units to draw the enemy's fire away from more expensive units, gameplay especially typical of games of the real-time tactics type. Micromanagement is even more necessary for units with special abilities, that can only be used infrequently. "Micromanagement" in this sense is often abbreviated to "micro", which can be used as a noun or a verb.
Master of Orion's main screen. The panel on the right shows the sliders that control how resources are allocated by the colony which the player has most recently clicked.
Micromanagement versus Macromanagement
There is sometimes confusion regarding the difference between micromanagement and macromanagement, normally abbreviated as 'micro' and 'macro' respectively. Macro generally refers to managing large quantities of tasks at the same time. For example, building units from various structures throughout the game while also building more structures, scouting, creating new bases, etc. This is different from micro, which is generally controlling small amounts of units and giving them very specific orders.
Economic micromanagement
The range of possible economic micromanagement techniques is much wider than for combat, because strategy games' economies work in so many different ways. If the game uses "worker" units to gather resources and / or build things (a common technique in Real-time strategy games), one must make sure none are idle and that they are doing the right things, and must avoid letting enemy raiders destroy them (as is happening in the Starcraft image above). In some turn-based games one tells colonies what percentages of their efforts to put into various activities such as industrial growth, research, and building defenses or combat units; as colonies grow or the strategic situation changes, one has to check and adjust these ratios. In Sid Meier's Civilization series, it may be important for either economic or military reasons to build railroads as fast as possible, and doing this efficiently requires considerable micromanagement of Settler / Engineer units
Detailed management of units in combat aims to maximize damage given to enemy units and minimize damage to the player's units. For standard combat units the most common techniques are: grouping units into formations, for example to keep lightly-armored shooters behind and protected by more heavily-armored melee units; concentrating the fire of all ranged units on one target and then a second, etc., to destroy threats as fast as possible; withdrawing seriously damaged units from combat, if repairing / healing them is cheaper than replacing them; "dancing" units that have taken some damage out of enemy weapons range and then back into combat once the enemy have locked on to another target; using military tactics such as flanking and counterattacks; exploiting nontransitive ("circle of death" or "rock-paper-scissors") power relationships between units; using cheap units to draw the enemy's fire away from more expensive units, gameplay especially typical of games of the real-time tactics type. Micromanagement is even more necessary for units with special abilities, that can only be used infrequently. "Micromanagement" in this sense is often abbreviated to "micro", which can be used as a noun or a verb.
Master of Orion's main screen. The panel on the right shows the sliders that control how resources are allocated by the colony which the player has most recently clicked.
Micromanagement versus Macromanagement
There is sometimes confusion regarding the difference between micromanagement and macromanagement, normally abbreviated as 'micro' and 'macro' respectively. Macro generally refers to managing large quantities of tasks at the same time. For example, building units from various structures throughout the game while also building more structures, scouting, creating new bases, etc. This is different from micro, which is generally controlling small amounts of units and giving them very specific orders.
Economic micromanagement
The range of possible economic micromanagement techniques is much wider than for combat, because strategy games' economies work in so many different ways. If the game uses "worker" units to gather resources and / or build things (a common technique in Real-time strategy games), one must make sure none are idle and that they are doing the right things, and must avoid letting enemy raiders destroy them (as is happening in the Starcraft image above). In some turn-based games one tells colonies what percentages of their efforts to put into various activities such as industrial growth, research, and building defenses or combat units; as colonies grow or the strategic situation changes, one has to check and adjust these ratios. In Sid Meier's Civilization series, it may be important for either economic or military reasons to build railroads as fast as possible, and doing this efficiently requires considerable micromanagement of Settler / Engineer units
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