Suggestion: Provincial building construction - Sequential instead of Parallel

[ydmatrix2]

After playing a few games, I see as one of the greatest benefits of managing regions as part of a province the provincial resource pooling - especially construction (infrastructure).

Instead of, say, 5 regions each slowly building they own building, in parallel, over multiple turns - it is much more efficient to focus the entire province on a single building until completion, then focus on the next building and so on. It provides the benefits of those buildings several turns earlier, and will likely also finish all the same construction faster (if at least some of those buildings provided additional infrastructure).

This however leads to a bit micro-intensive gameplay - for each province, each turn, choose 1-3 buildings to focus on so that at least one building is finished each turn; the next turn - queue another building or two across the province; and so on.

The suggestion I have is to reduce this micromanagement while keeping the benefits of focusing the construction efforts one building at a time. While keeping the spirit of the game (no queuing of multiple buildings in a single region), I'd like to select at once in each region the next building to construct, but for the entire province to focus the resources so as to complete them one at a time instead of in parallel. This would allow to select the desired construction order for each region in a province, and leave the province alone for a few turns, knowing that it will still progress building efficiently.

In terms of UI, I'd think the best place for this would be an option somewhere next to the provincial auto-management options, which I sometimes click on by mistake. And without making the UI more complex (choosing the order of buildings to focus on, across the regions) a simple logic would be to always focus on the building closest to completion (least remaining infrastructure points), then the next one, and so on.

What do you think?

[Pocus]

I thought about that too and I wonder in which case this should not be the default option, to always tackle one building at a time ... But then I guess people will ask to not have infrastructure averaged between regions ...

[ess1]

Thanks Pocus. As ever, quick to respond.
I would very much like this. Thank you OP for suggestion.

[ydmatrix2]

I thought about that too and I wonder in which case this should not be the default option, to always tackle one building at a time

Thanks for the quick answer.
Will an (unintended?) consequence of making this a default behaviour be making the AI more effective at managing their provinces as well?
Assuming the current logic doesn't try to micromanage to build one-at-a-time, that's somewhat of a handicap the AI may currently have compared to a (sufficiently motivated) human player.

But a downside of making this default, if the player is not paying attention and still queueing buildings in each region is to starve the construction of larger buildings, by always pushing something ahead of them in the provincial queue.

[poesel71]

Are there no transfer losses for distributing infrastructure inside a region? TBH I have never thought much about this and if there are no losses then the tactic used by the OP would make a lot of sense.

+1 from me for any mechanic that supports this.

Btw are there any plans for being able to transfer infrastructure between regions (for a cost of course)?

[Bridger]

Honstly, I much prefer to have them averaged because I *want* my buildings to build slower. Anything to delay the constant mind-numbing chore of choosing a new building for 1-2 dozen provinces every, single, turn.

The game slows way down once you get 100+ provinces. The more you have, the more it slows down.

Using the AI to build for you doesn't help, because there is no situation in which setting an entire province to building mostly gold buildings (or culture, or food, or military, etc.) is a good idea. Every province needs a mix of these.

So TBH, I am happy to have my buildings take longer so that my turns go faster...


Now if you combine this idea with only choosing one building per province at one time....that might be better.

[misterjordan845]

I really like this idea, it keeps the strategic benefit of focused construction without forcing constant micromanagement every turn. The current system rewards optimization, but it can feel a bit click-heavy, especially with multiple provinces. A provincial “sequential focus” toggle that automatically prioritizes the building closest to completion sounds clean, intuitive, and aligned with the game’s design philosophy (no per-region multi-queue). It preserves player control over order while reducing repetitive actions. Honestly, this feels more like a quality-of-life improvement than a balance change — I’d definitely use it.

[Pocus]

This should arrive with the final patch for Empires. A new priority system will let you queue construction across a province: each region will still build only one structure at a time, but you will be able to assign different priorities so some regions complete their buildings before others.

[Surt]

Just like in Kingdoms?