Couple of automated ideas to improve things...

[Frugal_Gourmet]

1) Ability to put workers on pollution clean-up duty only. These workers hop to action when any pollution clean-up becomes necessary and remain idle when there is none.

2) Auto-recon abilities for air units: the ability to set an air unit to perform the same recon mission every turn until you specify otherwise.

3) Auto-air superiority: same idea..

4) Auto-bombing status: same idea.. bomb enemies that enter a range in war time until the user re-assigns.

5) If you have your queue set (for the love of God) the game should NOT ask you what you're building next at the beginning of a turn. Just inform the player via the text highlight only, and if they want to change it they can do so manually. The fact that it doesn't do this renders the queue neigh-useless and not very time-saving.

6) Ability to set a global flag point (kind of like Age of Empires) so that produced units will always travel to the same location when created.

7) Add "escort" mission for regular units (or make them stack-able) so that units can travel synchronously without much effort.

Do these simple 7 things, and I think Civ3 micromanagement would be really reduced...

[sophist]

1) I believe that's in the patch.

3) Air superiority is currently broken; I believe the fix in the patch will work as you want it to.

5) Well, just clicking OK is faster than selecting something. Admittedly it's not as quick as your solution, but I would prefer this as a game option: "Show pop up when improvement completed and non-empty queue." Also a "Show pop up when unit completed and non-empty queue" to go with that.

7) An escort mission would be key. Especially with naval units. See also my post in the map marker thread. Well, not really a thread since nobody replied....

[Frugal_Gourmet]

1) Keen!

3) But is it automated? (i.e., fighters will run air superiority automatically unless you select otherwise or something of that ilk?)

5) Yeah, but I think it could be improved.

7) We are in agreement here.

[sophist]

3) I believe Air Superiority happens indefinitely until you stop it. That would be the Right Way.

[Asharak]

1) Damn, I like that idea. It's in the patch, you say? Great!!! Now, if only the patch would stop crashing my WindowsXP machine, life (and not just Civ) would be greatly improved.

2) thru 4) Dunno how much I like those, necessarily (and yes, I know air superiority is broken, I'm commenting more on the auto-bombing)... when it comes to my war plans, I like as much micro-managing control as possible. Sure, they'd be faster, but I don't trust the AI to run my military for me. Then again, I happen to like micro-managing Civ, and actually oppose the exist of City Governors at all, so my two cents is probably in the minority on that one.

5) DAMN STRAIGHT. That's extremely annoying! On a related note, I'm glad the patch added the option to stop the governor changing the military unit you were building each time you complete one... so it's no longer necessary to queue up 10 Rifleman... alas, the patch, the patch (see #1)

6) Provided that was implemented probably, it'd be nice. I'd like to see it at city-level, so that the tanks I produce from one city will go somewhere, but the infantry from another somewhere else.

7) Also a good idea. I rarely ever see 'escort' missions in games enacted properly, though... and how should the computer handle it if you ordered a slower unit to escort a faster one? It'd be a little tricky to implement, I'd think... but still a good idea.

I'd also like to see the Civil Disorder interface improved. As it stands, I get sick of , and often forget to, manually find any city that went into civil disorder that turn and adjusting the workers to solve the problem. The burning city looks nice, but could a pop-up with an 'auto-adjust workers to restore order' box be added?