Micromanagement

[mathusalem]

for SP only :

* only on smalls maps
* no scout or spy after the third one
* big army or tough SC : I don't adjust my force with the enemy one, I crush them methodically and raise the PD.
* only battlespell without a gem cost + clams, blood stones

[thejeff]

Victory Conditions.

Don't try playing a 600 province game with all nations in it. You'll be massively dominant long before actually taking all the provinces.

I usually play with 5-6 nations, 10-15 provinces each. 10%+1 capitals as a victory condition. You don't really get into endgame magic, but the AI can't handle that anyway.
Early/midgame is where the AI works best.

And don't recruit troops in every province anyway. Recruit troops in the castles near the front and maybe capital only troops. (And your occasional good indy province) Recruit mages everywhere you can. You should be spending most of your money on mages by the time you've got 50 provinces.

[Zeldor]

Do not cast Gift of Nature's Bounty And do not play nations like MA TC.

[BesucherXia]

I always play SP huge maps (glory of the gods) with all nations in it. When I am getting tired of the micromanagement, I just start another game and pick another nation.
After all, if human players can manage to reach a certain phase in a SP game, killing AI will be just a matter of time.

[Makinus]

One feature that would ease the micromanagement would be a setting where the province would always produce a selected unit up to the resource amount available in the province... would be possible to add this in a patch?

[thejeff]

Possible, but unlikely. It's been suggested before and little interest was shown, by users or the devs.
Troops have a gold cost as well as a resource one, so such a setting would also have to prioritize spending gold as well.

If you have the gold, you can always queue up units well past the resource limit.

Your questions suggest to me you're focusing too heavily on troops and particularly indy troops, which are usually not as effective as national troops. I rarely recruit troops in more the 4-5 provinces a turn. Usually in forts. Sometimes indy archers or elite (sacred?) indy troops. Occasionally in late game I'll recruit low resource indies in mass to provide chaff to buff with Army of Lead/Fog Warriors etc.

[LDiCesare]

Only produce units at forts. You'll be unlikely to have 50 forts on any decent sized map for SP until you've won the game.
And put some victory condition like VPs, you can teleport/cloud trapeze and take them all from the ai when you reached the point you should have won but can't continue due to the hassle.