Pretty sure you have the bug, that not all Nations were set to hard at the start of the game because 4 Nations do way worse than the rest. Until its patched you should always manually check all nations diff to make sure before starting the game.
It actually ends up fairly automated. Most of the time you are going to want a continuous production of certain items, so you put those on 'infinite' and a fair amount of the rest of the time you are going to want a lot of something, so you can have a structure making a dozen or more and not need to worry about it for a fair while. For example, the Weavers are basically your only way of getting Fabric I believe and you can only have three of them in your Nation (in different cities if I have gotten how the Loom augment works right too). Fabric is used in large quantities in a bunch of things that are in high demand, so at least one and potentially two of those Weavers are going to be stuck on 'just produce more Fabric'. A similar situation with Blacksmiths making Metal Ingots. It's definitely not 'set and forget' like is usually the case with 4X/Civilisation Style games but outside of Act Transitions potentially messing with things and tech unlocking an important new item, it's often fairly obvious what you might be wanting in a given situation, you can tell when something is either using too much or not producing enough of something else and it makes sense how you structure things to achieve the desired goal. Honestly, the biggest issue I have is remembering to go around and fill in the Supply slots in my buildings when I know I've produced either a new item that fills that slot or a superior item to what I had already filled them with.
The sandals with the fur 🎶
Pretty sure you have the bug, that not all Nations were set to hard at the start of the game because 4 Nations do way worse than the rest. Until its patched you should always manually check all nations diff to make sure before starting the game.
Fun to watch but seems like micro management hell to play.
It actually ends up fairly automated. Most of the time you are going to want a continuous production of certain items, so you put those on 'infinite' and a fair amount of the rest of the time you are going to want a lot of something, so you can have a structure making a dozen or more and not need to worry about it for a fair while.
For example, the Weavers are basically your only way of getting Fabric I believe and you can only have three of them in your Nation (in different cities if I have gotten how the Loom augment works right too). Fabric is used in large quantities in a bunch of things that are in high demand, so at least one and potentially two of those Weavers are going to be stuck on 'just produce more Fabric'. A similar situation with Blacksmiths making Metal Ingots.
It's definitely not 'set and forget' like is usually the case with 4X/Civilisation Style games but outside of Act Transitions potentially messing with things and tech unlocking an important new item, it's often fairly obvious what you might be wanting in a given situation, you can tell when something is either using too much or not producing enough of something else and it makes sense how you structure things to achieve the desired goal. Honestly, the biggest issue I have is remembering to go around and fill in the Supply slots in my buildings when I know I've produced either a new item that fills that slot or a superior item to what I had already filled them with.
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