I macro much better in AoE4 than in sc2. I believe its because of two main reasons:
- The reduced pace of the game yields more time to pause and think things through.
- Because of the lower lethality/ more layers of urgency that an enemy surprise attack can have, having constant minimap vision is less important, and allows for more frequent gazing upon the resource tab.
Two of the most important things to look at in-game, confirmed by eye-graphing studies seems to be the minimap as well as the resource tab. AoE4 have them positioned better than sc2, where they’re diagonally opposed. They could, however, from an eye-movement perspective, be positioned better if you could opt in to have them next to each other, for a more ergonomic merged overview section.
Immortal: Gates of Pyre, obsessed with mechanics optimization as they are, are currently pioneering a similar solution, and I find it genious. By merging the minimap with the resource tab, you don’t have to sacrifice as much map vision at the cost of macro and vice versa.
You could argue that it’s a skill to prioritize which condensed information window to look at during any given time. The better you become, the better you are at estimating your resource balance without looking, and the better you become at anticipating army rotations, allowing for fine tuned choices as to which information to prioritize. This being said, the skillset is still a skillset that is forced by the current UI.