I have a few ideas that may make micromanaging a lot more straightforward and less repetitive. II'm sure that all of us are very fond of the relatively new bulldoze mode, where we can delete many buildings with just a swipe of a finger. I find that this tool prevents repetitiveness and allows us to delete things quickly and in a straightforward manner.
In fact, the bulldoze tool inspired these ideas. However, instead of only being able to delete buildings will bulldoze mode, how are some other modes and what they would allow a player to do:
Mode cycler: Instead of the bulldoze button just turning bulldoze mode on and off, why not have it cycle through all of the below modes. This saves space on the button menu, and while it does require some repetitive tapping to get the mode you want, these modes will do their own share of saving you from having to deal with repetition.
Sell mode: In case you want to get resources back from the buildings that you are destroying. The screen will have a green outline instead of red and should be the next mode after bulldoze mode. This mode should do exactly the same things as bulldoze mode, but sells the buildings instead of just wiping them out. You will not be able to demolish nodes or paths in this mode. Or, you could just save having to create another mode and have the bulldozer sell buildings when it can, but then just demolish things like nodes when it can't sell them.
Upgrade mode: Self explanatory really, but allows you to upgrade several buildings in a single swipe and displays a blue outline under buildings that can be upgraded. Cannot be used to upgrade pathing, as you could make a big mess if you swipe over several paths and initiate upgrades on segments of path. Path is easy to upgrade, just go into the menu and select upgrade all. The reason behind this mode is so that players can have better control over which buildings are upgraded without having to upgrade each building individually through the menu, which is tedious, or having to upgrade them all at once, which is unwise in certain situations.
Power-on mode: This mode activate buildings that are deactivated and ignores already activated buildings. A yellow outline is displayed instead of the red outline for bulldoze mode.
Power-off mode: The opposite of power-on mode. deactivates buildings that are active. A dark yellow or brown outline should be displayed in this mode.
The reasons behind power on and off modes is because sometimes you want to have strict control over which buildings are off and which ones are on. For instance, let's say you're starting a new region city and you have the entire city built but are now just waiting on the colonists to come in. Wouldn't you want to deactivate all of the job buildings and then activate them one by one as colonists start coming in to control commute distance? These modes would allow use to exercise this control over many buildings without having to resort to repetition.
Terrain mode: This mode has a purple outline and allows the player to toggle individual tiles between solid and liquid. This enables players to edit their terrain to their liking, however, it comes with great cost. For each tile transformed from liquid to land, 1 million ore is spent, and on every world other than abandoned and lava, each tile that is turned to a liquid tile costs 1 million water. On abandoned, each ether tile that is created costs 1 million ether, and lava is not a terrain type that can be created, for obvious reasons. Any kind of terrain change will cost $100,000 and 10,000 civics per tile.
If you don't have the necessary resources, the change won't occur, but you will need to be careful when you do start getting enough resources to change several tiles at once, because the change happens instantly and is irreversible unless you have enough resources to change it back.