Automanage building units

I'm playing England on M/M on my first time through. I'm doing OK, I think - esp thanks to Il Papa excommunicating France when they kept attacking me. Now I own a lot of French Territory. And the Milanese are going to get it too.

When I started the game I left checked the box for only being able to manage cities with a faction heir in them. Now I wish I didn't.

Every turn I save some florins (over a couple of thousands), my automanaged cities spend it on units I dont want! Like more ships, or ballistas. Rah.

Is there any way to stop this happening? Can I get these auto managed cities into line on fiscal policy :whip: - like letting me save up for a castle upgrade?

Thanks [edit for typos - oops]

I couldve sworn that you could change this setting mid-game. Try hitting escape and have a look at the options menu.

On the settlement scroll for the city - the part where you can select where you can select what buildings to build or what troops to recruit - there should be arrowheads to the left and right of the "policy" that the governor is using to make auto manage decisions.

You should be able to uncheck the auto manage box there or click the arrowheads to cycle through the types of policies available. You can also check/uncheck boxes to allow or prevent them building or recruiting or what have you.

I tried running on auto manage for awhile but ran into the same problem with governors recruiting seige weapons for no good reason. Even while set on a 'financial' build policy.

I then tried not letting them recruit troops and that seemed to cause them to not make buildings as well. Thats just my impression I didn't really scrutinize it to verify.

So, now I just manage everything myself. Which isn't so bad but, I'm starting to need a checklist to make sure I don't leave anyone out. ;)

You can deselect it for each city. You may also be able to do so on the faction overview screen. Anyhow, never start another campaign with automanage.

It's quite easy to do it yourself. Before you end turn, just glance over your cities. You usually want a hammer icon for each settlements (they are building stuff). You should also try to see a walking dude icon for those settlements that you want to recruit units in. It's really quite quick.