I think the key to automation is to lift the player from micro management to macro management while still requiring attention and feedback. moo3's excel sheet style of macro management is definitively the worst horror example I can think of.

Imagine yourself as the president / king of a nation, there is no way in hell that you are going to bother to detail manage every single transaction going on in the economy, or decide which private is allowed to enlist in a single platoon and decide his gear on an individual basis.

The way I see it, your job is to shape the nation, establish frontiers, create doctrines, decide major events.

This can be done, but it wouldn't be the move a single unit at a time game anymore, but as long as you stay away from the spreadsheet style of moo3 then it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.