The developers felt that, compared to the other races, Zerg wasn't clicking enough.
... Yea, I think it's a good thing I never got that game 
Not saying that makes it bad, but if the developer mindset _ever_ results in "let's make a change solely so players in situation XYZ have to click the mouse more", then I'm out.
They made a design choice that there should be "macro mechanics" which are basically these arbitrarily added chores that you have to do for your production to perform at maximum capacity. I guess if you wanted to add such a thing to AI War you might remove the auto-reactor management stuff, remove the circular queues, limit the queues more, then make production costs subtracted upfront. Doing these things quickly and accurately while dealing with other pressures would become an important part of playing the game well. I think the comparison to Diner Dash is good, and it's unfair to characterise it as "solely to make players have to click the mouse more." It's about having that element of managing all these different things under intense time pressure.
All I mean is... it's not quite as dumb as it seems.
It's not entirely to my taste either as I'd rather see that focus applied to managing the battles and such, but there it is. It has, you know, its own unique and beautiful place in the tapestry of the universe.
