This actually sounds pretty subjective. There is only one non-subjective answer I can think of:
Micromanage Early, Automate Late
Early in the game, you have few cities, few population. A couple of well used units can topple another civilization. A worker improving the right square and double your food income. But late in the game, you have lots of cities and units, all the important hexes are improved, you've explored everything already. In short, early in the game every decision affects a greater part of your civilization than the same kind of decision late in the game.
So, micromanage your units early in the game, when they matter a lot. Then, whenever you think they've become unimportant, automate.
Most of the other reasons to automate or not end up being subjective, or simply:
It depends.
Do you want to win absolutely, and play on the highest difficulty possible? Chances are you should be micromanaging everything, checking on every city/unit every turn.
Do you like some parts of the game and not others? Perhaps you like war but not building? Automate whatever you don't like, and play what you do.
Do you enjoy quick games or watching a world evolve with only light input from you? Automate a lot, and click next turn to get to the fun stuff. Also maybe play on quick.
In short, it depends on how you want to play. As long as you're having fun, you're doing it right.
Can you rephrase your question at all to be less subjective, less abut how you specifically might want to play? Maybe, "which of the automation options tend to make good/bad decisions?" We can't tell you how much to care about automation, but we can tell you where you might want to care, if you decide to.
The Paper Maker and the Wat are transformed into a Library and a University. The other unique buildings I tried were destroyed.
I'm pretty certain that some classes of buildings are always destroyed, but there is probably also a random factor.
The XML files have some information about it, the probability of capture for the unique buildings is the following
Longhouse 66%
Bazaar 75%
Satraps Court 75%
Paper Maker 66%
Wat 66%
For the other unique buildings there is no value given, I assume that they are always destroyed.
Best Answer
No. The list of great people available is an easily edited file split into categories for the artist/writer/scientist/whatever. The name of the person is randomly selected from this list.
I don't know the criteria Firaxis used to choose the people on their list, but there aren't 'great people' on their list who are from many of the default civs, just mainly Western or Oriental countries.