I personally find automation to be significantly less natural than a well set comp/limiter for stuff like this. Just personal preference though.
Micro or macro?
I do little bitty (well under one second most of the time) volume fixes with the envelope tool and it's brutal but effective.
I also do broad fixes with the envelope tool (Audacity is my main DAW software) and find it super useful.
I do my final limiting with an automated plugin, but I get things pretty tight and consistent before I do that.