Stellaris Dev Diary #172 - Reworking the AI

[MatRopert]

Then I won't have to wait for 2.6.1 and can straight away jump into 2.6.
So technically the AI is feature complete (as of 2.6) and anything extra is tweaking values and fixing bugs. That is good to know!

Don't get me wrong, you might experience some quirks in 2.6.0. But fear not, 2.6.1 should be available quite early, possibly on same day as opt-in.

 

[Hertzila]

Thanks for the quick reply!

The AI needs numbers and in this case the numbers just say -50 EC / month and so it tries to fix it.

Would it be possible to make it consider the effect of unfulfilled pop jobs, like calculating whether the pop jobs would reach its target once fulfilled, so better resettle some pops / prioritize growth? Or would that be too costly or finicky for the AI to calculate and take into consideration?

 

[sidestep]

Thanks for the quick reply!



Would it be possible to make it consider the effect of unfulfilled pop jobs, like calculating whether the pop jobs would reach its target once fulfilled, so better resettle some pops / prioritize growth? Or would that be too costly or finicky for the AI to calculate and take into consideration?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, it could probably do that, or at least try to approximate it. That's a good improvement suggestion, thank you!

 

[UltimateTobi]

Don't get me wrong, you might experience some quirks in 2.6.0. But fear not, 2.6.1 should be available quite early, possibly on same day as opt-in.

Awesome, thanks!

Thank you for this DD. I really enjoyed reading this stuff.

 

[Olterin]

Hm, another thought just occurred to me: the focus surplus, at least in minerals, isn't something that depends on the stage of the game, but rather on the number of colonies you have (and are actively developing). Would it be possible to take this into account, or is that too computationally-expensive to do?

Edit: also, many thanks for sticking around in the thread, it cannot be repeated often enough - greatly appreciated

 

[FinellyTrained]

Since I am actually thinking it through before writing something extensive, here are my thoughts on early focuses.

Spoiler: AI plan

early_default_plan = {
    type = early

    income = {
        energy = 50
        minerals = 200
        food = 50
        consumer_goods = 50
        alloys = 100
        unity = 50

        physics_research = 200
        society_research = 200
        engineering_research = 200

        exotic_gases = 1
        volatile_motes = 1
        rare_crystals = 1
        sr_living_metal = 1
        sr_zro = 1
        sr_dark_matter = 1
    }

    focus = {
        energy = 10
        minerals = 30
        alloys = 50
        food = 10
        consumer_goods = 20
    }

    pops = 500
    empire_size = 1.25

    potential = {
        country_uses_consumer_goods = yes
        country_uses_food = yes
    }

    ai_weight = {
        weight = 1
    }
}

Alloys focus 50 for early game? Are you implying fighting DEs by default?
Habitat costs 3000 alloys and 200 influence. Optimistically you have +5 monthly influence by that stage, so it 40 months to get the influence. 50 net alloys is a nice figure if you are spamming habitats or actively fighting somebody, but since when habitats are early game? 20 alloys net would be fine. 30 is for rushing somebody's capital by 2020. Even for habitats stage, 50 is not needed, by the time you get it, you can have like 9k saved. If we are talking standard settings no magic levels of skill, habitats appear like 70 years into the game. 70*12*10 is a bit less than 9k, but a bit. Make it 20 and that's enough.

Food focus 10? Encourage planetary growth costs 1000 food per planet for 120 months. 12 (actually, it's 1000/120=8.3) net food for each planet is the focus.

Focus minerals 30? Buildings costs are in the hundreds. Most common 2nd building is the robots assembly which has a price tag of 500. Though since default AI is probably not going to replace starting buildings, 30 may be enough.

Consumer goods nobody cares about, unless you are planning to use them for planetary decision or for bribes, which AI probably is not going to do. Leave it at 5. Unless AI is going to sell them.

Early game energy is like the most important thing, you need 300 to clear blocker that grants extra pop, you need 200 per scientist. If we are talking about strong AI, it is looking to get something like 5 surveying ships. If we are talking about 20 alloys net, then science ship price takes 5 months. 200/5=40 is the upper threshold ballpark figure of early energy focus.

 

[kgptzac]

Looks like if the scripting of AI can be made more goal-oriented and modular, more should be opened up to modding, so maybe one day AI will build all the modded buildings with correct logic.

 

[Make Victoria 3]

2. Planetary plans would be really nice, and the planet automation and planed designations could be tied more into the economic AI, but as always: can't do everything

Will they come in the long run with plans on how many planets are to be dedicated to be foundry/research/... worlds based on potential income once they are built up?

Unfortunately not, it doesn't really know why there is a deficit, only that there is.

Can you not relativly easy know and compare what can be produced if every job is worked - devastation and what is produced now.

 

[Pointyearedgit]

Thanks for all of the hard work and responses here, I think those plans will likely need to be adjusted, but it seems like a solid system to build on!

 

[Malecord]

put all the nation’s offensive fleet power into one stack, and then consider splitting in 2,3 or more depending on how confident the AI feels about its military power versus its foes.

Don't get me wrong, I think the work you've done is absolutely solid. But really you had to make experiments to reach this conclusion? Doomstacking is the only sensible strategy in Stellaris, even if the general public on this forums consider this statement to be an offence against the community.

With that been said I hope that crisis AI won't follow this rule to the letter, because as it stands now, with them receiving fleets by script rather then by managing resources, there is no way to erode their power if they play for win by doomstacking all they have.

 

[Shadowstrike]

Just curious: do the economic plans also allow specifying how much naval cap to shoot for, and how many ships to build? The examples don't list that, but it feels like it fits in the purview of an economic "minister" responsible for ship construction.

 

[WebDeath]

So.. Criminal Empires are going to be getting a nerf, unless a community member makes a mod for them, from what I read. Shame.
I am wondering how this will effect Vassals and Subjects of your empire that you conquer? Both Resource wise and Military wise.

 

[Crazycryodude]

How much do the ministers "talk" to each other? E.g. if the economic minister decides we need to increase mineral output by 80 but our local resources are mostly tapped out, will it ask the war minister to set its sights on that mineral-rich region the neighbors have? Will the war minister tell the economic minister "we can't take them without a 20% expansion of the fleet please build me more battleships"?

 

[M@ni@c]

So by typing 'debug_ai' in the console and observing an AI empire, you can see what it has in mind:

I'd like to suggest this info is available by default if you select the fleet of an AI you're allied with.

 

[Dlin369]

Will the Ai be able to take into account temporary boosts? Like if I were to subsidize the Ai 100 food a month for 10 years, will the Ai know you prepare for a deficit in 10 years?

 

[Lys91]

Right now there exists no such specific plans, BUT the system is setup so that you can do that very easily. You could for example make a general "high science" plan and weight it higher for technocracy empires. Or make a Technocracy specific plan that is limited to them only via the potential = {} trigger!

Why don't you do it? It seems giving different plan to different civics should be something part of the base game and that would enhance the game experience. Is it something planned for the next few patches once the plan mechanism is considered to be working well?

 

[3Davideo]

Here's an idea that might help with the "won't demolish mining/research stations to build habitats": have habitats available as an upgrade to mining or research stations. This would also be more convenient for human players!

 

[M@ni@c]

It will also not build anything on planets that already have several free jobs.

Quiz question: what happens if a planet is full of slaves who can't do specialist jobs, there are 10 free specialist slots (because the former owner built those), and you have a mineral shortage. Will your AI build mining districts, or will it think there are enough jobs available, and completely cease developing the planet?

In general, while no doubt your AI is an improvement over what was there before, unfortunately I'm not as excited as everyone else. Just having the AI work towards a static number of surplus income, is too basic. To name food and minerals, the surplus you should strive towards depends entirely on how many planets you own. For empires that can use the Encourage Growth decision, that's 8.33 food surplus per planet. The minerals surplus per planet should be between 10 or 20, depending on the stage of the game and how fast your population grows. The required energy surplus is a bit more complex, as it depends on how much your empire sprawl increases your campaign costs, and whether or not you want to terraform worlds. The desired alloy surplus depends on whether you're living in a friendly or hostile corner of the galaxy. And let's not forget the new approach makes incompatible any two mods that add a new resource.

As a consequence these new AI plans will force modders to create an infinite number of permutations to account for all possible situations. They're not modder friendly! It would have been better if you could instead set the surplus goal for each resource individually. I would have envisioned something like this in 00_strategic_resources.txt

minerals = {
    tradable = yes
    market_amount = 100
    market_price = 100
    max = 15000
 
    deficit_modifier = minerals_deficit #found in static modifiers

    ai_weight = {
        weight = 1
    }

    ai_wants = {
        whatever
    }

    ai_wants_surplus = {
        base = 30
     
        modifier = {
            add = 10
            num_owned_planets >= 2
        }
        modifier = {
            add = 10
            num_owned_planets >= 3
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 1.1
            condition_whatever = yes
        }
    }
}

 

[starchitect]

1. Does the AI scoring system multiply base building weights, or ignore them entirely until the plan is complete and the base building weights take over? If so is it multiplying just the base weight, or the base weight factored by any scripted modifiers to it?

2. One thing I dont see here is the possibility to weight defenses (where does the AI want to build fortresses for example) How does this work? Since there is no define for AI_DEFENSE_SCORE_MULT or the like, how could we teach the AI that a defensive building might be a good idea if it doesnt produce resourses that the plan is otherwise looking for?

AI_DEFICIT_SCORE_MULT = 50 # AI will score buildings producing resources in deficit this much more
AI_FOCUS_SCORE_MULT = 10 # AI will score buildings producing focus resources this much more
AI_AMENITIES_SCORE_MULT = 2 # AI will score amenity buildings this much more than other misc resources
AI_HOUSING_SCORE_MULT = 5 # AI will score housing buildings this much more than other misc resources
AI_CRIME_REDUCTION_SCORE_MULT = 2 # AI will score crime fighting buildings this much more than other misc resource
AI_ADMIN_CAP_SCORE_MULT = 2 # AI will score admin cap buildings this much more than other misc resource
AI_POPS_SCORE_MULT = 5 # AI will score pop growth and assembly buildings this much more ( already fairly high weighted in code )
AI_UPGRADE_SCORE_MULT = 40 # AI will score building upgrades this much more ( since they don't take up a new building slot )

Thank you for all this hard work, Stellaris is going to feel like a whole new game.

 

[slv]

@sidestep

Great diary, looking forward to see the fleet management changes!

As for the economy plan, will we be able to have fine control over what buildings will be built durin the execution? For example if I for whatever reason want AI to build robot assemblies, but I do not want them to build gene clinics, will that be acomplishable (it seems that both get placed into the same pop growth category so probably will get the same weight modifiers)?

AI_DEFICIT_SCORE_MULT = 50 # AI will score buildings producing resources in deficit this much more
AI_FOCUS_SCORE_MULT = 10 # AI will score buildings producing focus resources this much more
AI_AMENITIES_SCORE_MULT = 2 # AI will score amenity buildings this much more than other misc resources
AI_HOUSING_SCORE_MULT = 5 # AI will score housing buildings this much more than other misc resources
AI_CRIME_REDUCTION_SCORE_MULT = 2 # AI will score crime fighting buildings this much more than other misc resource
AI_ADMIN_CAP_SCORE_MULT = 2 # AI will score admin cap buildings this much more than other misc resource
AI_POPS_SCORE_MULT = 5 # AI will score pop growth and assembly buildings this much more ( already fairly high weighted in code )
AI_UPGRADE_SCORE_MULT = 40 # AI will score building upgrades this much more ( since they don't take up a new building slot )

Is there any way to see the base weights for buildings? I assume that beyond the hood every plan will do the similar weight comparison the way it is doing now, I would be happy if there is a way to, for example, forbid AI from building a housing building until there are free district slots. Would that be possible? Surprised that the AI isn't simply trying to keep housing and amenities above 0, is it possible to make the AI do that? Is it possible to make it so police states will build more precincts or will I have to fallback to an old system to acomplish that?