[2.6.3 beta] The Year is 3304, and the AI is still in stalemate with the Contingency

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

pmchem

Major
24 Badges
Apr 13, 2018
625
1.237
  • Shadowrun Returns
  • Stellaris: Nemesis
  • Stellaris: Necroids
  • Stellaris: Federations
  • BATTLETECH: Heavy Metal
  • Stellaris: Lithoids
  • Stellaris: Ancient Relics
  • Stellaris: Megacorp
  • BATTLETECH: Flashpoint
  • Shadowrun: Hong Kong
  • Shadowrun: Dragonfall
  • Stellaris: Distant Stars
  • BATTLETECH - Digital Deluxe Edition
  • Stellaris: Apocalypse
  • Stellaris: Humanoids Species Pack
  • Stellaris: Synthetic Dawn
  • BATTLETECH
  • Stellaris - Path to Destruction bundle
  • Stellaris: Leviathans Story Pack
  • Stellaris: Digital Anniversary Edition
  • Stellaris
  • Pillars of Eternity
  • Crusader Kings II
  • BATTLETECH: Season pass
It is April 12. The year is 3304. The war between the Contingency and the empire AIs has raged for over 800 years.

ze3IhJW.png


The New Ugarlak Khanate is the sole surviving empire, with 1 planet and 11.7K fleet strength. The Contingency has 5.5M fleet strength, but just doesn't seem to want to finish the job -- at least in any kind of timely manner.

The AI empires just couldn't deal with a crisis. I suspect this was due in large part to their 2.6.x incompetence/refusal in upgrading starbases ( https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-3-fix-the-ai-starbase-upgrade-issue.1371095/ ), but, it's hard to say for sure.

Yet I was fascinated that for hundreds of years the galaxy has been at essentially a stalemate. The empire AIs, vastly outmatched, nevertheless hung around. The Contingency seemingly had little interest in killing empires off. It was a stoppable force vs. a movable object. The L-Gates have also never been opened. I guess this is the state of 2.6.3 Stellaris, but I hope they have more fixes planned in the near future.

Steam, all expansions/DLC except lithoids and Federations (because it's too buggy to buy), no mods, 2.6.3 beta, all default settings and random empire. Year 3304 achieved via observer mode (from day 1) and fast_forward console commands.

Save game attached.
 

Attachments

  • 3304.04.12.sav
    1,4 MB · Views: 2
No Crisis is able to conquer the galaxy even after supposed AI fixes.

This is a huge issue. Yes x25 crisis is nice. But what does it matter if the AI can't even expand and conquer properly? We told Paradox about the root cause of this issue many months ago already: The crisis sends construction ships back and forth instead of expanding rapdily in one direction. They will never conquer the entire galaxy even if they had 100x fleet power of everyone combined.

Alas, the crisis remains a joke without the proper AI fixes.
 
No Crisis is able to conquer the galaxy even after supposed AI fixes.

This is a huge issue. Yes x25 crisis is nice. But what does it matter if the AI can't even expand and conquer properly? We told Paradox about the root cause of this issue many months ago already: The crisis sends construction ships back and forth instead of expanding rapdily in one direction. They will never conquer the entire galaxy even if they had 100x fleet power of everyone combined.

Alas, the crisis remains a joke without the proper AI fixes.

I think if you gave the crisis x100 fleet power they might conquer the galaxy just by accident.

I'm more concerned with how passive the AI can be against the endgame crisis. From what I've seen either one or two fallen empires go turbo-exterminator mode and will obliterate the endgame crisis in a matter of years, or the AI will sit and watch the crisis for decades without doing anything. In my last game I had completely destroyed the contingency fleets, but because I had closed borders with most of the galaxy I couldn't reach the signal system. I had to declare war on half the galaxy just to get my fleets to the final system where I then could finally destroy it.
 
The construction ship problem is part of an underlying issue with automatic ship AI, you can see the same problem in your own science vessels if you set them to automatically survey. They will beeline in one direction then all of a sudden stop and do a 180, cross your ENTIRE EMPIRE and then survey one single corner system before going back the whole way. Automatic ship AI needs a complete overhaul, its just not good. And once thats done maybe we can finally get automated constructors ourselves.
 
It's really the interplay of two issues you guys pointed out leading to the stalemate --

No Crisis is able to conquer the galaxy even after supposed AI fixes.

This is a huge issue. Yes x25 crisis is nice. But what does it matter if the AI can't even expand and conquer properly? We told Paradox about the root cause of this issue many months ago already: The crisis sends construction ships back and forth instead of expanding rapdily in one direction. They will never conquer the entire galaxy even if they had 100x fleet power of everyone combined.

Alas, the crisis remains a joke without the proper AI fixes.

Issue #1: the Crisis doesn't know how to expand and conquer in an effective manner.

I think if you gave the crisis x100 fleet power they might conquer the galaxy just by accident.

I'm more concerned with how passive the AI can be against the endgame crisis. From what I've seen either one or two fallen empires go turbo-exterminator mode and will obliterate the endgame crisis in a matter of years, or the AI will sit and watch the crisis for decades without doing anything. In my last game I had completely destroyed the contingency fleets, but because I had closed borders with most of the galaxy I couldn't reach the signal system. I had to declare war on half the galaxy just to get my fleets to the final system where I then could finally destroy it.

Issue #2: the AI is too passive, and too bad, at defending against the crisis (unless perhaps it's a FE). Relates to general military AI, and issues such as starbase upgrades.



Combine the two and you get an incompetent attacker against a helpless defender. Stalemate for 800 years. This is the state of the 2.6.3 beta Stellaris endgame. Please fix, PDX.
 
Was this the only remnant of the Khanate? Khanate successor states are not entirely normal empires, and maybe that is why the crisis cannot deal with it?
That is, perhaps this empire doesn't appear in the ranking list the crisis uses to determine its target, so it will never be targeted?
 
So, question: what happened to all the planets that the Contingency occupied and purged? Are they just not owned systems because of a lack of starbases, or?

I was in fast_forward so I did not look at invasions, etc., but my belief is that yes they are unoccupied because the Contingency killed the starbases and planets.

Was this the only remnant of the Khanate? Khanate successor states are not entirely normal empires, and maybe that is why the crisis cannot deal with it?
That is, perhaps this empire doesn't appear in the ranking list the crisis uses to determine its target, so it will never be targeted?

I am not sure if it was the only one, but, I did see the galaxy ~300+ years prior and that khanate was larger at that time. So the Contingency knows to fight it. It's just doing a terrible job. It took hundreds of years for it to kill off most of the AI empires (and not because they were putting up a fight).
 
I was in fast_forward so I did not look at invasions, etc., but my belief is that yes they are unoccupied because the Contingency killed the starbases and planets.
This might be worth a closer look, because I noticed something when I dealt with the Gray Tempest - bombardment-based refugee emigration seemed REALLY hyperactive, to the point where planets would depopulate themselves BEFORE the Tempest actually bombarded them into nanite worlds.

If that happens with the Contingency, too, it might explain something, since it would result in loads of properly-empty planets instead of Contingency-occupied ones.
 
Crisis AI has been broken for years now. They really need to be fixed so that they actually try and exterminate the galaxy instead of sitting around twiddling their thumbs. This is really a big issue with the game - lategame AI can't keep up with the player, and the crisis need teeth beyond just increasing the max crisis strength we can select.
 
This might be worth a closer look, because I noticed something when I dealt with the Gray Tempest - bombardment-based refugee emigration seemed REALLY hyperactive, to the point where planets would depopulate themselves BEFORE the Tempest actually bombarded them into nanite worlds.

If that happens with the Contingency, too, it might explain something, since it would result in loads of properly-empty planets instead of Contingency-occupied ones.

Well, the save is in the OP, anyone can download and take a look!

Crisis AI has been broken for years now. They really need to be fixed so that they actually try and exterminate the galaxy instead of sitting around twiddling their thumbs. This is really a big issue with the game - lategame AI can't keep up with the player, and the crisis need teeth beyond just increasing the max crisis strength we can select.

yes, sigh. it's just all terribly exacerbated in 2.6.x, including 2.6.3 beta

Forget about the Contingency war, I want to know if the UK has sorted Brexit.

There will be a referendum in 3324
 
You know, as a small counterpoint, the hordes don't seem to have trouble aggressively expanding. Unfortunately, the last 2 campaigns I played, the khan spawned really late and wasn't much of a threat. However, he did expand quite a bit before running into some stronger empires.
 
Unfortunately, the last 2 campaigns I played, the khan spawned really late and wasn't much of a threat. However, he did expand quite a bit before running into some stronger empires.
My Khan spawned in, like, 2325 and got defeated. By Grand Admiral SCALING empires. With standard midgame/endgame.

The Khan used to be a much bigger threat. Seems like they designed the Khan to be dangerous for the old AI, and the new economic AI lets them trivialize the Khan.
 
it seems like they can randomly expand in some kind of Brownian motion; it's the killing-as-a-goal that may be broken
I don't particularly mind killing-as-Brownian-motion where the Crisis is concerned; for an extra-galactic (extra-dimensional?) threat that considers you little more than a blob of nutrient paste, I would even go so far as to say it's contrary to their theme that they would e.g. do a careful study of your social structure, identify your capital and industrial centers, and try to decapitation-strike you. When you're trying to kill a termite mound you don't identify the Queen's chamber and perform a targeted assassination; you just pump poison gas in the entrance and let it diffuse outwards. And that's what you are to the Crisis. Pest control.

No, the problem with OP's image is not that the Crisis expands brainlessly outward; it's that it DOESN'T expand brainlessly outward. It doesn't expand its territory at all, it just purges people, which is offensive to my map-painting sensibilities but OK. What leads to these endless stalemates is that it has these weird blind spots where its fleet just doesn't go, and you live or die based on the luck of the draw as to whether you happen to inhabit one of those.
 
I don't particularly mind killing-as-Brownian-motion where the Crisis is concerned; for an extra-galactic (extra-dimensional?) threat that considers you little more than a blob of nutrient paste, I would even go so far as to say it's contrary to their theme that they would e.g. do a careful study of your social structure, identify your capital and industrial centers, and try to decapitation-strike you. When you're trying to kill a termite mound you don't identify the Queen's chamber and perform a targeted assassination; you just pump poison gas in the entrance and let it diffuse outwards. And that's what you are to the Crisis. Pest control.

No, the problem with OP's image is not that the Crisis expands brainlessly outward; it's that it DOESN'T expand brainlessly outward. It doesn't expand its territory at all, it just purges people, which is offensive to my map-painting sensibilities but OK. What leads to these endless stalemates is that it has these weird blind spots where its fleet just doesn't go, and you live or die based on the luck of the draw as to whether you happen to inhabit one of those.

if you consider the lore of the contingency, OP's pic actually makes sense, the contingency is programmed to cure the disease, not conquer the galaxy. What little is left of the empires can be considered an acceptable level of galactic fauna in the grand scheme by their algorithms.
 
It's not just the crisis. The AI in general doesn't know how to kill off a beaten opponent, whether it's by design or not. I had a game where regular AI empires I was at war with had several opportunities to finish me off, but they always just ambled off instead of dealing the killing blow.

It honestly feels like the AI is only faking that it wants to kill you, while actually wanting you to win. Which could possibly even be intentional, though this is entering conspiracy theory territory.