2.2.1 AI is completely broken

[Princess Katherine]

Was playing 2.2.1, and I noticed that the AI suddenly stopped working. They couldn't do anything, no ships, no colonies, nothing. So, since I am not playing Ironman, I swapped to their empires to find out what happened and here are a few things that I noticed:

1. They are incapable of upgrading buildings
2. They are incapable of repairing damaged buildings
3. They are incapable of clearing blockers
4. They don't seem to know that City Districts increase housing
5. They don't build civilian trade buildings that add many clerk jobs
6. Machine Empires don't know that they need a basic amount of maintenance drone jobs
7. Machine Empires do not resettle their pops leading to one planet still assembling while they had 140 unemployed drones
8. Marauder Empires aren't able to send their fleets to attack you through other nations and so they end up stuck in a loop
9. They don't know how to increase their maximum resource storage
10. They don't seem to build shipyards and rely solely on their starting system
11. Curator Enclave does not grey out "tell me something I dont know" option allowing you to pay 300 credits endlessly without getting any new information
12. Caravaneers can sometimes get stuck in your territory due to space amoebas or other hostiles

I was wondering if anyone knows if there is a workaround for many of these problems as playing a singleplayer game right now gets very dull without working AI.

 

[roman566]

In my game, one AI acts as a human would. One planet challenge is exactly what a human would do and the AI is doing it rather well. 80 years into the game and they failed to get even one colony.

 

[wundte]

Was playing 2.2.1, and I noticed that the AI suddenly stopped working. They couldn't do anything, no ships, no colonies, nothing. So, since I am not playing Ironman, I swapped to their empires to find out what happened and here are a few things that I noticed:

1. They are incapable of upgrading buildings
2. They are incapable of repairing damaged buildings
3. They are incapable of clearing blockers
4. They don't seem to know that City Districts increase housing
5. They don't build civilian trade buildings that add many clerk jobs
6. Machine Empires don't know that they need a basic amount of maintenance drone jobs
7. Machine Empires do not resettle their pops leading to one planet still assembling while they had 140 unemployed drones
8. Marauder Empires aren't able to send their fleets to attack you through other nations and so they end up stuck in a loop
9. They don't know how to increase their maximum resource storage
10. They don't seem to build shipyards and rely solely on their starting system
11. Curator Enclave does not grey out "tell me something I dont know" option allowing you to pay 300 credits endlessly without getting any new information
12. Caravaneers can sometimes get stuck in your territory due to space amoebas or other hostiles

I was wondering if anyone knows if there is a workaround for many of these problems as playing a singleplayer game right now gets very dull without working AI.

yeah, we wait for it to get fixed. I bet somewhere around february 2.2 should be playable.

 

[LWE]

I enjoyed my playthough with Glavius’s AI regardless, it was marred only by late game lag and somewhat screwy Contingency. Mind you, I’m a bit of a noob.

 

[elitesix]

Glavius AI mod is basically mandatory. It's so good that in one game where I only built 15 corvettes in the first 15 years I've actually lost due to an AI empire declaring war on me in first 15 years and taking my homeworld with 30+ corvettes (bordered democratic crusaders) on ensign. It doesn't use cheats, just better logic and fixes many of the things you list.

 

[Northernwwater]

Gl

The mod description says .. "this is a great mod and fixes everything." So what does it do to fix the issues in the OP?

 

[Repùblica Vèneta]

I’ve also noticed that the AI seems to make some really egregious strategic mistakes during wars in 2.2. I invaded an empire over the weekend who had its fleets dispersed and locked into nonsensical patrol missions. There was no effort to defend its choke point starbases or consolidate its fleets, the empire literally seemed to not react at all to the fact it was under the existential threat of invasion.

During another war, an AI sent its entire army into my territory without a fleet escrort, allowing me to massacre their troop ships and prematurely end their invasion. The worst part is that I could see on sensor range that the AI has a sizeable fleet about two jumps away, it just never bothered to use it to defend the troop ships.

These things really irk me. There’s so much about Stellaris which is great, but it’s hard to feel any sense of accomplishment at winning a war when the AI is essentially self sabotaging itself.

 

[Bagfisch]

During observer games I also noticed how the AI is incapable to assign leaders to research.

At least the military priotisation got better and it happens less often that planets get bombarded for 13 years with 20 Assault Armies waiting over the capital.

 

[LWE]

The mod description says .. "this is a great mod and fixes everything." So what does it do to fix the issues in the OP?

It improves the AI’s economy by telling it when to build/not build certain buildings, when to trade for certain resources for the market, etc. and fixes its fleet composition so that it wields semi-capable forces, rather than being trivially easy to defeat. The most egregious issues remaining are connected to how the AI uses its fleets and armies, which modders don’t have any control of. I documented a bad case of struck armies (hostile crisis armies) in the bug forum.

 

[Northernwwater]

It improves the AI’s economy by telling it when to build/not build certain buildings, when to trade for certain resources for the market, etc. and fixes its fleet composition so that it wields semi-capable forces, rather than being trivially easy to defeat. The most egregious issues remaining are connected to how the AI uses its fleets and armies, which modders don’t have any control of. I documented a bad case of struck armies (hostile crisis armies) in the bug forum.

That does not seem like much beyond what increasing the difficulty does. I'll try it out though.

 

[Northernwwater]

These problems are not hard to find. They must intentionally release knowing this. I wonder if the culture at the company is one of "don't tell the emperor he has no clothes".

 

[Lumpy]

That does not seem like much beyond what increasing the difficulty does. I'll try it out though.

No, it actually does very different things than upping the difficulty level does. Increasing the difficulty level merely gives the AI more and more free stuff with each increment. Glavius' mod basically changes how the AI operates, from the ground up. I highly recommend it, I can't remember when I last played without it.

 

[UltimateTobi]

That does not seem like much beyond what increasing the difficulty does. I'll try it out though.

Wrong. Increasing difficulty gives the AI bonuses/cheats. Glavius' AI Mod changes AI behaviour in general and makes the AI challenging even on Ensign (meaning challenging without having bonuses/cheats).

It improves the AI’s economy by telling it when to build/not build certain buildings, when to trade for certain resources for the market, etc. and fixes its fleet composition so that it wields semi-capable forces, rather than being trivially easy to defeat. The most egregious issues remaining are connected to how the AI uses its fleets and armies, which modders don’t have any control of. I documented a bad case of struck armies (hostile crisis armies) in the bug forum.

@Glavius told that with 2.2+ modding tools he has way more possibilities, eventually tackling Military AI and improving Army and Fleet behaviour. But that is down the line. First thing is to get Economy AI running.

 

[pmchem]

The first thing is for PDX to fix the AI for its paying customers, instead of a third party player doing it for free. Everything in the OP is quickly visible to any player and it would be nice to just have a fully functional game! Invest in QA!

 

[Princess Katherine]

Update! I tried out Glavius' AI 2.2 mod like it was suggested and it did help a lot! There are still several broken problems and the AI ran into an economic suicide spiral after 60 years, but hey, that's better than before when it couldn't even last 20. Had to go around the galaxy once to fix most problems and so far so good c: Thanks for the help guys!

 

[kolpo]

In my my first game noticed I that it is very easy to completely outtech the AI. All AI had a pathetic tech rating. This was in my first game with a hivemind who constantly expanded and ignored the admin cap nor had I any tech bonuses.

I even suffered some self inflicted economic crisises in that game(was still learning 2.2). What will happen if I play a tech focused empire and play well? I understand that it is hard to make AI for a complex game but I was never THAT dominant before.

 

[Annihilat0r]

I noticed that the AI in the official 2.2.2 beta (now called stellaris_test) is vastly superior to the AI in 2.2.1. So it seems like PDX is working on it for real this time.

 

[Wolfgang I]

I noticed that the AI in the official 2.2.2 beta (now called stellaris_test) is vastly superior to the AI in 2.2.1. So it seems like PDX is working on it for real this time.

It has been suggested that the AI can buy from the market without actually paying the price now.

 

[pmchem]

If that's for real, that's not the kind of "fix" that I want. Blatant AI cheating does not equal fun.

 

[Lumpy]

If that's for real, that's not the kind of "fix" that I want. Blatant AI cheating does not equal fun.

Well, the AI needs something to offset the fact that it lacks a brain. If you want AI that is able to at least be somewhat competitive when faced with a mildly competent player, it will have to cheat. If this wasn't the case, we all would be slaves of SkyNet already.