I would say we will have to wait for the diplomacy overhaul to happen, so we can have a bigger range of action to make different personalities feel different. Because right now, I don't really see the difference between hegemonic imperialist and slaving despots.
A Quantitative Look at AI Personalities in 2.1 "Niven"
- Thread starter klingonadmiral
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It's one of the things I don't get why Paradox didn't add more since release (well, they added some, especially for gestalt empires, but that's all).
Like for the traditions, it was a very promising idea, but they never built more on it.
Even if they don't want to put work in making each AI personality more important, they could quite easily (and yeah, making more Ai personalities is easy - the harderst part is to write the dialogues and to find personality ideas) add a lot of variants so "imperialist" empires don't look exactly the same.
Like for the traditions, it was a very promising idea, but they never built more on it.
Even if they don't want to put work in making each AI personality more important, they could quite easily (and yeah, making more Ai personalities is easy - the harderst part is to write the dialogues and to find personality ideas) add a lot of variants so "imperialist" empires don't look exactly the same.
I’m thinking this is the master plan, the other reworks need to be in place anyways (why change AI personalities like crazy *before* you change the economy and diplomacy?).
The only thing is that the different personalities have to be maintained for every patch (like ship types), so there will probably be a soft limit on what they can update. Still, they add so much to what makes stellaris fun, I imagine they will be adding more and expanding the current ones.
I was digging through the game files a few patches ago for modding purposes, and I'd like to add a discovery I found (I've forgotten where it was though).
The "militarist" ethic is twice as likely to spawn on galaxy gen as the other ethics, while "pacifist" is half as likely. This affects the starting empires as well as the primitive nations. The only reason I could find was that militarists are increased because they're more "interesting" (aka they fight more), more likely to get wiped out due to declaring a bad war, and historically strong military nations prevailed over pacifist ones. Pacifism AI tends to do very well due to free resources and the AI not killing itself with the wrong war, and are altogether more boring according to the devs.
While technically true that "Hegemonic Empires" are historically the most common nation type by FAR, they are about as boring and generic as a nation could be (and flawed in the modern day). They could use a few different varieties, like one that prefers autonomous vassals rather than conquest, and for God's sake give the "Barbaric Despoiler" it's own AI and not a +1000 to HE!
Unless you're using a mod, this is incorrect. An AI will ALWAYS pick the personality with the highest weight, and will swap mid-game if their ethics/civics change.
For example, a Fanatic Authoritarian + Spiritualist will ALWAYS be evangelizing zealots...unless they take "slaving guilds" or "decadent", in which case they will always be slaving despots.
The "militarist" ethic is twice as likely to spawn on galaxy gen as the other ethics, while "pacifist" is half as likely. This affects the starting empires as well as the primitive nations. The only reason I could find was that militarists are increased because they're more "interesting" (aka they fight more), more likely to get wiped out due to declaring a bad war, and historically strong military nations prevailed over pacifist ones. Pacifism AI tends to do very well due to free resources and the AI not killing itself with the wrong war, and are altogether more boring according to the devs.
While technically true that "Hegemonic Empires" are historically the most common nation type by FAR, they are about as boring and generic as a nation could be (and flawed in the modern day). They could use a few different varieties, like one that prefers autonomous vassals rather than conquest, and for God's sake give the "Barbaric Despoiler" it's own AI and not a +1000 to HE!
Unless you're using a mod, this is incorrect. An AI will ALWAYS pick the personality with the highest weight, and will swap mid-game if their ethics/civics change.
For example, a Fanatic Authoritarian + Spiritualist will ALWAYS be evangelizing zealots...unless they take "slaving guilds" or "decadent", in which case they will always be slaving despots.
The devs deliberately did this because a galaxy full of pacifists means a static galaxy of federations that doesn't shift because the big blocks don't want to fight wars or don't have the capacity to, while the few belligerents that do spawn can't beat any of them in wars. Since there's no diplomatic way to break the blocks up or do opportunistic wars against rebels, a game full of pacifists gets very boring very quickly.
Really? I wonder if they changed that, since I do remember playing games with a fair number of premade races and having one of them sometimes spawn as Democratic Crusaders and sometimes as Honorbound Warriors.
interesting. i always suspected that hegemonic imperialist and their "evangelizing zealot" cousins are a bit overrepresented.
though to be fair, federation builders, spiritual seekers and erudite explorers are basically the same, just with a minor adjustment towards spiritual / materialist for the latter 2. so if you roll those 3 (and a few others) into a "good guys" group and the conqueror types into the "bad boys" group it will probably even out somewhat.
though to be fair, federation builders, spiritual seekers and erudite explorers are basically the same, just with a minor adjustment towards spiritual / materialist for the latter 2. so if you roll those 3 (and a few others) into a "good guys" group and the conqueror types into the "bad boys" group it will probably even out somewhat.
It's not so much that there are more personalities for other ethics.
It's that there are no special requirements to become a hegemonic imperialist.
It's available to any non-pacifist empire with at least one tick of either Xenophobe, Militarist, or Authoritarian.
Most of the other empires have specific conditions required to become them. For instance the "forgotten" tier Migratory Flock has to be Pacifist or Xenophile and possess either the Nomadic or Rapid Breeders traits. Making them much rarer because that's a much wider possibility space.
And you can roughly track that down the probability distribution in the OP. The less a personality appeared in the dataset, the more stringent the requirements to produce it are.
Pacifist AND Xenophile
Well, not quite. Fanatic Purifiers are also rather narrowly defined, behind gated behind a civic that only has 2 legal ethics combinations (and technically those combinations are not forced to pick the FP civic), and yet they show up rather frequently. So I'm pretty sure the game is actually boosting their rate by quite a bit.
I'm pretty sure the game automatically gives the civic whenever an empire match the required ethics.
The best argument of all: stats.
The ability to choose individualistic AI settings is something that lacks in Stellaris, compared to other 4X games like Galactic Civilization or Endless Space. It would allow a lot more flexibility in building custom games, while still retaining an element of randomness in the initial position of the empires.
I see three settings which should be able to be customized:
* The ability to choose a specific empire as an advanced start empire, or being able to amp up the difficulty of this empire. This would allow some interesting settings; for instance, a very hard genocidal empire vs the rest of the galaxy
* The ability to select an AI personality. Doing so would have the game hard-set the AI empire to the ethics/civics necessary for this personality to emerge, then distribute the remaining civic points randomly
* The ability to select the species portrait of the AI empire. Again, for the interesting settings that could ensue, like an entire galaxy populated by only less than a handful of species.
Fortunately, for the moment, one can circumvente this by creating enough custom empires, then set them to mandatory. But it is rather cumbersome.
The ability to choose individualistic AI settings is something that lacks in Stellaris, compared to other 4X games like Galactic Civilization or Endless Space. It would allow a lot more flexibility in building custom games, while still retaining an element of randomness in the initial position of the empires.
I see three settings which should be able to be customized:
* The ability to choose a specific empire as an advanced start empire, or being able to amp up the difficulty of this empire. This would allow some interesting settings; for instance, a very hard genocidal empire vs the rest of the galaxy
* The ability to select an AI personality. Doing so would have the game hard-set the AI empire to the ethics/civics necessary for this personality to emerge, then distribute the remaining civic points randomly
* The ability to select the species portrait of the AI empire. Again, for the interesting settings that could ensue, like an entire galaxy populated by only less than a handful of species.
Fortunately, for the moment, one can circumvente this by creating enough custom empires, then set them to mandatory. But it is rather cumbersome.
I definitely agree that AI personalities require more attention, and i wanna put addition attention in a problem of that materialist ethic is underused. This is an outcome of the fact that peaceful trader and ruthless capitalist personalities were moved from materialist ethic to corporate dominion civic. And now there is no proper personality not only for aggressive materialists but also for peaceful materialist. While first tend to be hegemonic imperialists, the second happen to be federation builders (even if they like pacifist - fanatic materialists.).
And both ruthless capitalists and peaceful traders still have special dislike replies to spiritualist empires even if they are spiritualists themselves.
And both ruthless capitalists and peaceful traders still have special dislike replies to spiritualist empires even if they are spiritualists themselves.
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This is a huge claim that needs a scientific proof.
Especially when there are so many misconceptions about wars and violence in general before the 18th century. Of course if you base your knowledge of history on strategy games you would think so - but historically it's simply false. Most people just want to live their lifes, and states will fight for ressources, not for hegemony. Hegemonist empires are severely overrepresented because they look bigger on maps and because they have more ressources to pass on their legacy. But behind every Roman Empire, there are the countless city-states, tribes, kingdoms and proto-states they conquered. Mathematically, there's necessarily more non-imperialist states than imperialist states in history.
So I'm looking at the weights for AI personalities and their effects for the first time, because honestly this post has fascinated me.
Hegemonic Imperialists are as follows
Although HegImps have a really low base weight for acceptance (although mysteriously it's guaranteed for despoilers) they also have very general requirements. As long as you are some combo of auth, mil, and phobe, and have no specific defining trait or civic that gives any other personality weight, then you're a HegImp. With this in mind, I'd be very interesting to see something similar done for ethics weights of generation.
Now, it is a problem that this happens? Well, yes and no.
In gameplay terms as many others have already said, a static galaxy would be boring. HegImps are a pretty general "unfriendly" power without being a menace or a pest. Having them be slightly over-represented isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I think the biggest complaint is a cosmetic issue. Having plenty of aggro AIs to play against isn't a bad thing, but scrolling down that list of empires and seeing "Hegemonic Imperialists" on a full quarter of foreign empires is a little bland.
I propose the following "solution":
Hegemonic Imperialists are as follows
Although HegImps have a really low base weight for acceptance (although mysteriously it's guaranteed for despoilers) they also have very general requirements. As long as you are some combo of auth, mil, and phobe, and have no specific defining trait or civic that gives any other personality weight, then you're a HegImp. With this in mind, I'd be very interesting to see something similar done for ethics weights of generation.
Now, it is a problem that this happens? Well, yes and no.
In gameplay terms as many others have already said, a static galaxy would be boring. HegImps are a pretty general "unfriendly" power without being a menace or a pest. Having them be slightly over-represented isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I think the biggest complaint is a cosmetic issue. Having plenty of aggro AIs to play against isn't a bad thing, but scrolling down that list of empires and seeing "Hegemonic Imperialists" on a full quarter of foreign empires is a little bland.
I propose the following "solution":
- A personality for FanAuth+Mil/Phobe
- A personality for FanPhobe+Mil/Auth
- A personality for FanMil+Auth/Phobe
- A personality for Mil+Auth+Phobe
- Barbaric Despoilers gives +1000 weight for Slaving Despots
Every large game should have at least 3 fanatics A.I.The way they get huge and sometimes fall like a pack of cards is fun as hell to watch.They make the game less static.
My guess is that they’re planning a big overhaul on the personalities, and don’t want to add more until they have done so. No point in adding more if they’re going to be rebuilding personalities from the ground up.
Alternatively, they don’t want to do much work on personalities until they finishing reworking all the ‘base’ mechanics, like warfare, economics, diplomacy. Better to make the necessary changes to those, then begin adding personalities that work with all the new widgets you’ve added/revised.
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Well, but we only get to interact with the one civilisation, that managed to unify their planet. Much better chances for that one to be the Roman Empire.
Also, HegImp seem to be about exploiting all resources for themselves and not sharing them with others. Maybe also exploiting other (weaker) empires. In all honesty, that seems like pretty much the default for any nation.
Current distribution in my custom game setup.
Erudite Explorers 2 (would have wanted one to be a more aggressive kind of materialist)
Spiritual Seekers 3 (would have liked for at least one to be more aggressive without turning into Evangelizing Zealots)
Ruthless Capitalists 1
Federation Builders 2 (thinking of making one Fanatical Befrienders in 2.2)
Xenophobic Isolationists 1
Migratory Flock 1
Metalheads 1 (tweaked them specifically to net be hegemonic imperialist)
(would have liked at least one other generic AI personalities for both machines and hives)
Hive Mind 2
Driven Assimilators 1
Determined Exterminators 1
If i could i would force Driven Assimilators and Migratory Flock as advanced stats. Think i need to make a Honorbound Warriors to add some more aggression. It adds to the immersion for me to play with a setup i created and i want them to act as i imagined them to. So more AI personalities is something im hoping for.
Erudite Explorers 2 (would have wanted one to be a more aggressive kind of materialist)
Spiritual Seekers 3 (would have liked for at least one to be more aggressive without turning into Evangelizing Zealots)
Ruthless Capitalists 1
Federation Builders 2 (thinking of making one Fanatical Befrienders in 2.2)
Xenophobic Isolationists 1
Migratory Flock 1
Metalheads 1 (tweaked them specifically to net be hegemonic imperialist)
(would have liked at least one other generic AI personalities for both machines and hives)
Hive Mind 2
Driven Assimilators 1
Determined Exterminators 1
If i could i would force Driven Assimilators and Migratory Flock as advanced stats. Think i need to make a Honorbound Warriors to add some more aggression. It adds to the immersion for me to play with a setup i created and i want them to act as i imagined them to. So more AI personalities is something im hoping for.
Thanks for linking this, I'm going to keep an eye on it when 2.2 comes out!
As for OP, really interesting data, many thanks for going through the effort of gathering and processing it. It really does look like there is a major problem with how certain personalities are so dominant and others are so under-represented. I hope the devs will take a look at this and address it in the near future. Maybe it might even make it into 2.2?