Sure, they might declare war, but the vast majority of the time it seems that they don't move their fleet out of their home system, or just use it to patrol for pirates, while I come in and gobble up their systems with no resistance. I don't really like having to use mods to solve obvious problems with the game, but this might be the best solution right now.
AI not really doing anything past the early game?
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Sure, they might declare war, but the vast majority of the time it seems that they don't move their fleet out of their home system, or just use it to patrol for pirates, while I come in and gobble up their systems with no resistance. I don't really like having to use mods to solve obvious problems with the game, but this might be the best solution right now.
That is not what I found last night. I had multiple of them invading me on 4 fronts. It was pretty intense running back and forth trying to hold it all together. At the end of the most recent war, even though I gained maybe 8 systems, none of them were very important. It was more or less a long and expensive draw.
Where it struggled was if you put a strong fortress on a key intersection. It either held back and the fortress kept a whole front at bay or the AI would try to slip be on the edge of the system to bypass the stronghold. Rarely did it actually assault a fortress with a serious attack.
Perhaps something in the 2.2.3 build spurred them on, as I had a similar experience the last few days. The AI was a bit more proactive on using its fleets, although I don't know if that's because I pumped the difficulty way up and so they actually had a significant advantage over me. It was scary in the early game when I saw a 4k power fleet and I was fielding at best 1.5k. At least that early in the game static defenses work pretty well and I could hold a strong point at the cost of a planet and a few systems. Still, once we got to the part of the game where you started upgrading buildings I was able to come back and retake the planet, and it had been developed absolutely terribly in the time they owned it. There were 3 Commerce Zones but over 10 empty clerk jobs. But that's a completely different issue and a much more difficult one to solve compared to just getting the AI to actual undock its ships.
I was recently thinking about all the juggling that I do to keep my economy balanced and not have to use the market very much, while the AI probably doesn't have much in the way of the skill set to properly manage things for the long-haul and relies a lot on the market to make up for shortfalls. The game has gotten so complicated economically with the last update I'm not so surprised the AI doesn't have the ability to keep up in the long-term where the "grand strategy" aspect of the game comes into play more than the initial expansion and scramble for space. With so many other bugs in actual gameplay, I can see how they'd be focused on fixing those rather than making the game more challenging.
You are right in that the game to which I was referring was being played under 2.2.3. It definitely seemed more proactive about expanding its borders and beat me in the race to cut off some intersections early on.
I have been playing with the Glavius AI mod for a bit now and I have not noticed much difference in AI behavior other than being a lot more active with their fleet movements during war. I understand that a lot more is probably happening under the hood but I think I expected a more dramatic visible difference.
I have a vassal who controls a tenth of the galaxy and doesn't have even a warship. Is it trying to spite me? But it itself asked for protection!
Yeah the vassal who I helped push to the space age has also not built a single warship though it did build a few transports for its armies. In a different game, I saw where one of the comm's vassals had a fleet of two dozen transports but not a single warship. This latter was under 2.2.3.
I just want to chime in here as well. I've completely lost interest in playing. Which is sad because I love the new economy system, but there just isn't anything fun to do when the ai's can't function at all.
I believe majority of changes are done just to let AI use its fleets and build them and not sit around. Glavious is not all powerful ofc, even that was done by using even system. The second important part is AI is actually playing the economy game and not just outright cheating infinite resources.
I am on the latest beta patch and I have noticed all around good improvements with the AI. The AI seems to do well until the late game. I usually play GA high aggressive. The late game AI still needs some work though. Some empires will just sit in their capital while I ravage their lands. I have noticed that they are usually inferior to me and this rating may be what's locking them up or it is some kind of self preservation code. The other AI who are similar to my power ratings or are allied/federated tend to be much more active.
Possible Fix:
Per Edit 2 so people skimming past can see how I resolved one of my biggest issues. The AI no longer has shipyards and don't build any more. Telling them to build multiple shipyards gets them back into the mood to keep playing.
This is done via cheats:
play [id] - Play as the id of the AI. Now that you have control, find a station and tell it to build a shipyard.
play 00 - Switch back to you.
debugtooltip - Shows the IDs of AIs when you hover over a system's icon.
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Having this issue right now. I am using no mods and even on 2.2.3 past mid-game most of the AIs just seem to stop.
First thing noticed:
I was in a federation with 1 AI, it wanted to declare wars against a neighboring enemy but would never attack. Realized its 3-4 fleets that were crazy powerful were spending the full time just patrolling their space even when we were at war. Eventually I left the federation and went to war with them and even during the war with them and I was taking all their systems they would just patrol, never try to attack or take anything and they definitely had the power to. It wasn't until I took over a system that broke a trade path did the fleets stop patrolling and started trying to take things back.
Second thing noticed:
Many years later I joined a federation of two AIs and noticed neither one builds any ships anymore. They had a big war either their neighbors and then stopped. Their entire space was filled with pirates which I killed. I then gave them a lot of minerals and then even monthly minerals and nothing. One of the two literally has no fleet power and the other one upgraded the single corvette he has. Which looking at this upgraded corvette its very early game stages corvette. Their tech score is still slowly rising but the economy score seems to be stuck.
Third thing noticed:
Only the remaining AIs that are still doing something are ones with 15+ planets or new small ones. All the others have stopped building ships and/or just patrol their space. They start wars with each other but nothing happens with some small exceptions. A single empire spawned off another and the bigger empire went to war with the newly spawned one. Despite the bigger empire having 7 planets in 30 systems and no enemies near by. The single empire took a nearby planet and won the war. Years later the smaller empire became a vassal under the bigger one despite the bigger empire having literally no fleets.
Right now I'm still trying to re-jump start the federation of two AIs I joined to find out what they are stuck on. If I find a way I'll let ya know but decent amount of resources doesn't seem to help.
Edit 1: Forgot there's console commands I can use to see AI resources. Both AIs have maxed resources stored and actually have a really good economy.
Edit 2: Found the issue!!! Neither AI has a shipyard anymore for w/e reason. Likely lost in the war or pirates or something. Not sure but they aren't adding one either, just filling their stations with Anchorages.
I forced them both to build multiple shipyards and the problem has now resolved itself. The AI is doing things again.
Edit 3: Final edit. Trade route patrolling still is another issue and I don't know how I can fix that without destroying an AI's income lol.
Per Edit 2 so people skimming past can see how I resolved one of my biggest issues. The AI no longer has shipyards and don't build any more. Telling them to build multiple shipyards gets them back into the mood to keep playing.
This is done via cheats:
play [id] - Play as the id of the AI. Now that you have control, find a station and tell it to build a shipyard.
play 00 - Switch back to you.
debugtooltip - Shows the IDs of AIs when you hover over a system's icon.
------------------------------
Having this issue right now. I am using no mods and even on 2.2.3 past mid-game most of the AIs just seem to stop.
First thing noticed:
I was in a federation with 1 AI, it wanted to declare wars against a neighboring enemy but would never attack. Realized its 3-4 fleets that were crazy powerful were spending the full time just patrolling their space even when we were at war. Eventually I left the federation and went to war with them and even during the war with them and I was taking all their systems they would just patrol, never try to attack or take anything and they definitely had the power to. It wasn't until I took over a system that broke a trade path did the fleets stop patrolling and started trying to take things back.
Second thing noticed:
Many years later I joined a federation of two AIs and noticed neither one builds any ships anymore. They had a big war either their neighbors and then stopped. Their entire space was filled with pirates which I killed. I then gave them a lot of minerals and then even monthly minerals and nothing. One of the two literally has no fleet power and the other one upgraded the single corvette he has. Which looking at this upgraded corvette its very early game stages corvette. Their tech score is still slowly rising but the economy score seems to be stuck.
Third thing noticed:
Only the remaining AIs that are still doing something are ones with 15+ planets or new small ones. All the others have stopped building ships and/or just patrol their space. They start wars with each other but nothing happens with some small exceptions. A single empire spawned off another and the bigger empire went to war with the newly spawned one. Despite the bigger empire having 7 planets in 30 systems and no enemies near by. The single empire took a nearby planet and won the war. Years later the smaller empire became a vassal under the bigger one despite the bigger empire having literally no fleets.
Right now I'm still trying to re-jump start the federation of two AIs I joined to find out what they are stuck on. If I find a way I'll let ya know but decent amount of resources doesn't seem to help.
Edit 1: Forgot there's console commands I can use to see AI resources. Both AIs have maxed resources stored and actually have a really good economy.
Edit 2: Found the issue!!! Neither AI has a shipyard anymore for w/e reason. Likely lost in the war or pirates or something. Not sure but they aren't adding one either, just filling their stations with Anchorages.
I forced them both to build multiple shipyards and the problem has now resolved itself. The AI is doing things again.
Edit 3: Final edit. Trade route patrolling still is another issue and I don't know how I can fix that without destroying an AI's income lol.
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Making sure the AI builds a shipyard whenever it doesnt have one is something i do in my AI mod. (And a starbase!) I presume Glavius does it too.
Modding the AI to be a little more generous with its shipyard-building also helps its fleet behaviour - as part of a wider approach, alongside scaling alloy budgets it helps them upgrade & rebuild fleets more seemlessly.
There are a few key tweakable presets for weighting fleet positioning / movment during war (in 00_defines) . Small changes here make a big diffderance, however i dont think there is anything for anti-piracy patrolling in there...
Iirc, glavius also adjusts fleet movment by clearing their orders at onset of war, (and at other times?) with triggers.
Modding the AI to be a little more generous with its shipyard-building also helps its fleet behaviour - as part of a wider approach, alongside scaling alloy budgets it helps them upgrade & rebuild fleets more seemlessly.
There are a few key tweakable presets for weighting fleet positioning / movment during war (in 00_defines) . Small changes here make a big diffderance, however i dont think there is anything for anti-piracy patrolling in there...
Iirc, glavius also adjusts fleet movment by clearing their orders at onset of war, (and at other times?) with triggers.
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I think one solution to some of the AI issues, and game play in general, is to fudamentally rework and remove the piracy mechanic. Make it a tax on fleet cap (-1 fleet cap per two hyperlanes in the trade route for patrol craft or something), because right now it just makes the outliner a useless disaster and makes fleet manager a mess, and makes the AI do stupid things. If you really want pirates just go back to the 2.0/2.1 version where they pop up in unclaimed systems.
I have found that his most recent updates have finally seemed to get the AI rolling. Although I still wouldn’t recommend playing on ensign and at least slightly increasing the difficulty.
Strongly agree. Only played about 4 hours of 2.2, had no idea what I was doing with the new mechanics, probably made a complete mess of everything - but the AI seemed to have already given up, and as such, so did I.
I really will not be buying the next expansion if the AI hasn't had some work done on it. If I can't have a decent, unmodded game of 2.2, then there's no chance I'd fork out money for 2.3.
(If I were to make an educated guess, it's that the AI in Stellaris has always had a priority system, but doesn't have a goal. It isn't actually playing to win, and as such it can easily get into a state whereby its priorities are wrong and it keeps making things worse. Does it know it should try to maintain positive incomes, even? Feels like it needs a whole new algorithm, one that can dynamically inspect its options, identify which resource is its bottleneck, whether it has an outside threat and thus needs to buff its fleet, etc. It needs to play more like a human and less like a spreadsheet.)
Yes, this has been happening.
I recently attempted a war of vassalization against my neighbor. It was an easy battle, but it ended in a status quo because they're in a bloody federation spanning half the galaxy. My neighbor lost everything except its capital system to my new vassal.
It was only a few years until I noticed my vassal had zero warships and a nice border planet they weren't colonizing. I tag in to see how they're doing (not a cheater, I swear, just trying to fix stuff), and I find they have no shipyards. I surmised my neighbor never built any shipyards outside their home system - this appears to be common behavior for the AI - so I built a couple for my vassal.
And voila, my vassal now has a few corvettes and a colony ship is on its way without me telling them to build it.
Yes, it's pretty much the best fix so far. The difference in difficulty when i added the mod was very clear. Absolutely worth trying.