AI or Why I Stopped Playing (for now)

[BmB23]

Still not fixed, or even attempted to fix. Nothing is on the roadmap that even remotely looks like a fix. Like I said, if it wasn't prioritized for 1.1 you could safely assume it would never get fixed, and I was right. Maybe in Stellaris 2.

Absolutely pathetic.

I was having a pretty good time with the game up until about 90 years in. I had explored and expanded to the best worlds I could find nearby and tried to keep on the good side of the larger empire beside me so they didn't crush me with their "overwhelming" force. But playing the xenophobic Commonwealth of Man I didn't want to be too diplomatic. I was observing a space age pre-civ inside my territory, and I figured it would be okay to be friendly with them since they were a "totally-not-humans" race rather than some complete alien.

Very soon after they ascended to interstellar travel, the nearby large empire declared a rivalry with them, and I thought this would be a good reason to go to war even if I had little chance of winning. So I gave the not-humans a guarantee of independence, hoping the threat would rise enough for them to accept a protectorate. Unfortunately the war broke out before then. The first few motions of the war seemed great, they demanded my core planets as war goals and set a massive 3000 power fleet against me. At this point my combined forces equalled maybe 1500-2000 power. The notifications of hostile fleets detected as the enemy rallied their fleets made me think of this cutscene from Halo Reach (spoiler):

My ally at this point had built up a fleet of their own approaching 1000 themselves, but they did not come to my aid. The resulting battle over my homeworld even with a relatively powerful defence station, but with some of my forces still scattered across sector space, was an absolute pasting. I lost most of my fleet and they began bombarding my homeworld.

This is where the lack of AI became apparent. I realized they had not demanded my homeworld but still attacked that first, and that from others experiences, the AI will only ever target your homeworld or sector capital. I decided to go guerilla on them with the rest of my forces and raid some of their other systems using my long range wormholes. Then, after bombarding my homeworld for a while, rather than sending an invasion force they simply left me to rebuild my forces. Something that war economy and a healthy stockpile of minerals made fairly easy.

It seems that they had pulled their entire now 3-4000 strong fleet, and another thousand or so they must have constructed in the meantime, to fight off a few hundred strong worth of raids. Does the AI know how to do anything other than use one single fleet with every ship in it? I'm starting to doubt. This would make kiting the main fleet around super easy, given the speed and range advantage of wormholes, while I rebuilt and invaded their worlds, they would give no response to this action for several months letting me completely occupy at least one planet uncontested.

Only when finally sending my fleets to attack did my ally send their own fleet, while sending their smaller fleet to assist my larger fleet seems sensible on the surface, again from the experience of others this is all the AI knows how to do. They will only follow your biggest fleet around with their own blob no matter what. In this case they kept winking out when a battle was about to begin leaving me to die on my own, so the assist was even worse than useless giving me a false sense of having numbers.

Realizing that by cheesing these limitations I could with some effort win the war even though the enemy had now built up a 7000 strong fleet and destroyed me in several straight fights I stopped playing. And probably will not begin again. If the AI cannot win even with such a massive advantage, where in every straight fight they completely destroy me. Where they could easily invade and occupy every planet they wanted while at the same time fighting off raids if they only sent their ships to the right places. They didn't even make an attempt to invade. Then what chance would an AI with balanced forces have? The war AI basically does not exist. This makes a significant portion of the game unplayable.

I hope this is top priority. If it is not addressed by 1.1 I might just give up hope that it ever will be and never play again. All the depth of the civilian aspects cannot outweigh the fact that war is broken to where even a cheating AI would not be able to fight properly.

 

[Spyguy27]

I hope this is top priority. If it is not addressed by 1.1 I might just give up hope that it ever will be and never play again. All the depth of the civilian aspects cannot outweigh the fact that war is broken to where even a cheating AI would not be able to fight properly.

I totally agree that AI improvements should be near the top of the list. I've seen it do smart actions and also some really dumb ones. But seriously, 1.1 comes out next week so it's unrealistic to think everything is going to be fixed by then. So if you never want to play the game again that's fine but making that kind of statement isn't going to get anything improved any faster. It's not like they forgot to hit the "make the AI perfect" button before launch.

I'm actually forcing myself not to play any more before 1.1, maybe even 1.2, so that I can go in fresh and see what's improved. I had tons of fun in my Terran campaign but am cautiously optimistic most of the things that annoyed me will be cleared up by 1.2. The next 6 months or more will see the game evolving and getting fixed up quite a bit. It sucks but have some patience.

 

[UnionBuster]

Can't disagree...during a war, the AI demolished my fleet and then did nothing. Prior to that, they attacked my home world's spaceport a few times. I was able to take several years to rebuild my fleet and then head back in and crush them to get a beneficial war score.

I was watching an AI only game yesterday and was just in awe at how ineffectual the AI prosecuted the wars. I know Paradox can do it, I've played enough EU and CK. I like to play on normal typically, so take the preceding with that in mind.

 

[danest]

It must be specific to their AI personality or something. I foolishly split my fleet to attack two planets at once, and lost everything to the larger single-blob of enemy ships. Fleetless, I then lost planets in rapid succession. Another neighboring empire declared war on me in my weakened state and took the rest before I could rebuild another full fleet.
That being said, I've also seen the opposite where the enemy is just screwing around, not taking the war seriously apparently, even as they're torn apart.

 

[kazper]

It must be specific to their AI personality or something. I foolishly split my fleet to attack two planets at once, and lost everything to the larger single-blob of enemy ships. Fleetless, I then lost planets in rapid succession. Another neighboring empire declared war on me in my weakened state and took the rest before I could rebuild another full fleet.
That being said, I've also seen the opposite where the enemy is just screwing around, not taking the war seriously apparently, even as they're torn apart.

They are particularly bad in the early game where their lack of assault troops mean you can experience what OP wrote where they'll siege and never ever invade. Late game the AI does a little better although it still suffers from the doom stack issue (except FE which seems to have 4-5 stacks until destroyed.

 

[danest]

I've seen them invade with one army at a time, over and over.. that's particularly strange because computers should be great at simple math... defending troop numbers vs attacking troop numbers, at the very least. But not all the time. Sometimes it gets it right, I've lost planets. Not sure what's causing the stupid and the smart flip flopping.

 

[kazper]

I've seen them invade with one army at a time, over and over.. that's particularly strange because computers should be great at simple math... defending troop numbers vs attacking troop numbers, at the very least. But not all the time. Sometimes it gets it right, I've lost planets. Not sure what's causing the stupid and the smart flip flopping.

I don't know but I think might be about their resources at the time. They do not wait to gather a fleet of assault troops, but if they have already built them - which the AI will have by mid-game - and you don't destroy them, they get it right. I'd need a lot more play to confirm my suspicion though.

 

[Strangeplz]

First i want to say i agree the AI is shotty in stellaris and i do not understand why the did not add a mechanic that was added to EUIV, being able to toggle your vassles to attach to your troops/fleet and be able to set the to aggresive/supportive/defensive. I mean it is like they have learned NOTHING from past games or it is to be added later....

 

[Aleks S. I]

In my most recent game I had an issue where my ally, who had a fleet slightly stronger than both mine and my enemy's, would send their fleet to protect a spaceport, then it would decide to follow my fleet, then just before it reached the edge of the system it would decide to go back to the spaceport. This continued for the entire war and we only ever occupied one planet (in the system the fleet was running in circles around) because of it.I had the same issue with the enemy fleet, where they would avoid any kind of engagement if my fleet was in an equal or advantageous position. Which makes sense, but when the enemy fleet is ping-ponging between a friendly space space station and their home planet (they would use the emergency retreat every time my fleet entered the system they were attacking) it makes it very hard to actually fight a war.

 

[kazper]

First i want to say i agree the AI is shotty in stellaris and i do not understand why the did not add a mechanic that was added to EUIV, being able to toggle your vassles to attach to your troops/fleet and be able to set the to aggresive/supportive/defensive. I mean it is like they have learned NOTHING from past games or it is to be added later....

They pretty much stated that this was a good idea and would be added in some form. As for not learning making an AI for a game like Stellaris is much different from eg EU4. They cannot just take the same concepts and migrate them.

 

[Finnway]

This is where the lack of AI became apparent. I realized they had not demanded my homeworld but still attacked that first, and that from others experiences, the AI will only ever target your homeworld or sector capital. I decided to go guerilla on them with the rest of my forces and raid some of their other systems using my long range wormholes. Then, after bombarding my homeworld for a while, rather than sending an invasion force they simply left me to rebuild my forces. Something that war economy and a healthy stockpile of minerals made fairly easy.

This happened to me too. I was vastly outnumbered. After defeating my fleet, the enemy destroyed some of my spaceports, but left the majority of them (66%) intact. This allowed me to rebuild a fleet large enough to destroy a single spacestation and conquer a planet before my fleet was destroyed. I repeated this several times. The AI never invaded any of my planets or destroyed any mining stations. Eventually I abandoned the campaign because it was so obvious the AI should've won.

 

[lemonsquid]

i currently stay out of federations. the ai will declare multiple wars with a dozen ai empires and then these new enemy empires start invading my space(even though no wargoals can be found in my space lol). Plus the fact that allied ai will stick to my fleets like glue instead of doing other important tasks such as fending off other fleets i cant manage

 

[lifehole]

Really, the shitty warfleet AI is a reason for almost all the major flaws in the game right now, besides maybe the controversial sector system and UI. The lack of decisive strategic and tactical decisionmaking by the AI stymies the progress of the entire game, and makes wars for the player bad, too. The lack of diplomatic changes due to the slow progress of war caused by these problems means that very little changes by endgame, and not many significant blobs form besides the player, usually. Unless you sim for 400+ yrs.

 

[danest]

i currently stay out of federations. the ai will declare multiple wars with a dozen ai empires and then these new enemy empires start invading my space(even though no wargoals can be found in my space lol). Plus the fact that allied ai will stick to my fleets like glue instead of doing other important tasks such as fending off other fleets i cant manage

I'm very careful to federate only with peaceful empires, unless I actually really do just want to fight other people's wars all day.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

One thing to learn is to not create the strongest fleet in a Federation or Alliance... if the AI have bigger fleets than you do they do not blob up their fleet with yours.

But should it really be that way?!?

The simplest of fix, for now, would be to just have a toggle that forbid the AI to attach to a particular fleet. They can then go to work on a better system for directing and working with your allies.

I also agree that AI should learn to spread their fleets out a bit more... I also think that destroying mining, research stations and outpost should make POPs really unhappy and increase war weariness so defending your space actually matters. This would make doom stacks MUCH less attractive to use.

Using more realistic combat tactics seem to break the AI a bit. But I bet the AI will become better as they get feedback on player tactics.

 

[Invader_Canuck]

The biggest problem with the AI persecuting wars is infantry assault transports.

If they AI doesn't have a big stack of them, they will pretty much never be able to assault your planets right now. The reason is they do a poor job of grouping them up in wartime.

If however they have a big powerful invasion army, they will take planet after planet. However if they lose that fleet, well, then it's back to the behavior of sending 1 or 2 ships at a time.

This is a problem, and I am not sure we can fix it on our end atm. I could try raising the budget for armies and the AI's preferred invasion fleet size. That might help.

(Edit) I just went into the defines.lua and doubled AI Transport fleet sizes, and doubled their budget for armies, from 5% to 10%, I took 5% away from station budgets, since stations are actually quite an inefficient way to spend money early on I don't think it should throw things out of war. Plus I play on hard so the AI is hardly hurting for resources.

 

[aazo5]

They pretty much stated that this was a good idea and would be added in some form. As for not learning making an AI for a game like Stellaris is much different from eg EU4. They cannot just take the same concepts and migrate them.

Why not? That mechanic seems like one that could literally be taken and migrated to this game. I don't understand why they wouldn't be able to do that.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Well, I'm playing as United Nations of Earth and I'm quite an isolationist. Unfortunately a path to part of my empire was blocked recently - it's in another galaxy arm and I discovered that my only route belong to the fallen empire. And since they definately won't speak with me - it was effectively cut off. So I had to ask my neighbour for civilian access but in order to get it I had to give them many other deals - including independence guarantee. Some time later some far away empire declared a war on some other far away empire, but unfortunately this empire was allied with my neighbours so my neighbours were also dragged to war and me (what a surprise) with them, probably because of this independence guarantee. But ok, I built new fleet just in case and decided that I can lend a hand in this conflict because my "allies" already lost 4 battles. And - another surprise - none of my neighbours, my "allies", want to give me access so I could send in my fleet. I'm not super strong, but with my high tech ships I could help to win - but... nope. I'm in a war and my allies deny me the possibility to engage our common enemy. Cool.

 

[Suzaku]

Well, I'm playing as United Nations of Earth and I'm quite an isolationist. Unfortunately a path to part of my empire was blocked recently - it's in another galaxy arm and I discovered that my only route belong to the fallen empire. And since they definately won't speak with me - it was effectively cut off. So I had to ask my neighbour for civilian access but in order to get it I had to give them many other deals - including independence guarantee. Some time later some far away empire declared a war on some other far away empire, but unfortunately this empire was allied with my neighbours so my neighbours were also dragged to war and me (what a surprise) with them, probably because of this independence guarantee. But ok, I built new fleet just in case and decided that I can lend a hand in this conflict because my "allies" already lost 4 battles. And - another surprise - none of my neighbours, my "allies", want to give me access so I could send in my fleet. I'm not super strong, but with my high tech ships I could help to win - but... nope. I'm in a war and my allies deny me the possibility to engage our common enemy. Cool.

Strange one would think you should get temporarily access while at war.

 

[Jeremy971]

Everytimes I see negatives threads on AI, I cant stop asking myself if we play the same game.

AI lands armies on my worlds. It does guerilla.

And in my current game AI did something really good. I won a war againt an empire next to mine and the survivors made a strong federation with my neighbors. Impossible for me to expand my empire, I was stuck.

Then a strong alliance declared war to the federation. It was a really good opportunity for me to attack them. So I declared war.

My fleet was 3K. The federation member had 3K, 6k and 1K.

Since they were attacked from all the sides they splited their fleets so I attacked the 3K fleet first ! My allies came to assist me. I won.

The 1K fleet went to my weakest worlds and destroyed my mining stations so I tried to catch them. I did. At the same time, they sent a massive invasion fleet of 18 transport ships but escaped when I sent my fleet protect the sector.

After 5 years of war. World after world I succeeded to defeat the Federation. But AI hided the last 6K fleet and ambushed me when I attacked the last homeworld. My fleet was at 5K but no match for them. So I ran away.

Finally AI asked for peace and gave me 2 worlds...

This game is awesome ! I'm addicted ! AI is good enough in hard mode...