[Dev Team] 3.0.3 Patch Released (Checksum d281)

[Lidhuin]

I agree - the problem is what to do about it. I think i proposed an idea that wasn't there before and it may be one which can turn the tide from terrible AI to not so terrible AI. Apparently people don't like it - they think devs should just make AI smarter from the thin air. But the fact is I don't think they know themselves why AI is doing what it's doing (unless they debug some specific situation very closely).

"Just work harder" doesn't work in real world - if something isn't acting as expected you need to pivot some decisions, make machine helping you and so on.

People are disagreeing because the obvious problem is that AI will quite literally ignore tech all game based on three lines in a text file that modders can mess with. You don't need an advanced program to figure that out, nor to fix it.

AI doesn't need to be perfect or even good; passable would be enough for me. But they're going to leave this totally useless AI around with the worst possible economic plan for an indefinite period of time and that's frankly unacceptable.

 

[makapse]

I think the devs need to stop playing MP and play a whole SP campaign as well to understand the level of the AI research problem

 

[darkgob]

So, no change for the currently biased Crisis selection chance? Disappointing. Looks like I'm just dealing with the Unbidden for the foreseeable future...

 

[Mole204]

I wonder what things will happen next? Egyption plagues? The Homeworld disappearing on Tuesdays? Stick to fixing things, not going back and screwing up things.
And the pop unemployment numbers seem to be missing the hundreds digit in the planet summary.

 

[不思议奶茶]

wow

 

[jayparadoritox]

So, no change for the currently biased Crisis selection chance? Disappointing. Looks like I'm just dealing with the Unbidden for the foreseeable future...

Unbidden? My empires used to dream of seeing the Unbidden. We're all too scared to research the final project on our L-Gates since we know the chances of triggering Gray Tempest are absolutely definite.

Monty Python joke aside, thank you Paradox for working hard on another patch and for being so communicative. Considering that's such a rarity with big devs these days, I think you're getting way too much crap and misery thrown your way in these threads. Don't envy you for reading through them and making these replies. Stay sane!

 

[malakhglitch]

Unbidden? My empires used to dream of seeing the Unbidden. We're all too scared to research the final project on our L-Gates since we know the chances of triggering Gray Tempest are absolutely definite.

Well I am still dreaming of Unbidden. I mostly get the Contingency under Random.

 

[darkgob]

Unbidden? My empires used to dream of seeing the Unbidden. We're all too scared to research the final project on our L-Gates since we know the chances of triggering Gray Tempest are absolutely definite.

Haven't seen the Gray Tempest once, it's always L-Drakes.

Well I am still dreaming of Unbidden. I mostly get the Contingency under Random.

Just make sure you research Jump Drives before the endgame starts, your odds will be much better. Random is not random at all, it's still unevenly weighted.

 

[sr999]

I used to think that was a good thing. But my experience in the last few years - especially with Stellaris - makes me think that it has mostly failed.

Yes, the games continue to be developed. But I don't think they are being much improved. There is not enough time spend on bug fixing before the team moves on to the next DLC and too many issues keep accumulating. Later on the development cycle it also becomes apparent that game systems that keep getting added in the DLC never interact with each other. So you get more and more buttons to press, but they don't really alter the gameplay loop. Because it still needs to function if someone doesn't have a certain DLC. So most things end up as win-more buttons.

These may be fair comments - though constructive criticism of the business wasn't really what I was getting at: which is "sustainable AIs".

That said, you say "Later on the development cycle it also becomes apparent that game systems that keep getting added in the DLC never interact with each
other."

Your insight there I think is profound - and it makes a lot of sense to me! Indeed it may be a significant part of the explanation of how the AI can continue to function at all, across multiple versions AND mutiple combinations (and even, perhaps, permutations?) of DLCs.

And certainly, by isolating the DLC systems from each other, it makes a huge amount of sense from a technical design perspective. Because bugs created at the design stage are often insoluble, and otherwise the most expensive to fix. The DLC model massively exacerbates this routine technical issue because, like the wheat-and-chessboard problem but far worse, each new DLC exponentially increases the number of simultaneous logical versions of the product - all of which must be supported.

For that reason I even would argue, with confidence a priori (as an outsider looking in), that the DLC model itself thus precludes significant interaction between the DLCs - though obviously each DLC must integrate seamlessly with the "vanilla" version du jour.

I'll stop there - but I'm very interested in your further constructive )) thoughts?

 

[makapse]

My personal opinion is that the DLC model itself needs to stop. What PDX should do instead is go for season pass system. And each season pass should contain paid content first and then finish with their free update. And allow the DLCs added in the season to become free after some time after the season ends. In this way, they will have to support far fewer combinations of the game, thus improving stability and technical design too. And then, we will no longer have to face the problem of a content not being linked to other DLC because they will all be eventually free anyways

 

[UltimateTobi]

My personal opinion is that the DLC model itself needs to stop. What PDX should do instead is go for season pass system. And each season pass should contain paid content first and then finish with their free update. And allow the DLCs added in the season to become free after some time after the season ends. In this way, they will have to support far fewer combinations of the game, thus improving stability and technical design too. And then, we will no longer have to face the problem of a content not being linked to other DLC because they will all be eventually free anyways

Why would I buy a Season Pass if its content becomes free after said "Season" (whatever that entails)?

 

[grommile]

My personal opinion is that the DLC model itself needs to stop. What PDX should do instead is go for season pass system. And each season pass should contain paid content first and then finish with their free update. And allow the DLCs added in the season to become free after some time after the season ends.

So I get everything without paying for anything except the base game?

Sounds fantastic.

Paradox's accountants may not agree.

 

[makapse]

You need to check the system in civ 6 then. You wont get the content for free any time soon, so you will still want to buy it. Admittedly, they had 6 DLC in a year. Now tell me, would you wait for an year to play as a megacorp, or buy it when it had released? If you were never going to buy it anyways, then you would have got it for free, true, but that means paradox has to spend much less trying to ensure their game is stable for 100 different combinations of DLCs. That savings would counteract the loss of some revenues, allowing them to have a more stable game and more DLC in a year. Plus, there are always the cosmetic DLC they can sell separately, or even just a single DLC out of that season pass if you absolutely only want that 1.

 

[grommile]

Now tell me, would you wait for an year to play as a megacorp

Yes.

I'd also wait a year to play the actually interesting content

Because if I know I'm getting it for free in a year's time, why would I pay for it now, given that (a) Paradox are a shareholder corporation, not some tiny indie studio who need every scrap of cashflow they can get to stay in business and (b) I have a metric shedload of other games on my Steam account?

 

[Kayden_II]

Because if I know I'm getting it for free in a year's time, why would I pay for it now

Say that to the guys and girls that pay in form of pre-orders or the full prizes at release altough they know they will get whatever with discounts in a year, too.

 

[grommile]

Say that to the guys and girls that pay in form of pre-orders or the full prizes at release altough they know they will get whatever with discounts in a year, too.

Anyone who pre-orders download-only games from an established studio should take a step back from their computer.

 

[permeakra]

* Significantly reduced the effect of empire pops on the required growth of new pops to 0.25 from 0.5.

Well, Stellaris, for the time being I'm moving to Cities:Skylines and Surviving Mars. Ping me when you get your screws right.
Yes, I'm bitter.

 

[Less2]

I understand the devs are limited on the time they can fix things. Can they please just apply the simplest fix of telling the AI to:

- Never build clerk buildings (even the deluded few who think clerks are decent acknowledge that it is only with an extremely min-maxed build, which the AI will never have).
- Never build gene clinics (the payoff time is too long, an AI should never be planning to break even on production 50 or more years later).
- Never build a unity building until at least the 5th open building slot. Like gene clinics unity is a very long-term thing unless you have a very specific plan in mind, which the AI never has.

Do these three simple things and I guarantee the AI will be an order of magnitude more competent, enough that the majority of complainants will be satisfied.

If you want to be extra nice and put in more effort, have pops filling clerk jobs be part of the migration queue to fill planets that have non-clerk jobs available.

 

[HFY]

* Fixed case where AI logic was countering itself. This also solves the single largest AI performance drain

I am interested in what specifically was going on here.

If you want to be extra nice and put in more effort, have pops filling clerk jobs be part of the migration queue to fill planets that have non-clerk jobs available.

This would be a significant QoL enhancement for me -- it would allow Clerks to function as "spillover" jobs which I keep enabled so pops are never technically unemployed, just underemployed until they can migrate out.

 

[BakedPotato]

Haven't seen the Gray Tempest once, it's always L-Drakes.

Haha, it's always the Gray Tempest for me, 4 out of the last 4 times.

People are disagreeing because the obvious problem is that AI will quite literally ignore tech all game based on three lines in a text file that modders can mess with. You don't need an advanced program to figure that out, nor to fix it.

AI doesn't need to be perfect or even good; passable would be enough for me. But they're going to leave this totally useless AI around with the worst possible economic plan for an indefinite period of time and that's frankly unacceptable.

I think the devs need to stop playing MP and play a whole SP campaign as well to understand the level of the AI research problem

This, this so much. The current AI is just horrible at developing and maintaining any sort of economy, whether it's consumer goods, alloys, research, unity, or admin cap. I don't care about multiplayer dev streams, just fix the damn AI. This game is now 5, FIVE, years old, and it STILL doesn't have a competent AI.

Don't say it can't be done either. Normally I play Ironman only, I'm the roleplaying type who doesn't go out of his way to meta-game and punish the game, but even lately I've had to abandon vanilla Stellaris in favor of StarNet + friendship patch, something I never wanted to do. Why? While I don't like the way StarNet makes all AI empires feel pretty much the same and how it makes like 90-95% of their worlds into forge and generator worlds, it at least invests in its economy and doesn't get steamrolled by mid-game.

There are also the little things that StarNet does which, for years, I have strongly harped about, such as the AI colonizing off-climate worlds and sucking up the low habitability penalties which can slowly be mitigated through tech, buildings, and policies. I haven't seen any sign of StarNet AI terraforming, haven't quite gotten that far enough into a game yet (plus it tends to colonize everything lol), but I wouldn't be surprised if it does. It beats the vanilla AI that will still have like 8 uncolonized worlds within the borders of a xenophobic empire with just its 3 starting worlds at year 2400.

So despite StarNet making the AI a little too "meta" or try-hard, they've at least made it feel sort of competent at nation-building. Oh, another thing I noticed that StarNet does which I never, EVER see the vanilla AI do: it changes its trade policies. Every vanilla empire uses wealth creation, but with StarNet I see them using consumer benefits. Is that because consumer benefits is OP or the others suck? I dunno, but again, the little things, and with consumer benefits they're able to afford more research and admin cap buildings. Little things.

I've heard mixed reports about Glavius AI, if it's still up-to-date, if the mod is back, or whatever. Would prefer that mod as its goal is to simply improve the AI by nudging it better directions.