So I've only played a little bit, especially in this patch, but something I've noticed is that the AI seems to be incapable of attacking you now. Not only due to their relative power lagging behind, but literally never moving their fleets to attack you. Their navy seems to ping pong around their worlds in small numbers until my hunter-killer groups finally pin them down and destroy them. Then my siege forces just slowly creep forward and forward until I either get bored and wait for the war exhaustion to creep to 100 to end it in a few years, or I just annihilate them in their entirety.
It's much worse for AI vs AI wars, or wars where you don't participate. Both sides will basically sit there and do virtually nothing until the war exhaustion says both sides can end their war. There's no quick wars or mad dashes for land, only slow slogs where almost nothing seems to happen until the game just ends the war with its mechanics. Beyond that, the AI doesn't seem to be able to form a diplomatic group to do anything about this. Even if I didn't want to make allies, no one in the galaxy could do anything about me before it was too late. The only thing that seems like it can go wrong in a Stellaris game is "You are now being attacked by an AI which either started out several hundred years more advanced than you, or just gets the rest of the galaxy's equivalent power in event spawned troops". There seems to be no middle ground, either the AI is completely incapable of fighting you due to having similar conditions to you, or the AI is just given enough power to conquer the galaxy, and it might be able to hurt you.
I still see more potential in Stellaris than most Paradox games, but I just don't feel any challenge in it as of right now. One thing that I think might help would be a more "asymmetrical" start scenario as an alternative starting option, where the galaxy is already populated, explored, and claimed. That way you can have AIs with an already developed base that might make them slightly more competent. That's just one random idea.
It's much worse for AI vs AI wars, or wars where you don't participate. Both sides will basically sit there and do virtually nothing until the war exhaustion says both sides can end their war. There's no quick wars or mad dashes for land, only slow slogs where almost nothing seems to happen until the game just ends the war with its mechanics. Beyond that, the AI doesn't seem to be able to form a diplomatic group to do anything about this. Even if I didn't want to make allies, no one in the galaxy could do anything about me before it was too late. The only thing that seems like it can go wrong in a Stellaris game is "You are now being attacked by an AI which either started out several hundred years more advanced than you, or just gets the rest of the galaxy's equivalent power in event spawned troops". There seems to be no middle ground, either the AI is completely incapable of fighting you due to having similar conditions to you, or the AI is just given enough power to conquer the galaxy, and it might be able to hurt you.
I still see more potential in Stellaris than most Paradox games, but I just don't feel any challenge in it as of right now. One thing that I think might help would be a more "asymmetrical" start scenario as an alternative starting option, where the galaxy is already populated, explored, and claimed. That way you can have AIs with an already developed base that might make them slightly more competent. That's just one random idea.
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