Prices still seem to be generally rising. Less than in 2.2.2, but especially alloys are pretty overly expensive in my game.
Is it true that the AI cheats?
- Thread starter Sapare
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i observed the AI alot, i saw some " strange" spike in energy , but they were with "disappearance" of other resources ( or slave pops) ; the selling on the market of the AI is not calculated yet , so i'm not sure if it is cheating ( the resouces "disappear" because the AI is using them elsewhere ) or it is just buying-selling on the market(\slave) .
for now the only "confirmed cheats" its for regular AI empire to produce % resources bonus with the difficulty lvl ; and fallen empire(awakened empire) spawning fleets evry tot ( usualy a titan if they started with it with 4 destroyers or 2 battleships and 4 destroyers( around that number anyway) , if they lose theyr fleets .
the AI buy on the market ( spam buy actualy) and it is registered , increasing the price of resources realy fast if more than 2-3 AI are in red.
It seems to me the AI has some sort of safety feature where if they are basically bankrupting it just gives them energy. I dont think it realizes it has this; it desperately tries to get stable up till it hits.
Easiest way I saw it was despoiling. It feels like old eu4 when you would camp someone into ruin, except that the AI just shits energy at the break point.
Honestly these crutches need to go away. Let the AI die. If the AI cannot get out of a death spiral too bad. If it's too debilitating because the malus for being negative just makes it even harder to get it fixed, maybe rethink the malus. Or add more ways to cope, like salvaging stations and scrapping ships/buildings.
AI cheating should be for adding difficulty, not a crutch for difficult design. Using it as a crutch leads to lazy and bad design: see naval play in any paradox product for reference.
Easiest way I saw it was despoiling. It feels like old eu4 when you would camp someone into ruin, except that the AI just shits energy at the break point.
Honestly these crutches need to go away. Let the AI die. If the AI cannot get out of a death spiral too bad. If it's too debilitating because the malus for being negative just makes it even harder to get it fixed, maybe rethink the malus. Or add more ways to cope, like salvaging stations and scrapping ships/buildings.
AI cheating should be for adding difficulty, not a crutch for difficult design. Using it as a crutch leads to lazy and bad design: see naval play in any paradox product for reference.
Even with just the default difficulty scaled resource income plus market access makes wars of attrition automatically favour the AI.
I was playing a game earlier where I confined an AI to 5 systems and 2 planets with two fleets of 3k vs their two 2k ones and despite completely dominating space battles, eventually the attrition started to turn the war in their favour as most of these loses were against starbases as they had slipped by my lines and capped a bunch of my systems before I had FTL inhibitors on my fortresses and the constant loss of one or two corvettes added up in warscore and alloy attrition. The AI just kept replacing losses faster than I could when they had a relatively Pathetic economy.
Trading directly with AI empires it seems they have no limits on alloys as I could offer them maxed out energy, minerals, and food at better than market rates throughout my entire game. You can also use this to cheese their diplomacy with favourable trades but thats another thing altogether.
I just don't understand why AI can't follow a few predictable, lore friendly scripts based on how humans play to execute the majority of their functions and save the resource hogging decisions for more big picture things like who to start wars with or directions to expand. We aren't asking for Skynet levels of omnipotence, just to follow paths that I might given what I see before me on the galaxy map.
As a temporary fix I do like the suggestion of having the difficulty scaling be a linear boost to station and job outputs as this would result in those being lost when I take them away with military actions but still provide similar effective boosts as the current system.
I was playing a game earlier where I confined an AI to 5 systems and 2 planets with two fleets of 3k vs their two 2k ones and despite completely dominating space battles, eventually the attrition started to turn the war in their favour as most of these loses were against starbases as they had slipped by my lines and capped a bunch of my systems before I had FTL inhibitors on my fortresses and the constant loss of one or two corvettes added up in warscore and alloy attrition. The AI just kept replacing losses faster than I could when they had a relatively Pathetic economy.
Trading directly with AI empires it seems they have no limits on alloys as I could offer them maxed out energy, minerals, and food at better than market rates throughout my entire game. You can also use this to cheese their diplomacy with favourable trades but thats another thing altogether.
I just don't understand why AI can't follow a few predictable, lore friendly scripts based on how humans play to execute the majority of their functions and save the resource hogging decisions for more big picture things like who to start wars with or directions to expand. We aren't asking for Skynet levels of omnipotence, just to follow paths that I might given what I see before me on the galaxy map.
As a temporary fix I do like the suggestion of having the difficulty scaling be a linear boost to station and job outputs as this would result in those being lost when I take them away with military actions but still provide similar effective boosts as the current system.
Having spent time modding the last few days, i think i have a lead on the linkage between AI budgeting and market trade. Idk about the free resources though...
Maybe there is an oversight in that budget scripting, not requiring a conditions of affording things before allowing purchase? Ill try to examine this - might even be an easy fix
Maybe there is an oversight in that budget scripting, not requiring a conditions of affording things before allowing purchase? Ill try to examine this - might even be an easy fix
I haven't seen the issue any more in the beta branch. I'm not saying it is fixed though. Neither has Paradox replied to my bug report too. It could be that the AI is more successful in managing its economy now. Well I still have doubt it's that efficient in running its economy but so far (2275) I haven't seen any particular imbalance and every fight seems fair. There was also changes in diplomacy balancing and nowadays it's not rare to be betrayed or see massive changes in a short amount of time, what is quite fun actually as this leads to many more opportunities. I got suprised to be declared war upon while being one the most powerful empire and allied with the 2nd most powerful empire in the map aside from fallen empires. That's clearly new to me.
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I don't think it is an accident or oversight - I'm pretty sure I saw a post by Wiz explaining that it was a deliberate mechanic to stabilise an AIs crashing economy.
Certainly an oversight to have the result being them buying thousands of alloys out of the gate with it.
Regarding the described strange market interaction, this is consistent with m experience from the overnight simulation i ran last night. A few empires were in deep shit with unclear reasons (convoluted by various experimental mod-changes) ... however, market prices overall seemed stable.
My leading theory after experimenting with modding AI budgeting for 4+ hours:
@Glavius
@Gratak
I suspect that the ai-market issue discussed in this theead may be / have been related to the previously existing market exploit adressef in 2.2.3 the AI is set to use much of its energy on (market) trades every month weight 0.5) . Possibly, even when at 0 it would still do this with a chunk of its income +any energy it got from emergency-sales of other resources (tresholds for whwn to ”consider” doing this exist in 00_defines) . This could concievably unintentionally(?) lead to the AI using that same exploit at the tick of the month in certain situations. (Like shortage). Making gains through trading two ways but buying lower than selling, instead of the other way around.
... itd be nice to be sure on the state of this issue, but lacking concrete evidence of it in 2.2.3 saves, i wont prioritize it in modding/testing for now.
Attach a save file if you see it happening!
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i tryed to "cheat" the AI ( singleplayer - observe - click a country , giving it 50k of energy ) when they were in a loophole economicaly ;
they used all 50k of energy to buy resources all resources to almost 0 energy ( observed with the "buyed*" to the market) to then sell some of the just buyed resources because they were in red of energy , and continued in this loop till almost all resources were exausted ( always a problem to keep track because selled resources are not counted) .
there is a little problem with the AI usage of the market when they are in a pich , even if they cheat , Ai can't realy fix it once more than 1-2 resources start to be deep red .
Appreciate all the community members diving into the math to get to the root of some of this odd behavior while the devs take their vacation. If nothing else, it's encouraging that it sounds like much of this can be fixed/ patched relatively painlessly in the future.
@Verx90 seems close to what i suspected?
The good news is that all this is quite easily moddable.
In my my not yet published DECAI patch, ive significantly reduced the trading budget, other than in times of war or shortage. This way AI also builds up much more energy over time....
The good news is that all this is quite easily moddable.
In my my not yet published DECAI patch, ive significantly reduced the trading budget, other than in times of war or shortage. This way AI also builds up much more energy over time....
I did mod the AI so it could only trade minerals/food/consumables, which seems to alleviate the worst of the abuse / failings.