Is the AI capable of handling the Void Dwellers origin? What other origins are troublesome?

[BakedPotato]

The few times I've seen them, they're always weak and getting conquered. Before Lem they were utterly broken and never built new habitats, they were at the mercy of friendly empires and migration treaties. With Lem, they at least build habitats now, but I'm worried they never build them over actual resources (mineral and research deposit planets), they just haphazardly spam trade districts.

What other origins is the AI not equipped to handle? Doomsday is probably a no-go for the AI, unless their species is Extremely Adaptive, causing them to colonize anything in sight short of tomb worlds.

 

[legionof1]

They don't handle the current form of ring world or gaia seeded. Borked climate preferences in general take a very specific plan to handle. Your behind the curve alot unless you take very marginal planets, and the AI simply will not.

It also doesn't really capitalize on either fed origin, but at least in that case they have friends on there side so the neighborhood Exterminators don't just run over them. Feds will be reasonably powered off haveing 3 homeworlds worth of start but it's a crapshoot after that.

Necrophages also tend towards suck since the AI is slow to grab the seeded pre-sentients, and that's a fair chunk of the advantage in that you have another 8 or whatever pops hanging around.

 

[Vladisi]

I had an empire join a Common Ground federation, all of them Spiritualists to my Fan Materialist MegaCorp (also, one of Common Ground empires was a MegaCorp as well, so doubly annoying for me). Turns out I didn't have to worry about them for long, because very soon their planet unceremoniously exploded, leaving only a handful of their pops in the galaxy. Apparently their strategy for saving their species was migration treaties and not settling on another planet.

So Doomsday is definitely off the table for AI.

 

[BakedPotato]

Scion! That's the other one I've been thinking about it. I haven't seen any AIs start with this origin because I play with my own custom empires. But how does the AI handle the Scion origin? Are they allowed to expand, or are they stuck with one system because they're a vassal of a Fallen Empire?

 

[legionof1]

Scions on the rare times i see them do rather well, by virtue of the occasional injections of fleet and resources.

Scions are one of the subordinate types that are allowed to expand, in exchange for not being a protectorate. That said AI tend not to declare because the AI assesses available fleet power as if the FE would be an active participant immediately, rather then when FE opinion drops too low(thou attacking a scion does lower, its not nuff in one go).

 

[klopkr]

Not to sh*tpost but can the AI handle normal worlds?

Also I love giving an AI the doomed origin so their empire inevitably fails and a bunch of empty space opens up later in the game.

 

[Less2]

Not to sh*tpost but can the AI handle normal worlds?

This is a fair question. In every universe there's plenty of failed normal empires while there's only 1 or 2 of the various special starts like void dweller or ring world. If it was the other way around, with only 1 or 2 normal empires in the whole galaxy, and the 1 or 2 normal empires just happened to fail or underperform then we'd call normal starts unplayable for the AI.

 

[Fenris_SE]

Somewhat related to the topic ... I hope

Sometimes I'll create empires and throw them into a map with 1,00 stars and maxed empires/fallen/marauders, etc then go into observe mode with the game on the fastest setting and just watch what happens.

Some things I've noticed on this last one:
1) Machine empires that start with a machine world do not clear the last tile blocker giving them more replicator jobs.
2) Subsumed Will (the one that allows you to move pops with no influence cost) is not handled well by AI empires. Looking at a home world in perfect condition, has never been attacked and fully built only has 8 pops on it with 95 job openings at 2422 because the AI moved them all to other less productive worlds.
3) Habitats are still built but often never colonized with some AI, even ones that choose Voidborne as a perk.
4) Fallen and Awakened Empires do not take traditions or ascension perks. This may be by design though.
5) Not a single empire has taken Galactic Wonders, yet some took Arcology Project and never made any. This may also be by design, with the AI's current economy management I think they'd struggle to build a galactic wonder.
6) AI empires that chose World Shaper have never made a Gaia world that I've seen, even though they are often at or close to energy cap. Meanwhile empires that picked Hive World have made a few.
7) In an earlier run an Empire with Idyllic Bloom never made a single Gaia Seeder.
8) I've never seen a single Life-Seeded AI empire last very long. Although to be honest this is a really tough one, especially if you run into an angry neighbor early on, so no surprise really.

 

[BakedPotato]

Somewhat related to the topic ... I hope

Sometimes I'll create empires and throw them into a map with 1,00 stars and maxed empires/fallen/marauders, etc then go into observe mode with the game on the fastest setting and just watch what happens.

Some things I've noticed on this last one:
1) Machine empires that start with a machine world do not clear the last tile blocker giving them more replicator jobs.
2) Subsumed Will (the one that allows you to move pops with no influence cost) is not handled well by AI empires. Looking at a home world in perfect condition, has never been attacked and fully built only has 8 pops on it with 95 job openings at 2422 because the AI moved them all to other less productive worlds.
3) Habitats are still built but often never colonized with some AI, even ones that choose Voidborne as a perk.
4) Fallen and Awakened Empires do not take traditions or ascension perks. This may be by design though.
5) Not a single empire has taken Galactic Wonders, yet some took Arcology Project and never made any. This may also be by design, with the AI's current economy management I think they'd struggle to build a galactic wonder.
6) AI empires that chose World Shaper have never made a Gaia world that I've seen, even though they are often at or close to energy cap. Meanwhile empires that picked Hive World have made a few.
7) In an earlier run an Empire with Idyllic Bloom never made a single Gaia Seeder.
8) I've never seen a single Life-Seeded AI empire last very long. Although to be honest this is a really tough one, especially if you run into an angry neighbor early on, so no surprise really.

1) Did not know about the Machine World tile blocker thing. I play with custom empires, one of them called the Matrix, who has the Resource Consolidation origin. They seem to do pretty well in most of my games, though, often being a major tech leader.

2) Never noticed the Subsumed Will thing. Have a Devouring Swarm hive-mind that uses it, so will pay attention to it in the future.

6 and 7) Yeah, some of these, particularly the Gaia Seeder and Idyllic Bloom, get back to the good ol' fact that, for whatever reason, PDX removed the AI's ability to terraform. They used to back in the day, but it's crippled the AI's ability to expand ever since, especially for non-adaptive and/or xenophobic empires.

8) I have a Life-Seeded empire, too. But, being aware of the AI's inability to cope with habitability problems, I made them a lithoid race with a xenophilic, Trade League megacorporation.

From my own personal observations, the AI does not handle Syncretic Evolution if they're authoritarian or xenophobic, where the serviles are enslaved. They literally sell them ALL on the galactic slave market. This is pretty dumb considering one of the game's very own legacy empires is an authoritarian/xenophobe empire, the Xanids. It's almost as if... PDX never bothered to test or pay attention to feedback for this type of AI empire. There needs to be something in the AI that prevents them from entirely husking our their servile pops. For example, one of my empires is a Syncretic Evolution. Recently conquered them early in a game, hoping to use their serviles. Only problem is... they were ALL gone, sold throughout the galaxy. Kinda defeats the purpose of the origin, imo.

 

[Nevars]

Don't know about current shattered ring but before the update the change them the ai with shattered ring origin was basically free real estate for both neighboring player and ai.

 

[Derp Throat]

Prosperous Unification tends to baffle it.

 

[Kaoru Sen'nin]

Not really an origin but ... I never saw a Terravore actually eating a planet.

In most of my runs they are always at the bottom scoreboard.

 

[Morbid Gerbil]

The few times I've seen them, they're always weak and getting conquered. Before Lem they were utterly broken and never built new habitats, they were at the mercy of friendly empires and migration treaties. With Lem, they at least build habitats now, but I'm worried they never build them over actual resources (mineral and research deposit planets), they just haphazardly spam trade districts.

What other origins is the AI not equipped to handle? Doomsday is probably a no-go for the AI, unless their species is Extremely Adaptive, causing them to colonize anything in sight short of tomb world

Part of the problem is the max district counts of either 4, 6 or 8 depending on how much tech they have time for before dying.

If you drop into observer mode you can watch the AI apply it's development scripts for a standard WORLD to a 4 district habitat.
It's so pathetically inept it makes baby jesus cry.

 

[BakedPotato]

Part of the problem is the max district counts of either 4, 6 or 8 depending on how much tech they have time for before dying.

If you drop into observer mode you can watch the AI apply it's development scripts for a standard WORLD to a 4 district habitat.
It's so pathetically inept it makes baby jesus cry.

I think the Achilles' heel of this game is that there are simply too many moving parts, so to speak, for the AI, which is pretty much just scripts, to ever grasp, They backed themselves into a corner from the very get-go, 2015, by going with such a dynamic pop, resource, and management system. It'll forever haunt the game, seems like the AI will always be crap in Stellaris.

 

[Derp Throat]

I think the Achilles' heel of this game is that there are simply too many moving parts, so to speak, for the AI, which is pretty much just scripts, to ever grasp, They backed themselves into a corner from the very get-go, 2015, by going with such a dynamic pop, resource, and management system. It'll forever haunt the game, seems like the AI will always be crap in Stellaris.

It's fixable for modders with literally ones of people working in all the free time they want using workarounds, but that's just not feasable for a few dozen full time devs with access to the source code.