Looks like AI and performance are in the shitters again

[Verx90]

In Aspec's current megacorp series there definitely seems to be something going wrong with the AI when it comes to war. In part 5 below at 26:42 a neighbouring empire to the west declares war, they bring along their federation ally who borders Aspec from the south. The western AI attacks with a fleet stronger than Aspec's currently and manages to take a couple of stations, he quickly brings a fleet and after a while manages to drive them out.

There's a little bit more back and forth with the western neighbour over the rest of part 5 and all of part 6 (basically an hour of gameplay) and they do upgrade many of their nearby stations for defence, but they aren't a serious threat. The AI doesn't repair its armour and the fleet it attacks with is equal to one of Aspec's but can't do anything against it and an upgraded starbase. The worse AI problem is the southern empire. Across the entire hour not only does it not attack Aspec never sees a single ship of theirs. Eventually he sends his second fleet in and takes over 3 systems and a planet. There is no resistance and he quickly brings his fleet back to his territory. Again no southern empire fleet appears and ever attempts to take its systems back.

So out of the two one empire seems to not be building enough ships and generally being bad at attacking systems. The other either hasn't build any ships or has and isn't using them.

There are some things that you should notice ...
1 the empire on the est is the one that actualy wanted the war.

2. The empire on the west was probably not ready , and havimg less fleet power , and probably refuse to fight a lost cause , even morr since aspect picked the worst causus belli , so will get nothing from it .

3. The only visible bug there , the fact that the ia thin to reinforce the federation fleet even when it is on the other side of the war .

It is possible the western front is not bulding fleet , but since you can see them behing equal , its more problable that they dont want to move them (there may be a bug there in the reasons , or maybe they dont want to have piracy more than fighting this war that they didnt start)



All in all , for what i read and saw , the ia is no better or worst of 1.9 or 2.1 , still extrimly behind in respect a skilled player and make poor choises half the time . The challenge will remaim sleeping empires or the crisis as always i assume .

 

[Calvax]

There are some things that you should notice ...
1 the empire on the est is the one that actualy wanted the war.

True but the southern empire voted for it. I think it's fair that if an AI approves of a war that it should at least put itself on a war footing.

2. The empire on the west was probably not ready , and havimg less fleet power , and probably refuse to fight a lost cause , even morr since aspect picked the worst causus belli , so will get nothing from it .

It may be the case that the southern empire isn't engaging because it doesn't think it can win, but it's going beyond that to completely ignoring the annexed systems in its territory even when Aspec has retreated. Given the length of the war even if it started with no ships at all it should have been able to build up a liberation fleet in that time.

3. The only visible bug there , the fact that the ia thin to reinforce the federation fleet even when it is on the other side of the war .

That and the AI not using shipyards to repair its fleets.

It is possible the western front is not bulding fleet , but since you can see them behing equal , its more problable that they dont want to move them (there may be a bug there in the reasons , or maybe they dont want to have piracy more than fighting this war that they didnt start)

Yeah we don't know and I kind of wish Aspec had tagged over to check or at least driven his fleets in further looking for the enemy. Because it's certainly not good that the AI will leave undefended annexed systems annexed rather than trying to liberate them.

 

[Elimdur]

To be fair, having fleets standing around in useless places and not even going to the next starbase for repairs is a problem I have already noticed in the current version. This is not a newly introduced bug. It does not happen always and without knowing the underlying mechanics hard to tell why it happens.

 

[Spaceception]

Looks like I'll mostly be practicing with the new mechanics in an empty galaxy. That was my plan anyway, but it looks like I'll be doing an extended version of that.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

To be fair, having fleets standing around in useless places and not even going to the next starbase for repairs is a problem I have already noticed in the current version. This is not a newly introduced bug. It does not happen always and without knowing the underlying mechanics hard to tell why it happens.

I think the AI prioritises retaking lost territory over most other things, so rather than spending some time repairing, it goes straight back into the fight to reclaim territory. This is at least what I've noticed so far in 2.1 and if this is true, remains the same in 2.2

 

[Technoincubus]

I always wondered why Crusader Kings 2 became progressively faster and more optimized and Stellaris became slowwer and slower with each patch...even optimization patches. Now CKII is the fastest Paradox game and Stellaris is even slower than Hearts of Iron IV

 

[grandad1982]

I always wondered why Crusader Kings 2 became progressively faster and more optimized and Stellaris became slowwer and slower with each patch...even optimization patches. Now CKII is the fastest Paradox game and Stellaris is even slower than Hearts of Iron IV

Yeah that's not how I remember it. CK2 got slower and slower for quite a while (RoI being a big culprit). Still that's no excuse as to why Stellaris struggles.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

It's always good to see a good old forum kerfuffle.

Run with it guys, run like the wind!

It's always good to see the word kerfuffle. It's a fun word.

 

[Ashantai]

A final reminder to keep posts on topic and productive.

Insults, unsubstantiated rumours or speculation and insults are not acceptable.

 

[Verx90]

True but the southern empire voted for it. I think it's fair that if an AI approves of a war that it should at least put itself on a war footing.



It may be the case that the southern empire isn't engaging because it doesn't think it can win, but it's going beyond that to completely ignoring the annexed systems in its territory even when Aspec has retreated. Given the length of the war even if it started with no ships at all it should have been able to build up a liberation fleet in that time.



That and the AI not using shipyards to repair its fleets.



Yeah we don't know and I kind of wish Aspec had tagged over to check or at least driven his fleets in further looking for the enemy. Because it's certainly not good that the AI will leave undefended annexed systems annexed rather than trying to liberate them.

yes, some thing don't come back, but i'm looking for differences from 1.9 - 2.1 IA , some times it just ignore the "war" even when they are the only one, because its a lost cause .

aspec should look with spectator mod to see what they are actualy doing ( if they have the same behaviour of the IA in 2.1 , they will be sitting in a sistem with a starstation)

its not that different from what a player would do anyway , with the difference that a player would chose a bastion on \ close the frontline , but the ia seems to prefer to keep starbase more " variable" so the ia is less likely to build up specialized starbases ( even if i saw some cases in 2.1 of IA building full bastions (exept the crew quarters)

so all in all, its more like the IA is now able to use the new economic sistem, but thinking that they will get to have a positronic IA that make choises like an human , i think its a big dream .

they can use the market now, so they will be probably more efficent than in 2.1 by the simple possibility of buying resources when they need them to make something ; they should not be too bad , if all IA with a moderate empire can get to have 30k fleet power in 80 years, its WAY better than 2.1 ( some small empire never go over 2k fleet power)

 

[wingren013]

There's a little bit more back and forth with the western neighbour over the rest of part 5 and all of part 6 (basically an hour of gameplay) and they do upgrade many of their nearby stations for defence, but they aren't a serious threat. The AI doesn't repair its armour and the fleet it attacks with is equal to one of Aspec's but can't do anything against it and an upgraded starbase. The worse AI problem is the southern empire. Across the entire hour not only does it not attack Aspec never sees a single ship of theirs. Eventually he sends his second fleet in and takes over 3 systems and a planet. There is no resistance and he quickly brings his fleet back to his territory. Again no southern empire fleet appears and ever attempts to take its systems back.

This is how the AI currently fights wars.

How the AI in Stelaris works is that it will find a task and then find a fleet that it thinks is strong enough to do the task. It won't actively try and use its fleets that are sitting around (the cause of AI fleets sometimes camping around a star deep in their territory) and it won't reevaluate task that it has given out (which causes the AI to suicide it's fleets into much stronger fleets. If you pay attention you can see that the AI will do things like send a 2k fleet to attacck your 1k fleet while ignoring the 3k fleet accompanying your 1k fleet)

(note I'm just guessing from my own knowledge of AI programming and what I've seen the AI do. I don't think any developer has come out and told us how the AI functions)

 

[JOD]

This is how the AI currently fights wars.

Bingo. It's not at all unheard of in the current build for the AI to refuse to engage because it realizes it's outclassed but doesn't know what to do about it.

I've also sen them suicide to attack a weak starbase/fleet and ignore that I have twice the fleet power only 1-2 jumps or a relay gate away.

Those don't sound like new bugs, they sound like the same occasional AI priority problems the current AI has.

Same thing for the complaints about the AI not fully repairing it's fleet before attacking. It happens in the current build too.

 

[Harle]

It's pretty typical for issues to arise out of major changes. The game has never been hit with such a huge change-up in a single patch; not even the FTL cull was this big a change, from a technical position.

Suffice to say, I wasn't expecting a perfect rollout. Paradox isn't going to abandon the game suddenly though, so the doom-saying is a tad much. There will be more patches. Regularly, no doubt, for a while.

 

[Swordy_]

Guys be positive. (Or else!) I'm sure, that even Paradox won't ignore bugs like this. It might take a few weeks, or months, but they eventually fix it. Not like they have much choice, because if they don't, then playerbase gona drop, and next DLC will not sold well.

People for have been predicting the death of Paradox for as long as I've been playing Paradox games. Their playerbase keeps growing, their company keeps expanding with new titles and their games keep getting better from a sales point and a gameplay point.

Their model works. They've built up a hell of a lot of goodwill from the gaming community in how they conduct their business and the quality of games that they produce.

As @Harle pointed out, doing a rollout of a game changing scale such as this will invariably have some day one problems and will invariably be patched. That's not a Paradox issue, that's a "every piece of software in the world" issue.

I worked on software for the NHS in the UK and various other business critical systems and Paradox games are positively perfect compared to the general standard of day one software released throughout industry. Gaming actually has some of the strongest QA and testing strategies in the entire software development industry. Like all young programmers, I gave the gaming industry a shot too and even by the standards of the gaming industry, Paradox testing team seems quite good. There's some horror stories out there.

Software is hard. Very hard. You cannot create software without bugs - as in it's literally an impossible thing to do mathematically once the project reaches a certain size. It's not a case of them "ignoring them" or some such other idea. They're all professionals who take pride in their work as every other professional does; the idea that they notice a bug but just ignore it is actually pretty insulting.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Can you guys update me if performance has improved with the recent patch? I have a game at around 2430 and its turned into a slideshow now. To be fair I did build extra gateways for achievements, but I also changed resolution from 4k back to 1080p, along with all other options on low - no difference in performance.

I don't quite remember when I started the save, it might have been before the latest beta test update.

Does anyone have a save played up to lategame that was created after the most recent update? If so, did your performance improve at all? Obviously playing non-Gestalt.

 

[Patrocious]

Can you guys update me if performance has improved with the recent patch? I have a game at around 2430 and its turned into a slideshow now. To be fair I did build extra gateways for achievements, but I also changed resolution from 4k back to 1080p, along with all other options on low - no difference in performance.

Lategame performance is still terrible for me in 2.2.3 in a medium galaxy. These issues are most certainly CPU related so don't bother with graphic settings.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Lategame performance is still terrible for me in 2.2.3 in a medium galaxy. These issues are most certainly CPU related so don't bother with graphic settings.

Thank you for your reply. Has anyone tried lowering gateway and wormhole count and use the " !TPRPF" mod? Its supposed to remove lategame lag due to trade system by making changes to trade routes.

 

[supreme]

Came back to try Stellaris again after a very long absence and my game is stuttering so much it is just unplayable, my last play through was about a year and half ago and though it got bad late game at least you could finish it. I thought the new pop system was going to improve performance but it seems to have made it worse?

Shame really because I was having a great experience playing the game it has vastly improved since I last played and is more engaging but the performance is awful. Also the AI seem to almost come to a standstill mid game even on grand admiral setting, both their economy and fleet power seems to stagnate and the only challenge left is the mid/late game crisis.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

So does no one have a good solution for this issue? I am opted into the beta patch, but performance did not increase for me.

Any ideas on mods to try that might help with this other than the ones mentioned? Maybe we can do some edits in the game files to improve performance or something? If anyone could give me suggestions I would be very happy.

I would gladly post a savegame aswell so that some of the developers can analyze it and make the game better, just do something to make the game playable again please. I don't want to be forced into playing with 0 gateways, wormholes etc just because one update turned the game upside down.

 

[Palid23]

So does no one have a good solution for this issue? I am opted into the beta patch, but performance did not increase for me.

Any ideas on mods to try that might help with this other than the ones mentioned? Maybe we can do some edits in the game files to improve performance or something? If anyone could give me suggestions I would be very happy.

I would gladly post a savegame aswell so that some of the developers can analyze it and make the game better, just do something to make the game playable again please. I don't want to be forced into playing with 0 gateways, wormholes etc just because one update turned the game upside down.

Unfortunately there is no fix for the stuttering. we're at the mercy of the devs on this one.. this problem persists in 2.2.3 and I fear they're going to release it as is and we're all going to be stuck waiting for another patch under the hope it gets better. I hate to be a debbie downer without offering up much of a solution but I tried playing through the problem and found myself restarting every time around 2300-2350 because it became unbearable. I know they are at least addressing the issue but it's been 3 weeks and my hope for this getting fixed within a reasonable amount of time is starting to dwindle.