Phenotype Traits

[Derp]

The solution to that is more interesting/unique Traits and more interesting/unique AI Personalities, not to make AI's more similar.

More interesting and unique traits/personalities, assigned completely randomly, will still be as dull as what we have now.

If anything the AI should start with a personality and work backwards from there, instead of just shotgunning a wall and seeing what picture fits the dots the closest.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

More interesting and unique traits/personalities, assigned completely randomly, will still be as dull as what we have now.

If anything the AI should start with a personality and work backwards from there, instead of just shotgunning a wall and seeing what picture fits the dots the closest.

Nah. I vastly prefer the random nature of things- having to use your imagination a bit isn't a bad thing, and is far better than the game basically just making some pre-set empires you run into all the time. I already see the Kingdom of Yondhim or whatever far too often

 

[aono]

I don't agree with the OP's idea but I'm not averse to a more nuanced and guided AI empire generation than the current system where the computer seemingly just picks random things out of a hat and throws them at the wall.

There is a joke in russian game development.
"Do you know how russian game developer doing procedural generation? He will write a big, thorough, nice generation algorithm. On assembler. Then he will try to put it into game, system will grant a great deal of paradox results, so he will spit and just put random. As his stories about cool generator will be in Net, fans will try to decypher it's logic."

If anything the AI should start with a personality and work backwards from there, instead of just shotgunning a wall and seeing what picture fits the dots the closest.

By the way, it's intresting issue with empire ethics changing in-game (and I'd like to know can your empire ethic change uncontrollable). How should it affect personality? If this feature would be locked for player use only, it would be boring.
Also it's a question (maybe answered) - will traits actualy weight to ethic divergence and faction appeal?

 

[Cruxador]

Weighting any traits is bad, IMO. We need more variety, not less.

Weight doesn't decrease variety. Weighing things fundamentally leaves variety unchanged (barring 100% and 0% weights, which nobody is advocating) but by making probabilities lopsided, it provides an illusion of greater variety. You need to have the "typical" option in order to contrast the weird stuff to it. If everything's weird, you get what some procedural folks refer to as a gray goo. All these bright colors blended together to make something bland, boring, and (often as not) impenetrable.