Sector Discussion/Quarantine Thread

[Tim_Ward]

Actually, if Sega/CA and Firaxis is any indication, throwing more money at the AI team is not the end all be all of AI development. Indeed, adding too many people onto the payroll, and having too many people messing with the code, will probably wreck rather then enhance the AI.

I don't know about Warhammer Total War, but CA had one (1) person working on AI for Empire, and I think for Rome 2 as well.

Just remember, unlike PDX titles, Total War games need two totally separate AI's, one for the campaign and one for the battles, and the Total War games are big triple A titles and that CA are owned by an enormous publisher.

1 person.

I don't know about today, but under-prioritising AI has definitely been a problem in the industry historically.

 

[RELee]

There are things - like having rules about what you can or cannot disband or control when in a sector be inconsistently applied - that are absolutely not.

I will leave you to argue that with Wiz. I wish you luck.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

Look. The fact that you have not personally seen problems with sectors does not mean that those problems don't exist.

I stand by what I said: you cannot reasonably deny that there are problems with sectors. Too many players have talked about these issues. This entire thread would not need to exist if those issues were not glaring ones. This thread has over 11k views and very few people are trying to defend sectors as good implementations where the only problems are caused by player stupidity. Were it actually only a minority of people seeing problems, you'd see very different behavior. There's not even silent disagreement with complaints through the vote buttons. Either there is a problem with the implementation, or there is a problem with the way the mechanic was presented to the players, or both. Regardless, there is a problem, and it needs some kind of actual solution.

The point of good AI is to emulate a competent player. If the sector AI were at least decently competent, even if it weren't as optimal as all the powergamers want, there would not be this amount of complaints about it. The fact that there is some specific way to play that sectors can perform adequately under doesn't change the fact that there is a problem: if a real player were controlling an individual sector, under all the constraints an empire placed on them, they would still find some way to make progress. They would not freeze and be completely incapable of fixing a starving world. I mean, taxation is applied after sector maintenance, right? There is absolutely no reason the sector AI should care about energy expenditure to satisfy the focus the empire put on them for any maintenance that doesn't put them strictly negative if they have entirely free tiles to build on.

If there are situations the AI cannot perform under comparable to a human, then the AI is bad. Full stop.

So, we have two possibilities: the AI is bad, and needs fixing (or needs the symptoms of the terrible AI to be alleviated - and this thread is full of these types of suggestions). Or, there is one specific way to use sectors and the game does an absolutely atrocious job of informing the player what that way is or how to fix sector problems or what the sector is trying to do. The tooltip that will be added in 1.5 will be useful for this, but that still doesn't change the fact that the game itself has all these options for controlling sectors and yet only one seems to work, with no indication to the player that anything else is a bad idea.

 

[RELee]

There are many more possibilities here. The fact that you seem to insist on the last word and will not politely disengage from a difference of opinion and playing style suggests one right away. You will, of course, excuse me while I go away now.

 

[praftd]

There are really only 2 major things that would make sectors almost perfect for me.

1.) Please allow us to tax our sectors from 0% - 100% using a slider. Being locked at a max 75% is a shame because there are so many times I have sectors that are at +141 minerals or something and I have no access to them despite the fact my empire is mineral starved.

2.) Please allow use to draw resources from sector storage. Just like in #1, there are plenty of times my sectors are sitting on 10k+ energy and minerals and are going completely to waste.

I believe these two changes would make sectors a lot more palpable for people. Including myself who doesn't really have an issue with them otherwise.

 

[Stripes]

Additional, forced mineral "sink" without any changes on sectors wasting resources away.

Not exactly encouraging.

 

[Tim_Ward]

Easiest way to stop sectors stockpiling resources when they have nothing to spend it on is simply to let the player put a cap on how much they stockpile. Anything they collect that goes above that simply goes directly to the main empire.

 

[Kayden_II]

As in the other Thread ...

1. A separate Taxation of Energy-Credits (EC(s)) and Minerals ...
2. A second Form of Taxation (Stockpile-Taxation) as Addition to the first One (Income-Taxation) ...
3. 2 new Ethics: "Socialism" and "Capitalism" ...
3.1. "Socialism": Small Dis-Advantage (Happiness (H.)) with Stockpile-Taxation, but big One with Income-Taxation ...
3.2. "Capitalism": Small Dis-Advantage (H.) with Income-Taxation, but big One with Stockpile-Taxation ...

4. Way more empty Tiles on Worlds (66%) to out-maneuver the Dilemma of "Respecting Tile-Resources" and Having a balanced Production of ECs, Minerals and Research-Points ...
5. At Least: Halve the Weight-Parameters of Food-Tiles ! ...
6. At Least: Double the Weight-Parameters of EC-Tiles !

 

[LordMagus]

Someone mentioned either in this thread or another one last week that once a sector hit five planets it seemed to have problems allocating resources and just froze up instead. Might be worthwhile to split your sectors up into smaller chunks and see if that helps.

This isn't the case for me, the sector only contains 1 planet... it should have no problems.

Is the sector set to allow to build anything other than buildings? Robots, space construction, etc?

That's a no, reference first screenshot.

As can be seen below, I then ran the game for nearly 5 months to see if the AI was just slow. They did NOT queue a single building to upgrade. Can anybody think of a legitimate reason i.e. my sector settings that would explain this?

 

[Foefaller]

This isn't the case for me, the sector only contains 1 planet... it should have no problems.

View attachment 232204



That's a no, reference first screenshot.

As can be seen below, I then ran the game for nearly 5 months to see if the AI was just slow. They did NOT queue a single building to construct. Can anybody think of a legitimate reason i.e. my sector settings that would explain this?

View attachment 232205

If you have a save for that, I'd probably make a post on the bug report forums.

As for a guess... maybe it's trying to do something you don't have the tech for? Maybe something you are currently researching but haven't finished? I think there is a console command that lets you unlock techs. after you upload the save for the report, I'd try that and see if it starts clearing the tiles blockers/upgrading/something similar.

 

[PirateJack]

Oh, I see it now. The AI doesn't queue up buildings. It waits until a given building is finished (in case of excess POPs on a planet) or a POP has finished growing (in case of not enough buildings) before deciding on what to build next. This is because the AI doesn't think the same way we do. The reason we're able to queue things up is because our memories aren't good enough to keep that kind of detail in mind for multiple planets over many in-game months worth of progress. The AI doesn't need that kind of crutch, so it decides priorities at time of update.

So in a single planet sector it waits until the POP is developed before it starts building a structure, whereas in a planet with excess POPs it would determine build order at the time the previous building is completed.

Admittedly this could do with some improvement, and it appears to have been improved for 1.5 given the Wiz's updates, but overall it could be a lot worse.

 

[LordMagus]

If you have a save for that, I'd probably make a post on the bug report forums.

As for a guess... maybe it's trying to do something you don't have the tech for? Maybe something you are currently researching but haven't finished? I think there is a console command that lets you unlock techs. after you upload the save for the report, I'd try that and see if it starts clearing the tiles blockers/upgrading/something similar.

Posted a bug report about it just before, given how annoying this is. My two guesses are either that the sector AI wants more mineral reserve before it starts upgrading the energy plants, or it's allocating most of the resources to the tile blockers it can't yet clear. I'll test it in just a bit and see what happens.

Oh, I see it now. The AI doesn't queue up buildings. It waits until a given building is finished (in case of excess POPs on a planet) or a POP has finished growing (in case of not enough buildings) before deciding on what to build next. This is because the AI doesn't think the same way we do. The reason we're able to queue things up is because our memories aren't good enough to keep that kind of detail in mind for multiple planets over many in-game months worth of progress. The AI doesn't need that kind of crutch, so it decides priorities at time of update.

So in a single planet sector it waits until the POP is developed before it starts building a structure, whereas in a planet with excess POPs it would determine build order at the time the previous building is completed.

Admittedly this could do with some improvement, and it appears to have been improved for 1.5 given the Wiz's updates, but overall it could be a lot worse.

The exact issue isn't that it's not queuing a building for the growing pop, it's that it's not upgrading the power plants on the planet despite having the tech and minerals to do so.

 

[Derp]

...

As can be seen below, I then ran the game for nearly 5 months to see if the AI was just slow. They did NOT queue a single building to upgrade. Can anybody think of a legitimate reason i.e. my sector settings that would explain this?

No, it definitely seems like either a bug or bad decision making. There's no reason the AI should sit on minerals in a case like that.

 

[Robotkiller]

If the following mechanics were to be added to sectors, I would be completely satisfied:

• Spend influence points to modify anything in a sector (the values I list are mere suggestions)
  • 2 pts to build a new building
  • 1 pt to upgrade existing building
  • 3 pts to demolish/replace building
  • 5 pts to move pops to different tiles on same planet
  • Double the cost of resettling to a different planet, depending on the current cost for core worlds
• Whitelist/blacklist types of buildings - I despise seeing shield generators and combat arenas on every single planet
• If the sector's storage of resources is maxed-out, the spillover is given to the empire, but assessed at a penalty (say 25% is lost)
  • Reduce loss of spillover by researching administrative techs

 

[Agamemnic]

If the following mechanics were to be added to sectors, I would be completely satisfied:

• Spend influence points to modify anything in a sector (the values I list are mere suggestions)
  • 2 pts to build a new building
  • 1 pt to upgrade existing building
  • 3 pts to demolish/replace building
  • 5 pts to move pops to different tiles on same planet
  • Double the cost of resettling to a different planet, depending on the current cost for core worlds
• Whitelist/blacklist types of buildings - I despise seeing shield generators and combat arenas on every single planet
• If the sector's storage of resources is maxed-out, the spillover is given to the empire, but assessed at a penalty (say 25% is lost)
  • Reduce loss of spillover by researching administrative techs

Great suggestions. I'd also add that the sector's max storage be determined by the number of planets its managing. E.g - a 5-planet sector shouldn't horde over 5k in minerals; likewise, a 50-planet sector will need more than 5k.

I'd also limit the buildings one can interfere with. It should only be special buildings. The choice of special buildings is very tactical and hence one the AI will never get right. Power plants, farms etc shouldn't be micro'd by the player ever

 

[LordMagus]

If you have a save for that, I'd probably make a post on the bug report forums.

As for a guess... maybe it's trying to do something you don't have the tech for? Maybe something you are currently researching but haven't finished? I think there is a console command that lets you unlock techs. after you upload the save for the report, I'd try that and see if it starts clearing the tiles blockers/upgrading/something similar.

Okay, I officially tested it. This issue only occurred on a planet with tile blockers that I didn't have the research for. I tried giving the sector another 1000 minerals just in case it was saving them for tile clearing, didn't do anything.
As can be seen, all other planets in sectors are upgrading their power plants no problem:

After using the console to unlock the required tech to clear glaciers, the sector proceeded to clear all the tiles.

After taking all that time on clearing those tiles, when it STILL had a tile for another POP to grow on aside from the 1 you see on the engineering research tile, here's the kicker. Sector AI did not upgrade the energy buildings that are already being worked. Despite what others in this thread have said about sector AI not building on a tile until a pop has finished growing, it did exactly that:

So.... AI logic: It's better to build a power hub that gives +3 energy and a percentage booster on an unoccupied tile first, before doing +1 upgrades on tiles that are already being worked.
Now I know what you're thinking, this could easily be fixed by taking it out of sector and doing it myself. The only concern is, with larger sectors, you are sometimes unable to fix a troublesome planet without unassigning a heap of other planets first.

 

[Derp]

So are blockers blocking AIs from building properly? Maybe it's related to the bug that apparently causes sectors to bug out when robot building is enabled.

As to the second point, preferring to build on growing pop tiles over upgrading existing ones might not always be the best decision (such as when the sector has an excess of minerals and a pop that is still a long way from growing) but it's at least a reasonable decision. Might need to be tweaked in cases when a lot of minerals are available and a pop is still far from being fully grown.

 

[Robotkiller]

I've had cases where no tile blockers are present and some tiles still sit empty. I think I'll run a new game with robots banned.

 

[LordMagus]

So are blockers blocking AIs from building properly? Maybe it's related to the bug that apparently causes sectors to bug out when robot building is enabled.

As to the second point, preferring to build on growing pop tiles over upgrading existing ones might not always be the best decision (such as when the sector has an excess of minerals and a pop that is still a long way from growing) but it's at least a reasonable decision. Might need to be tweaked in cases when a lot of minerals are available and a pop is still far from being fully grown.

Yep, it's the tile blockers. The fact is, it's clearly a bad decision as the POP in question will take like 50 months to grow and the power hub is useless compared to upgrading all existing power plants. I had to use the console to complete the social research slot about 3-4 times before i got the glacier removal tech. That means that the colony would have sat there for YEARS without building or upgrading anything, waiting to clear those blockers.

TL;DR: Paradox, the issue is the tile blockers messing with the sector AI's build priority.

 

[LordDamien]

The one problem I had with Sector AI.. Is that when I make Certain population slaves on there planets.. I do not want them to free those Populations.. There is a good reason why they are Slaves ( Recently taken over empire.. They hate me but if they are in Slavery they become a little bit more happy and so does my population )

Now maybe they fixed that.. It has been some time since I played.. But I remember that I was told not to put Enslaved people in sectors since they AI tends to want to free them although they are slaves for a reason. But again maybe they fixed that as that would be really annoying that.. Your Enslave populations become Free all of the sudden ( For Roleplaying Reasons.. and I have not tested this out.. But I would move all my Enslave Pops off my main worlds and put them on Prison planets.. but not sure if you can move enslaved Pops or not )

I am asking a serious question here but - What are the point of sectors to begin with ?.are they just a bunch of planets under one leader who is like a Co leader ?. Are they suppose to do anything with the resources you give them ?. Like build up a navy or army.. What is there purpose ?