Seriously PDX... Fix your AI Logic across the board..

[Kinkness]

I don't care if you post pone your badly needed upcoming Diplomacy/Federation update for a whole year to make this happen. (Lets be honest, its the only next big update that could possibly happen, as its the last thing in Stellaris that feels absolutely.. non existant compared to everything else).

But really.. Your bare bones, basic, and non sensical AI worked for the super simplistic "place a building on a tile gg forget everything".. Even then it could barely function properly.... but now its damn near completely broken all over the place....
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Planets:
- AI building police stations, and precincts and stuff up the yazoo..

- AI doubling down on their need to cheat with free resources because they are all working in massive negative incomes for everything. (Which really makes the ENTIRE game feel cheap and cheesy when you know the AI is literally getting so many free hand outs cuz of how incompetent it is.. I can't push to break an enemies economy, or make it fall from within cuz the game will just give it free massive handouts). This becomes apparent when you vassalize a small nation only to have your +30 energy, and +20 minerals drop into the -50's for both.. For a nation that's only 1/4th your size, and thats AFTER you destroy the space stations, and ships to bring everything within your limits, and you're still royally fucked for HOURS after trying to fix the broken AI economy working on massive negatives...

Sectors:
- My god are sectors horrendous... 9/10 times they wont build anything...

- If they do build something they're using the same broken a$$ AI logic that I explained above... building police stations, and all types of non sensical crap... I've seen the sector AI when it did actually decide to do something, thought "gee we're getting +50 food and -30 minerals... lets build more farms!"..... /facepalm

- 9/10 times though.... they don't do crap even on a basic level.. they don't shut down or prioritize jobs based on how the economy is.. They don't build appropriate robots, or grow appropriate pops for what is needed...

- I need to micro manage EVERYTHING... which is 10x more micro managing than it used to be... Not only do I need to choose what building to build, I also need to keep an eye on housing, sectors, trade, fluctuating economy due to people migrating and straight up saying "i'm out of this b#$@" and leaving. I need to adjust and micro manage shutting down certain jobs to force pops into others... the list goes on....

- Multiplayer is... thrown out the window for me and my friends, because we need to pause, or slow down the game so often now for a game that already took a hella long time to complete, because we need to constantly baby sit 30 planets...

Fleets:

Throwing this in here, because fleets need to be seriously re worked logic wise as well.. Right now they're just "Derrr lets ram ourselves straight into the brick wall in front of us repeatedly until we gotta retreat!" I like the fact the fleets and admirals are supposed to feel like their own entity making decisions.. But right now its like they are rogues doing their own thing..

I need ways to tell my 2 fleets to pull back.. no not retreat 9 systems away.. no.. to PULL BACK.. disengage.. re group...

I need the enemy AI to do the same..

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As someone wrote in another post, which is exactly how I feel:

As someone who didn't actually like babysitting more than about 5 worlds sector AI not working is a real pain and leads to me just randomly clicking on stuff just to get warnings to go away. In the same vein having 25 planets in 23 different sectors is annoying as hell as well. This feels like way too much micro in my supposedly macro grand strategy game.

From my understanding this update was supposed to bring more options, but less micro (or at least less clicking required).. it failed horribly on the less micro and less clicking because of how broken and stupid the AI is.. I no longer need to just manage a handful of planets.. I now need to manage ALL of them.. The sector AI used to.. albeit not very well, it DID function, and it was something I could allow to leave to its own accord and it wouldn't royally screw me hardcore. Now it does... or it doesn't do anything.. Either it screws me royally on stupid buildings, or it literally doesn't do jack..

Fix the AI... because as of right now.. its so dreadfully backwards, it's sucking all the fun out of this amazing update..

Update:

I was just looking at the steam store, and I see quite alot of people who have switched their positive votes to negative votes primarily due to the AI and how horrendous it is. Stellaris is unfortunately sitting at a mixed.. and I'm half tempted to switch my vote to negative as well, since I honestly cannot recommend the game to anyone in its current state...

Tried telling a friend who used to play Stellaris with me why he should come back and play it just yesterday, and my constant defense is "its good with mods"... really makes you stop in your tracks.... Especially when its referring to core fundamentals like AI and needing mods like Glavius if you want the game to even function half appropriately...

I really hope this is a huge wake up call to PD... the problem is worse than it may first appear.

 

[Seisho]

I partially agree and partially disagree

The AI need a really harsch rework. My economy was totally screwed up after I annexed a large chunk of a Fanatic Purifier empire and the building on their planets...whoa, that sucks big time.
I would guess sector management Ai is the same - but as I prefer to manage my sectors myself... *shrug*

But sevtors are also a point...every single habitat planet annexed from said purifier empire resultet in a new 1 planet sector...that was rather uncomfortable.


But on the other hand - the new system feels not much more micro-managy as you describe (imo)
It is rather you have to think more about how to act and don't just brainless hit the upgrade button of 20+ power plants on your plents and just look which tile gives the most yield
I am so friggin glad that that is over

 

[Badesumofu]

The AI does need improvement and I think that should be a serious focus for a while. Both in the post-release support for Megacorp and then as a stand alone project before the next expansion. Maybe have some paid content developed that is mostly made by content designers and artists that doesn't change game systems or mechanics very much. That frees up programmers and mechanic designers to work on getting the AI functional.

I don't agree with what you're saying about micro, though. I don't feel any need to automate sectors in 2.2. The problem with the micro in the old system was that it was mindless and cumbersome. Just building out planets and upgrading buildings with very few meaningful decisions being made and far more clicks than needed. The new system involves doing a lot of stuff, but it seems like it's stuff that is actually consequential. When I interact with my planets I'm planning out how I want them to develop so that they best benefit my empire and get the most out of their natural features. I'm deciding whether to use that precious building slot to get amenities back in the green or just take the hit to stability because I really need to expand my soap manufacturing operation. There's plenty to do but there is actual thought going into it. Planets tend to naturally require less interaction as they mature anyway.

 

[ShaTiK]

Sadly I have to agree with all of these, apart from this one

They don't build appropriate robots, or grow appropriate pops for what is needed...

No one can choose which pop to grow. Game does to by itself, if I understood dev diaries correclty and my, so far, only game in 2.2. And microing robots is literally impossible with how work slots work now - it is my understanding that specialising robots or pops now is pointless. Maybe they will work at a place where they will get the biggest bonus, and maybe they can't. These things are really hard to make a formula for. But it makes resource-traits almost useless now. Can't build a working economy without breaking AI and old species trait system i guess..

 

[Kinkness]

The AI does need improvement and I think that should be a serious focus for a while. Both in the post-release support for Megacorp and then as a stand alone project before the next expansion. Maybe have some paid content developed that is mostly made by content designers and artists that doesn't change game systems or mechanics very much. That frees up programmers and mechanic designers to work on getting the AI functional.

I don't agree with what you're saying about micro, though. I don't feel any need to automate sectors in 2.2. The problem with the micro in the old system was that it was mindless and cumbersome. Just building out planets and upgrading buildings with very few meaningful decisions being made and far more clicks than needed. The new system involves doing a lot of stuff, but it seems like it's stuff that is actually consequential. When I interact with my planets I'm planning out how I want them to develop so that they best benefit my empire and get the most out of their natural features. I'm deciding whether to use that precious building slot to get amenities back in the green or just take the hit to stability because I really need to expand my soap manufacturing operation. There's plenty to do but there is actual thought going into it. Planets tend to naturally require less interaction as they mature anyway.

I guess it's more on the multiplayer side.. when playing with friends, etc. its far better to have a working sector AI so you can focus on other things, and keep the game going steadily. Single player its not as big of a deal since you can pause, or deal with things at your own pace.

 

[Kinkness]

Sadly I have to agree with all of these, apart from this one

No one can choose which pop to grow. Game does to by itself, if I understood dev diaries correclty and my, so far, only game in 2.2. And microing robots is literally impossible with how work slots work now - it is my understanding that specialising robots or pops now is pointless. Maybe they will work at a place where they will get the biggest bonus, and maybe they can't. These things are really hard to make a formula for. But it makes resource-traits almost useless now. Can't build a working economy without breaking AI and old species trait system i guess..

I love paradox.. but to be honest it was just lazy... Not gonna lie.. It is more than simple to make it a check when building.. What jobs are open.. what pops would be best for that slot.. then build it..

 

[ShaTiK]

I love paradox.. but to be honest it was just lazy... Not gonna lie.. It is more than simple to make it a check when building.. What jobs are open.. what pops would be best for that slot.. then build it..

I'm 95% sure that quantifying and making a working algorithm out of seemingly simple 'pick the best' is a hell of a work. There are tons and tons of possible combinations that breaks these things. And the sheer number of possible variations, when you have 8 various work slots and 4 species, are bad enough. And then running these formulas on EACH work slot on every planet every month - the game performance is already became worse in 2.2. These kind of calculation would just kill it

 

[Xendance]

Sadly I have to agree with all of these, apart from this one

No one can choose which pop to grow. Game does to by itself, if I understood dev diaries correclty and my, so far, only game in 2.2. And microing robots is literally impossible with how work slots work now - it is my understanding that specialising robots or pops now is pointless. Maybe they will work at a place where they will get the biggest bonus, and maybe they can't. These things are really hard to make a formula for. But it makes resource-traits almost useless now. Can't build a working economy without breaking AI and old species trait system i guess..

You can choose, they just grow slower that way.

 

[ShaTiK]

You can choose, they just grow slower that way.

Did not know that. But, again, with all that is going on even at 30 pops on a planet, it's hardly worth it. You CAN make a fancy miner/energy/research specialized species/robots. And it could give you up to 30% performance in some cases, yes. And yet I think that it's rather pointless, sadly. Making a whole game mechanic obsolete is sad, but I can't see how they can fix it without making game to compute 15 times stuff every month.

 

[Anemetius]

Same. With such dumb AI game is not fun anymore. And I dont want them to "fix" this by adding more moddifers to buff AI's resources. I feel like AI is doing nothing. Not even upgrading buildings or creating jobs. Most AI planets are full of unemployment pops.

Why Stellaris AI is so dumb comapred to the one from Civilzation?

 

[pmchem]

Sigh, this seems even worse than 2.0.

1 step forward, 3 steps back.

 

[stumason]

Not sure about the complaint about sectors - they are, as a default, disabled. They won't build anything unless you tell them too and I am not sure why you would. You can go the entire game without even acknowledging that sectors exist. You can even remove them from the outliner and just show planets.

As for planetary "micro" - personally, I have no objection to "micro" and I think some people will complain about it until everything is automated and they don't have to do anything, but anyhoo, I have seen many people complain about empty job slots, or having to "micro" their pops to prevent their economies tanking as pops move up a strata- why are you doing this? Is it because you are desperately trying to ensure full employment? This is a path to ruin.

Like in the real world, 100% employment isn't desirable. If you keep building those higher strata jobs, people will move into them and if you're so bad at planning ahead that you can't see this, your economy will tank as the minerals/food/energy fall away. It is far, far better to allow unemployment to rise a bit and then build a higher strata building - you won't have empty worker slots then! You won't need to keep shuffling your pops about to fill those job roles etc.

Seems to me a lot of people are making work for themselves in this regard.

As for pops of different traits, I've seen farmer aliens take up farmer jobs from my humans who then went into being Clerks, I've seen my citizen humans displace resident alien leaders who then get demoted. It can take a little while for the pops to organise, though.

 

[#Tukuro]

Not being able to assign resources automatically to sectors is one the worst pet peeves I have with the update. It makes larger maps unplayable by default.
I don't even get why they removed custom sectors. There's no sector limit, nor is there a limit for a planet being in a different sector. The only thing that changes is that you need a lot more governors to manage them, and the tedious micro of a dozen one-planet sectors.
If they just wanted larger empires to have more governors, why not just let us assign more governors to sectors if we go over some arbitrary cap? Just divide the bonus of each governor, and call it a day...

I don't even get how and why they are created, unlike literally everything else that has changed so far.
I've seen planets two jumps removed from a homeworld create a new sector. While on the other hand, it's somehow possible for a planet several jumps away to end up in the same sector as your homeworld.
From what I know, it's not explained anywhere. I've found no tooltip. And even checking the scripts leaves me none the wiser...

 

[The Village Idi]

Agreed.

And for everyone that is both politely and not so politely stating that it is a good thing that we have full control over 30 planets and asking why anyone would ever want the AI to do it for us. Remember not everyone wants to have to do that much micro. I have played pretty much every Paradox game since EU 1, without fail my favorites are the ones that have systems in place to reduce the amount of micro I have to do. HOI became great to me with 3 and the automated theaters but I could still micro a small force, in Vic 2 I always go for the governments that auto build factories but allow me to interfere where needed and in Stellaris I could keep a few core worlds to myself and put everything else in a sector while making small adjustments myself.

I want the GRAND part of grand strategy, let the AI handle the annoying day to day stuff and let me make the bigger decisions. Having to tell each of 30 planets to build a new set of houses or a new mine, etc. gets old for me very quickly. In my swarm game I was literally having to scroll through the planet list every minute to check if something was needed and usually something was across all those worlds. Add fighting a war into that and by the time my attention gets back to the planets several of them are falling apart. And that was without having to deal with trade at all.

I know plenty of people out there love the micro to get every last bit of have full control and get every last bit of advantage possible. But please remember that there are tons of us here that like the more high level stuff and the old sectors while not perfect were perfectly fine for us to have fun, as of now many of us are not. And they need every paying customer they can get to continue to provide us these fantastic games.


As to the AI it is fairly obvious that there was a deadline for release and it may even have been sprung on the team in the last couple weeks. The first thing they had to do was make the systems work, having the AI be able to control them was the last thing that needed to be done and obviously that did not get done in time. It will be fixed, just look to Glavius's AI mod and what he has been able to get accomplished in the last couple days. It will get done there just was not enough time. Does anyone remember the god awful economy in Vic 2 on release or the idiotic AI in HOI 4, this is Paradox and they do fix this stuff... eventually.

I have faith that sectors, piracy, balance and general AI will get fixed up. Probably not to the extremely high standards that some people expect but I am pretty sure it will be better than it was before. To think that the dev team is happy with the AI on this release is ridiculous but when the people that sign your checks say it will be released on this date you get done what you can then fix it up later.

 

[durbal]

I'm 95% sure that quantifying and making a working algorithm out of seemingly simple 'pick the best' is a hell of a work. There are tons and tons of possible combinations that breaks these things. And the sheer number of possible variations, when you have 8 various work slots and 4 species, are bad enough. And then running these formulas on EACH work slot on every planet every month - the game performance is already became worse in 2.2. These kind of calculation would just kill it

Not really. It's just a simple sorting algorithm.

 

[Damedius]

I'm 95% sure that quantifying and making a working algorithm out of seemingly simple 'pick the best' is a hell of a work. There are tons and tons of possible combinations that breaks these things. And the sheer number of possible variations, when you have 8 various work slots and 4 species, are bad enough. And then running these formulas on EACH work slot on every planet every month - the game performance is already became worse in 2.2. These kind of calculation would just kill it

Explain how modders can make better AI without making the game unplayable then.

 

[Devanor]

 

[ShaTiK]

Explain how modders can make better AI without making the game unplayable then.

Someone (maybe even in this thread, although I could be mixing up) explained that the game already have weights for traits, so game tries to a degree to put pops into more fitting slots. And modders could tweak these weights a bit to make system better. That part is true and mods make the game better. But that's only half of the equation, because ultimately it's not so much about putting the best pop into fitting slot problem - it's about how to tie it to the global empire's economy, both for AI empire and for sector AI to reduce player micro. And that's a much bigger problem to do properly. Plus, these two algorithms - 'best suited pop' and 'most needed for empire' would inevitably clash. My point? Yes, modders can tweak game to make it better in regards of suiting slot to pop - and I have no answer to 'why devs didn't do it themselves if it took a single modder 2 days to patch it'. But the problem, as I see it, is much-much bigger and it's the fixing of the clash of two algorithms that takes a lot of time and effort on part of the devs that people overlook.

 

[Rillian1980]

Thing Is ai so broke that surely it's just bugged cant for the life of me believe paradox would release an ai as is. Hopefully this can be fixed in next two weeks was looking forward to Xmas break playing this

 

[magickware99]

I don't understand why the devs would choose to increase the complexity of the game in a meaningless fashion by adding in alloys and consumer goods. I suppose they make sure from a RP/technical stand-point, but they can be abstracted down to minerals in the end with no real loss at all.

More importantly, the AI was incapable of handling three critical resources. Why add two more to the mix?