So.......sector AI.......

[Bankipriel]

I general I wouldn't let sectors build up new planets. I don't trust them with building placement. I normally find ways to have control of developing core planets, then queue up at least the base buildings. After a bit, I let the sector take over upgrading or anything else with redevelopment turned off.

I feel like that is the only way to play vanilla. I wanted to play a few games in Utopia w/out mods to see how things were working, especially in light of all the new elements involving core system increases. It really feels like cheating to re-activate my unlimited core-worlds mod, but ... the alternative is SUCH a slow game-pace, where I have to develop everything myself or eat my hat in frustration at the terrible development choices.

If sectors could properly develop a world (not OPTIMALLY, but just properly---because optimal development often dis-respects tile-bonuses) then I think they'd otherwise be a great element in the game, now that we have good options for increasing core systems to a reasonable amount through development mechanics. Maybe next year?

 

[GamerSteve]

I general I wouldn't let sectors build up new planets. I don't trust them with building placement. I normally find ways to have control of developing core planets, then queue up at least the base buildings. After a bit, I let the sector take over upgrading or anything else with redevelopment turned off.

Well with the new limit of 3 core worlds, it's pretty damn hard at least early on, not to hand over undeveloped planets to sectors. I had 3 early, got war-dec'ed by an AI, and took 2 of their planets just to cripple 'em and stop it from happening again, and now I had to sectorize them immediately or lose my core.

So as nice as this sounds, and yes I used to try and do this in older versions of the game, at this point, 3-world core makes it impractical to develop your worlds before handing them over.

EDIT: And yes I know there are unity techs that allow you to upgrade this, but then you HAVE to go down those paths to avoid sectors being given immature worlds.

 

[Slynx]

i'm starting to hate Sectors after this night's game.
1)he always try to move pops. and it's especially annoying that he is moving my main species away and replacing them with processed xenos... -__-
2)when processed xenos is on a tile with a building that isn't working(damaged or without energy) he will not produce food. yes sector ai is trying to move pops into the building tiles...or build something if they are empty -__-

 

[grommile]

EDIT: And yes I know there are unity techs that allow you to upgrade this, but then you HAVE to go down those paths to avoid sectors being given immature worlds.

Given all the other wide-oriented bonuses it has, Expansion (the Tradition that gives +2 core systems on completion) is pretty much the best first tradition to take unless you are playing a strategy that actively requires you to take something else first.

 

[insanebe]

Well.... i see alot of CK2 here that has not worked well on the "Tile System" of stellaris.
Ck2 was simple, build and upgrade.
Stellaris has special resourses and adjacency bonuses on its tiles that CK2 doesn't, the AI seems to not work that well with that system, but it isn't broken.

I just except it as part of the game, the sector "vassal" lord is stupid.

Perhaps the absence of CK2's role play overcoate makes accepting that the sector AI vassal lord is stupid harder for people to accept....

 

[Slynx]

the AI seems to not work that well with that system, but it isn't broken.

they've implemented new systems (like processing, unity buildings, auto slave from species rights and so on) but haven't taught AI about them.
for example if you have a xenos with nat engineer on a planet Sector AI(at least in my test games) will try to put him in a lab. even if his rights are on Slave only.
already talked about processed pops and problems with them. he is moving them to inactive\broken buildings, or moving them to any non-food yields.
and unity building...(the most valuable building in the whole planet for me) ai seems to think they are worthless. cuz if he re-development s off - it tends to replace them asap. -__-

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

Well.... i see alot of CK2 here that has not worked well on the "Tile System" of stellaris.
Ck2 was simple, build and upgrade.
Stellaris has special resourses and adjacency bonuses on its tiles that CK2 doesn't, the AI seems to not work that well with that system, but it isn't broken.

I just except it as part of the game, the sector "vassal" lord is stupid.

Perhaps the absence of CK2's role play overcoate makes accepting that the sector AI vassal lord is stupid harder for people to accept....

Ck2 holding upgrades are incomparable.
In ck2 the AI can't build the wrong thing, it just builds in the wrong order.
Moreover holding improvements have no maintenance, they're strictly better.

Building the wrong improvements in Stellaris can be actively detrimental to your Civ; not only through maintenance, but also the increased unity costs, science costs & ethics divergence that ineffective pops cause.

 

[Zealuu]

AI decision-making (which is the hard part, AI is terrible even at simple pattern recognition) has improved massively in Hearts of Iron IV since its release, which was later than Stellaris. It's not perfect, by any means, but they don't get encircled quite as easily anymore, and generally don't start new wars if they're already losing another. If Paradox are going to do some 1.5.x patches, I hope one of them is dedicated to either hardwiring the AI (sector and otherwise) to do what they should, or that they find a way improve its decision-making.

Either that or just strip out sectors and let the AI cheat even harder.

 

[grommile]

Either that or just strip out sectors and let the AI cheat even harder.

If they strip out sectors, I will never play on anything but a Tiny map.

If I continue playing at all.

 

[Slynx]

If they strip out sectors, I will never play on anything but a Tiny map.

i don't understand. once fully established you have no use to returning to the planet (unless you wanna build something in a star port). and it's not a problem at all to manage 20-50-100 planets yourself.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

Whether PI intended it or not, sectors are a tool for alleviating the tedium of planet management. (Because it's brainless micro through an infuriatingly poor UI)

Like most 4x, development & management of your economy is a key concept of Stellaris.
Sector behaviour is an anathema to this concept.

Also balancing around the gross inefficiency of sector AI is a deeply flawed approach, as it creates a micro-game where the strategic player will bypass the flawed system - typically through some equally burdensome workaround* - for massive advantage.

* Specifics have been highlighted by others above

 

[grommile]

i don't understand.

Buildings on core worlds still need upgrading. Manually.

(If I was designing a space 4X, I would take Stars! or Master of Orion (the original) as my point of reference for how planets work...)

 

[Slynx]

Master of Orion

have mercy..it was almost 25 years ago

Spoiler: huh

how is it any better then stellaris?

maybe you can tell about it, so i wouldn't have to find and archive with the game?

 

[LeibSSolmai]

I see three problems with sectors at the moment (at least 5 less compared to before the Patch):

1. They don´t completely ignore special resources if you don´t use the "respect tile sources" options and build farms on 2 energy + Batharian stone tiles.
2. They ignore pop Traits and pop modifiers and planet modifiers then building or manning buildings.
3. Specialised Sectors never produce one resource (Industrial doesn´t produce Food, Energy and Science absolutely no Minerals for developing themselves so you have to feed them all the minerals personally, I never had a food sector so no clue about that)

 

[GamerSteve]

Given all the other wide-oriented bonuses it has, Expansion (the Tradition that gives +2 core systems on completion) is pretty much the best first tradition to take unless you are playing a strategy that actively requires you to take something else first.

But again, even if this is true, it is effectively admitting that sectors are broken or at least not working well. If people are going to universally choose techs or traditions that boost their core, that takes more planets OUT of sectors. Effectively this is saying that sectors are good when you have to use them less. Something that is working well wouldn't be like that.

I mean after all, would you claim that the fact that one can use mass drivers or lasers means that missiles aren't broken? I mean sure you don't HAVE to use missiles to win battles, but what if you like the idea of missiles and want to use them for your civ? The fact that you can win wars better without them would be small consolation.

i don't understand. once fully established you have no use to returning to the planet (unless you wanna build something in a star port). and it's not a problem at all to manage 20-50-100 planets yourself.

This.

Micro only happens while the world is developing. You'd only have maybe 8 or 9 worlds at once that are still developing. Once done you can hand each one off to sectors and pick up another. At one point due to luck I had some systems with 3 habitable planets... Those systems being in the core plus some core techs gave me I think it was 12 actual planets in my core. I acquired them bit by bit. Once they were developed, I never touched them other than to do upgrades (i.e. upgrading power plants when I got a new tech) or build ships.

The other thing that drives me absolutely nuts about sectors is that there is no good way to cycle among the various space ports when I am trying to build ships. I want a list of all active spaceports. Until I have that, the bigger the core the better since I can use the outliner to find space ports.

 

[Zealuu]

If they strip out sectors, I will never play on anything but a Tiny map.

If I continue playing at all.

That's fair enough, conversely, I never play without mods that allow me to ignore sectors. Though I wouldn't say no to a per-planet "automatically upgrade structures when possible" type of toggle.

 

[Slynx]

The other thing that drives me absolutely nuts about sectors is that there is no good way to cycle among the various space ports when I am trying to build ships. I want a list of all active spaceports. Until I have that, the bigger the core the better since I can use the outliner to find space ports.

as someone found on reddit after a year of playing there is actually is a way.
this button:

but maybe it was a joke haven't tried it myself

 

[-Marauder-]

Buildings on core worlds still need upgrading. Manually.

Which, is really, really, really, really unnecessary. The auto upgrade feature is in the game. We are merely not given access to it. Heck even an "upgrade all" button would work. A lot of the micro of planets is simply upgrading buildings. Which could be easily solved with an auto upgrade feature. Give the player a toggle to enable it so they could do stuff manually at first and switch it on later when they are comfortable with their resources.

 

[GamerSteve]

as someone found on reddit after a year of playing there is actually is a way.
this button:

but maybe it was a joke haven't tried it myself

OK that cycles through the planets in what seems like a random order or maybe the order in which they were added to a sector. It's still not what I am talking about.

In the Outliner, I can see the name of every world at a glance, and I can click on which worlds I want and tell them to produce something. If I have a 12 planet sector and I want the 9th planet in the cycle to produce something, I have to click on that thing 9 times to get it. It's actually faster to just find the world on the galaxy map and get to it that way.

I'd like to be able to expand the sector list right from the outliner, and see all the worlds right there in the outliner, and click on the one I want.

Also, what I would really love is a space port menu that just lists every single port in one place. Then I want to be able to set individual ports to send ships to individual rally points. So I can have these 10 sending ships to point A, and these 12 sending ships to point B, and so on.

They have features like this in other PDX games like HOI. I don't see why we can't have them here.

But that's really a different issue from what is being discussed here.

 

[Slynx]

g. If I have a 12 planet sector and I want the 9th planet in the cycle to produce something,

ctrl+1
then press 1 to select the said planet.