Stellaris is too mechanical, not enough feeling.(Constructive Feedback)

[Te'Ryn Tec]

First off i need to say i love this game. Ive got over 630 hours invested in this game. Its amazing and i will continue to support and play this game.

My reasoning for this thread though is everything is so damn mechanical. Theres no feeling or "human touch/error" to it. Everything in the game is mathematically equated and determined. Theres no room for randomness or spontaneity.

We as the players are the only form of this. The AI only sees numbers and equations and if X criteria is matched then it can and will do Y.

As a player i can backstab, trick and lie on a whim. I can declare war because i think i can win. I can lose because i was wrong or make a mistake or not know the strengths and weaknesses of an Empire. I can win because i can counter and adapt to empire strength and weaknesses.

An AI does not. It calculates X and Y and only declares if it knows it can win.

How many times has anyone ever seen an AI leave or get kicked out of a federation? How many times has anyone seen polar opposite ethos's band together to fight a common enemy to save themselves? How many times has an AI declared war on you and then seen the AI go "Opps made a mistake, we're sorry".

I think alot of the problems stem from everything being so transparent. Nothing is secret. I can see an AI's overall navy str, fleet cap and research str to mine thats across the galaxy and never setting foot in their space or having any contact with and vice versa.

Oh you arent anywhere near me but know exactly when i purge a planet. You know exactly what my internal policies are even when the only time we ever communicated was to say Hi when we first discovered each others existence?

We are right next to each other within each others sensor range and see my ships loadouts but dont do anything to counter them? You cant see where my main fleet is because its not within your sensor range but you somehow can be following them to attack?

Im a xenophobe who has, compared to you overwhelming navy str and we are sitting at -500 relationship but you dont offer tribute or gifts to maybe try and appease me but if rolls were reversed i could offer you tribute or gifts?

Oh you like all 24 members of the federation except for 1 so you dont want to join?

Look you have a fleet str of 110k but wont touch that system with 4 2k ruby crystal fleets or leviathan.

Oh your an awakened xenophobe FE with a fleet of 768k pwr and wont attack me even though we are rivals and just finished sending you 4 years of insults and i only have 200k fleet str.



Things like this really get to me.

edit: i swear there was supposed to be some feedback in there but i got off topic and turned this into a salty rant.

My bad. Love you Stellaris.

 

[Kanaric]

what game does what you want right?

 

[Te'Ryn Tec]

what game does what you want right?

lol Touche. But Asherons Call(darktide server(pvp)) and Eve Online are the only two that come to mind. Both i no longer play either. Although Asherons Call finally closed it service a year ago i think.

 

[General Retreat]

To be fair, the AI will already make varying decisions on when to make or end war based on their personality type. They won't start wars they'll clearly lose because they're not suicidal and, well, duh. Lots of AI personalities are 'opportunists' though which means they're far more likely to take advantage of existing wars to launch their own.

I do agree that federations are currently far too stable and stagnant though. Meaningful reform and expansion of federation mechanics is apparently on the wishlist to be worked on though, so hopefully we'll be seeing that in future patches.

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

This is one of the reasons I think the Diplomacy features should be more like Master of Orion.

In that game, empires might pop in and suggest you join forces as another empire is a threat to you both. And they'll even pop in and say, hey look I know it was you who stole my tech and worsen my relations with federation buddies, so get your spies out of my borders or else!

And yes I had that happened to me. A doh! moment actually as I then went to war against that empire. Several years later another empire popped in and ask us both to give peace a chance and offered some tech and resources to sweeten the deal! So yeah I did call a cease fire with my rival.

Another example from that game is where if you used WMDs, then one of my allies will pop in and say hey, look, you either stop using WMDs, or else I'm cutting off all relations between us! So I did what she.

Later on, many years down the road, I used WMDs again, and my ally cuts off all relations with me saying, "I warned you what would happened."

Then, I kept getting sabotaged. I thought it was my former ally. But it was actually another empire I was in good relations with that was doing the espionage! Apparently my former ally and my trading partner were in cohorts to bring me down!

Now don't get me wrong now, Stellaris has some excellent features, but I feel it should learn from Master of Orion a bit on the espionage and diplomacy features.

 

[Robrecht]

what game does what you want right?

Not to give too much attention to Stellaris' direct 'competition', but GalCiv 3 (and indeed the previous GalCiv games) have AI that do a lot of these things.

Most 4X/Grand Strategy game AIs are pure number crunchers who make decisions based on pure math (for which they usually have a lot more information than players, including such things as the exact strength of an enemy they haven't even encountered yet and where resources that are only revealed by techs they haven't unlocked yet are located) and the occasional likes/dislikes 'personality' profile.

The AI in GalCiv games, however, quite intentionally only gets partial info and has tendencies rather than hard coded likes and dislikes. And the AI can be really, really sneaky. Like... Say, I've had it happen that a small AI empire that I was friendly with found itself wedged between myself, two other small AI empires and an aggressive larger AI empire, that was rapidly expanding, and the wedged empire incited the other small AI empires into declaring war on the aggressor with a promise of support (it tried to get me to join too, but I declined). So the other AIs declared war... Then the wedged empire allied with the aggressor and took over a big chunk of the smaller empires' territory. Then, when I reloaded the save, thinking I could gobble up this smaller empire, and accepted the offer to join the war, the wedged AI instead joined the war too and helped cut down the aggressor, taking lots of territories that it was impractical for me to take because it was between them and me. Basically the AI tried to incite a big war between all it's neighbours and then joined which ever side was larger. Just so it could take some territory and not be surrounded any more.

 

[Riftwalker]

An AI does not. It calculates X and Y and only declares if it knows it can win.

metalhead speaks otherwise... but seriously, the AI types do affect how and what they like the attack. metalhead for instance has like 10x aggression and 10x bravery, so they'll just ram themselves into a fallen empire. Rathless capitalists have high aggression but low bravery and so will only jump on the chance to kill smaller weaker empires.

The real problem is how defensive pact and federations work that cause AI's to really hold back from showing how they want to fight, because as people get into contact with each other, they also defensive pact, which makes attacks and wars in general rare, while federations can attack together, they don't really enjoy starting a fight.

 

[Slynx]

How many times has anyone ever seen an AI leave or get kicked out of a federation?

just saw this today. we've declared war and federation were harmed as a result. after the war empire that caused this were kicked out and became independent (and 10 years later it became my food),,,maybe it was because it's fleet became pathetic...of because stop atrocitues\ban ai wargoal. idk.

How many times has anyone seen polar opposite ethos's band together to fight a common enemy to save themselves?

same here. when i conquered and purged half of the galaxy remaining 6 empires formed together and started plotting against me. they even invited my only friend in the association

How many times has an AI declared war on you and then seen the AI go "Opps made a mistake, we're sorry".

in 1.3 i had this situation. ai declared war. came to me. lost everything vs starport...and soon proposed white peace.

You cant see where my main fleet is because its not within your sensor range but you somehow can be following them to attack?

you can do it too. you just need to see your target just once. even for a sec(with a pause)

Look you have a fleet str of 110k but wont touch that system with 4 2k ruby crystal fleets or leviathan.

what for? you get everything from it from situation log project. and it's a good way to delay enemy's fleets.
they destroy pirates\amoebas\travelling leviathans(wraith) though...

other then that i agree with you. i even talked about some of this too. especially this:

Oh you arent anywhere near me but know exactly when i purge a planet. You know exactly what my internal policies are even when the only time we ever communicated was to say Hi when we first discovered each others existence?