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Tamwin5

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Dec 3, 2017
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Currently, AIs tend to be very same-y in terms of what they do, and how they build. This is a result of the 2.2 update being as rushed as it was, but I think it could be easily fixable within the existing AI personalities system. I'm not sure if the wiki is up to date, but it currently lists colony spending vs military spending as one of the weights that the AI has. When minerals were used for both ships and planets that mattered, but now Alloys are never used planet-side, I doubt its useful. I will be dividing this into two sections: Economic and War.

AI personalities work on a system of Characteristics and Behaviors. Characteristics are things that are present or not: stuff like enslaving, Attacking neutrals, Multispecies, etc. Behaviors are a modifier value, with 1.0 being a generalized norm.

Existing Characteristics/behaviors wiki.

Economic

Characteristics
  • Robot Liberator (builds robots, full rights)
  • Robot Exploiter (builds robots, servitude)
  • Fortifier (builds fortresses, and fortress worlds at chokepoints)
  • Harmonious (builds unity buildings)
  • Providing (Aims to use Utopian Abundance or Social Welfare, if able, instead of population controls)
  • Resettler (resettles pops, instead of using Population controls, if other planets have space)
  • Trader (will sell/trade/gift excess food/cg, instead of using planetary edicts)
  • Lawful (will react to crime by building prescints and/or using edict)
  • Pragmatic/Utilitarian/Idealist Trade (uses Wealth creation, Consumer befits, or Marketplace of Ideal trade policy)
These Characteristics should cover most aspects of the economy that should be all or nothing: Unity buildings, Robots, Fortresses, and behavior for overpopulation. I decided to make what trade policy the AI uses fixed to make it easier to calculate/balance it. I also added the Trader behavior, so that when you have a trader type empire, they ACTUALLY regularly offer trades to you. The default behavior is to not build robots (but they won't be purged unless spiritualist), ignore crime (and use the crime deal once at 50+ crime), and enact population controls when a planet has maxed out districts and no more available jobs (and no spare rare resource income to upgrade a building).

Behaviors
  • Armament (Buildings devoted to alloys)
  • Science (Buildings devoted to science)
  • Industry* (Buildings devoted to Consumer Goods)
  • Entertainment (threshold of amenities at which a Holotheater will be built/upgraded)
  • Synthesis (rare resource production)
  • Commerce (building commercial zones when near district cap)
These Behaviors would be base threshold values, that are then modified by other factors. If an empire is threatened, they have a higher modifier to armament. If they have strong allies and no enemies, a lower modifier. If an empire is negative on any resource, it gets much higher. Ideally, CG production would be based on the CG requirements of pops/jobs, predicted to the near future, next building to be built, etc... but I think that might be too complicated, so I hedged my bets and made it one of the values.

Synthetic Resource production would be split determine to the needs of the empire, both in what production is currently has and what buildings it wants to upgrade next. It would also be heavily weighted to be built on larger planets with plenty of districts, or on Ecumeopoli. That way the building slot only giving 1 job isn't an issue.

Commercial Zones will have a weight to be built when a planet is running out of districts. This is contrasted with the weight of other buildings: If an empire has 1.5x Armament and is being threatened, it likely will never build commercial zones. An empire with 2.0x Commerce would probably be building commercial zones with 3 or 4 districts still empty.


War

Currently, AI have a preferred weapon type. This can be either kinetic, energy, guided, or strike craft. The trouble is that the AI tends to make perfectly mixed fleets, and (as far as I know) the research AI doesn't have any preference or weight towards the preferred weapons. I'd like the AI to ONLY research the weapons they are going to use, mostly ignoring ones they have no preference for. However, since guided and strike craft have limited slots, I'd move to a system where an AI personality can have 1 to 3 weapon groups they use (the code would allow any number of weapon types, to support modding)

Weapon Types
  • Energy (lasers, plasma, Particle, Lance)
  • Kinetics (Mass driver, Autocannon, Artillery, Cannon)
  • Guided
  • Strike Craft
  • Piercing (Disruptor, Cloud Lightning)
  • Point Defense (Flak, PD)
Any AI personality with Guided or Strike craft would have one of Energy, Kinetics, or Piercing. Any AI personality with Strike craft would have PD (as strike craft sections have PD).

AI personalities would also have different ship hull designs they would like using (Picket Corvette, Artillery Bow Interceptor stern Destroyer, etc.), with ratios they like keeping in their fleets (10 Corvettes, 5 Destroyers, 1 Battleship). This way AI that prioritize guided could have lots of Corvettes and Cruisers, and those with Strike craft can have more cruisers and Battleships. The ship hull design choice would ensure that AIs using Guided, PD, and Strike craft actually have those slots on their ships, and AIs not using them wouldn't.

Utility

Currently, AI personalities use a ratio of Armor, Hull, and Shield Modules. This seems perfectly fine, and I see no need or benefit of changing the system.

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Thoughts? Other things you think should be AI Characteristics?
 
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I came into this thread suspicious; the AI gets enough flak already for being lackluster and the last thing it needs is artificially imposed restrictions on what it likes to build. But I actually quite like some of these. Fortress worlds on chokes, etc. Though some don't seem to make much sense; why would an empire that allows pop controls not also use resettlement? That seems arbitrary.

Also trader empires do make trades; if you look into the 00_defines file, there's a certain 'trade willingness' that needs to be passed for the AI to actually initiate a trade.

Not sure about the weighting it to one resource over others, though.

Weighting the AI for specific weapons makes sense, since right now I'm 100% sure they just pick techs at random. Along with their Ascension Perks.

There could probably be a whole other section to that. Which ascension tree they're weighted to pick up, how willing they are to 'save' perks for an upcoming Good Perk rather than slotting in, I don't know, Enigmatic Engineering right away.
 
I like these suggestions, but one thing
Behaviors
  • Armament (Buildings devoted to alloys)
  • Science (Buildings devoted to science)
  • Industry* (Buildings devoted to alloys)
  • Entertainment (threshold of amenities at which a Holotheater will be built/upgraded)
  • Synthesis (rare resource production)
  • Commerce (building commercial zones when near district cap)
Looking at industry, shouldn't that be Civilian Manufacturing, not alloys? And what's the * for, or is it just from a copy+paste?
 
I like these suggestions, but one thing

Looking at industry, shouldn't that be Civilian Manufacturing, not alloys? And what's the * for, or is it just from a copy+paste?

The "alloys" was a copy-paste error. The ssterisk to to represent what I said below: that ideally, CG would be determined based on need, rather than a threshold.
 
Two things I would like to see: the aforementioned weighting for techs and ascension perks, and also a loyalty score, which defines how willing an empire is to fight for its allies. So a high loyalty score empire would be willing to fight to the death to keep you from vassalizing one of their friends, whereas a low score empire might not even show up, and would surrender as soon as you beat the person you wanted to vassalize.
 
I came into this thread suspicious; the AI gets enough flak already for being lackluster and the last thing it needs is artificially imposed restrictions on what it likes to build.
Yeah, on retrospection it is a little clickbaity. The AI problem I was attempting to address here is that all empires tend to build the same way. I wanted Erudite Explorers to build loads of labs, while Pacifists wouldn't build fortresses. The planets of an empire should reflect the flavor of that empire.
But I actually quite like some of these. Fortress worlds on chokes, etc. Though some don't seem to make much sense; why would an empire that allows pop controls not also use resettlement? That seems arbitrary.
Every Empire can use pop controls. An empire who resettles will first try and resettle pops to non-full worlds, but if they don't have the energy or all of their worlds are filled up, they will then use pop controls. Even empires who would use social welfare/UA can enact population controls, if their preferred option isn't doable.
Also trader empires do make trades; if you look into the 00_defines file, there's a certain 'trade willingness' that needs to be passed for the AI to actually initiate a trade.

Not sure about the weighting it to one resource over others, though.
Huh, TIL. At least this would ensure they have more resources spare to trade.
Weighting the AI for specific weapons makes sense, since right now I'm 100% sure they just pick techs at random. Along with their Ascension Perks.

There could probably be a whole other section to that. Which ascension tree they're weighted to pick up, how willing they are to 'save' perks for an upcoming Good Perk rather than slotting in, I don't know, Enigmatic Engineering right away.

For techs, I could also see restricting it at the actual roll, where they simply won't have the option of rolling weapons they don't use. I could see people disliking it for having the AI "cheat" though.

For Ascension perks, I don't think they should save perks. Feels a little too meta-gamey. I do like the idea of having weights, but I don't think they should have mandatory picks: If every Erudite Explorer ALWAYS went synth ascension, it would be boring. But people who are Robot liberators should have a high weight for Flesh is Weak and Synthetic Evolution, while Robot Exploiters should have a decent weight for Flesh is weak. Since Spiritualists don't research robots and Materialists don't research psionics, they would naturally not end up in the other path unless the dice fall perfectly, and that small chance is very interesting imo, and would make for a unique game.

Weights for Non-Ascension Perks could be based on characteristics as well: Lawful increases chance of taking Executive Vigor, Harmonius increases One Vision, etc.
 
Two things I would like to see: the aforementioned weighting for techs and ascension perks, and also a loyalty score, which defines how willing an empire is to fight for its allies. So a high loyalty score empire would be willing to fight to the death to keep you from vassalizing one of their friends, whereas a low score empire might not even show up, and would surrender as soon as you beat the person you wanted to vassalize.

Loyalty would be an excellent Behavior Modifier. 10/10
 
Every Empire can use pop controls. An empire who resettles will first try and resettle pops to non-full worlds, but if they don't have the energy or all of their worlds are filled up, they will then use pop controls. Even empires who would use social welfare/UA can enact population controls, if their preferred option isn't doable.
Every player Empire can. But I'm rather confident some AI empires will not enable that in their policies due to their ethics/personality, and I'm rather confident that there's no such AI that will have resettlement but not have pop controls, or vice versa.

If every Erudite Explorer ALWAYS went synth ascension, it would be boring
Which is why I mentioned 'weighted'. Erudite Explorers will favor Synth, but if they HAPPEN to get Sea of Consciousness and HAPPEN upon Psi Theory...
 
Every player Empire can. But I'm rather confident some AI empires will not enable that in their policies due to their ethics/personality, and I'm rather confident that there's no such AI that will have resettlement but not have pop controls, or vice versa.

I'm saying that every empire has pop controls. Some empires have resettlement. This is not about whether they have the species policy of resettlement, but whether they spend the energy to shuffle pops around. Since AI personalities are based on ethics, Empires who have a chance of being egalitarian won't be resettles. And even empires who have disabled pop controls still have a "discourage growth" decision.

Which is why I mentioned 'weighted'. Erudite Explorers will favor Synth, but if they HAPPEN to get Sea of Consciousness and HAPPEN upon Psi Theory...

Exactly. I was just mentioning forced picks because it is a related option, not because I thought you suggested it.