What do YOU want from the AI?

[Attitude Adjuster]

So Instead of beating the dead horse of "the AI is really really really really really bad and has been since forever.... like REALLY REALLY bad" (sorry i had to beat it a little bit there)

I thought we could discuss your REALISTIC expectations for the ideal Stellaris AI. and i must stress realistic, they obviously aren't going to be birthing Elon Musks wet dream/worst nightmare anytime soon.

I'll kick off the ball rolling by stating the three things I would be satisfied with from the stellaris AI.

- I don't want to be able to see it derp at a glance, if it has to derpy (and there are no good reasons why it should), at least mask its derp so it doesnt ruin my immersion. (some examples of visible derp - Horrible (or no) fleet movement, undeveloped planets) at the moment you can tell within 50 years of gamestart that the AI is just stupid and stagnant. (took me about 10 years after first contact to realise on my first megacorp playthrough that the AI was next level shit)

- i want the AI personality to mean something more than a diplomacy mallus, i would love to see different behaviour weights for the personality types again (it used to be like this, but recently all empires act identically, but maybe thats because they are so shit that none of their traits can come to the fore) this helps massively with immersion and roleplay

- i would love ALL of the AI to work, Awakened empires, fallen empires, Contingency, Unbidden & Prethoryn.
if anything these should have better AI than the normal empires, War in Heaven has been a joke since it was released, i mean really, i cant think of one time where the war in heaven has been interesting beyond the flavour text, and the crises are on again off again broken. make all of these a dynamic galactic threat not just arrive/awaken kill a few systems and then stall forever.

 

[Wolfgang I]

This is just for Grand Admiral and high aggressiveness:
I want the AI to crush me unless I luck out or kiss its ass.
A conquest heavy early game should be incredible difficult against normal empires and as good as impossible against advanced start empires.
Non-diplomatic empires should be under constant attack from AI empires as long as they are more powerful. If the AI finds my Purifer empire and has 5 times my fleet it should declare war instantly and beeline for my homeworld unless it is fanatic pacifist.
In a 1000 star galaxy even the AI should be able to resist the Khan or a 5x crisis as long as enough empires unite.
When it comes to AEs decadence should be disabled on max. difficulty.

 

[Dargaron]

Primarily, I'd want the AI to be able to do something when one of the crises (mid-game or late-game) spawns. I don't necessarily want a single AI empire to be able to contain the Khan, but when the Khan's individual fleets are larger than any non-FE navy in the galaxy, it becomes REALLY obvious that the player is expected to deal with the entire thing him/herself, which is just tiresome.

Same thing with the Crises: in my current Barbaric Despoilers isolationist game (where I'm testing out ALL the economic options, including Ringworlds and Ecumenopoli), the Unbidden spawned in the territory of a Hive Mind that controlled maybe 1/15th of a Large Galaxy, with another 1/15th in the hands of an allied state right next door. Both empires have been completely destroyed, and the only Unbidden ships that have been destroyed so far are 19 from when I sent down one of my fleets to see how my designs fared against Unbidden ships (spoiler: I needed MOAR anti-shield). I'd be fine with the AI crumbling in the face of a crisis, but when single Crisis fleets are stronger than the entire navy of regular empires, they're basically window-dressing that's taking up an enormous amount of performance to simulate their irrelevant economies.

 

[durbal]

I'd like it to actually play the game.

 

[Siri]

I would like the AI to do a better job of keeping up economically and scientifically, and once that is a reality other things such as some of the stuff Wolfgang suggested can be worked upon.

This is just for Grand Admiral and high aggressiveness:
I want the AI to crush me unless I luck out or kiss its ass.
A conquest heavy early games should be incredible difficult against normal empires and as good as impossible against advanced start empires.
Non-diplomatic empires should be under constant attack from AI empires as long as they are more powerful. If the AI finds my Purifer empire and has 5 times my fleet it should declare war instantly and beeline for my homeworld unless it is fanatic pacifist.
In a 1000 star galaxy even the AI should be able to resist the Khan or a 5x crisis as long as enough empires unite.
When it comes to AEs decadence should be disabled on max. difficulty.

I agree with all your points except the one about them being able to resist a 5x crisis. If they can do that together without little or no player input it would feel weird. I feel it nearly defeat the purpose of the crisis slider at that point. Maybe if they'd do it against a 2.5x crisis but a 5x should be more brutal than that, in my opinion.

 

[Roddo]

To leave me alone to manage my frikking empire myself.

 

[Sapa Inca]

1- I want the problem with stuck fleets and stuck armies ships fixed, no more endless bombardment while AI armies are stuck far away or AI dont even try rebuild armies lost in war.
2- I want that AI become capable of manage the economy of their empire, in current version they are clearly incompetent in this aspect.
3- I want that AI become capable of use all game features, for example, when campaings (energy edicts) was introduced AIs never used campaigns, I dont known if in currently version AIs learned how use campaigns, but I think that every feature implemented in game shoud mean that AI was coded to use that feature, otherwise the player power creep will be inevitable in long term.
4- More depth for AI personalities, even if it mean that AIs choose non-optimal decisions based in their personalities.
5- A toogle for disable fallen empire decadence, independent of difficulty level.

 

[ArcticISAF]

I recommend trying Glavius's AI mod. I've noticed a massive increase in competency from the AI, and he's been updating it pretty much every day to be better.

I'm playing on Grand Admiral (Scaling), year is just past 2400. AI empires have over 100k in fleet power (130k when I was fighting one around 2380). They're really quite difficult. Much much better than vanilla currently.

 

[Volapyk]

Hmm good thread to get an idea of the worst grievances people have with the AI, so let me chime in with a few as well.

- Able to build up their own economy properly, managing districts and buildings, don't have to be able to min/max and super specialize it's worlds, but at least upgrading buildings, properly build districts it needs, it really puts me off capturing an AI planet and see them having build 8 trade buildings (or any other kind of buildings) and having non of them upgraded. Being better at this aspect of the game would in turn making them more formidable in most other areas, better able to keep up in tech, building larger fleets and so on.

- Managing armies, there is noting more annoying to me than seeing the AI stomp an enemy in a war, only to never properly win the war because it can't figure out how to properly invade a planet it is bombarding, and its single fleet is just stuck there till the end of the war. I would even accept an outright removal of ground forces and make it purely based on fleets and bombardment, just to not see the AI fail at this part of the game.

- Fixing the crisis, it is a huge letdown when you realize the crisis has stopped dead in it's tracks because the AI can't handle its own constructors, and again re-working the crisis to not need anything but their fleets would be a big step in the right direction, or just fix how they manage them.

- Be better at working together, pool fleets when needed, and keep them separate when that makes sense, move to defend it's allies and actually work to defeat the crisis.

- Finally, and this one is probably a bit wishful thinking, but I would love to see them be at least slightly competent in waging a war, too many times I've seen them either throw their fleets away in pointless attacks, or just sit home doing nothing while their systems gets invaded one at a time. Getting them to use different tactics depending on the situation can be hard to get right, but it would be nice.

 

[Wolfgang I]

I would like the AI to do a better job of keeping up economically and scientifically, and once that is a reality other things such as some of the stuff Wolfgang suggested can be worked upon.



I agree with all your points except the one about them being able to resist a 5x crisis. If they can do that together without little or no player input it would feel weird. I feel it nearly defeat the purpose of the crisis slider at that point. Maybe if they'd do it against a 2.5x crisis but a 5x should be more brutal than that, in my opinion.

With resisting I meant things like defeating roaming crisis fleets. I have seen such things happen in 1.9.1 when a giant AI Federation controlling 2/3 of a 1000 star galaxy(1x habitable planets) manged to contain a 5x Contingency at least for a short time. 1.9.1 was close to what I wanted from a difficulty point of view(at least on warp only). If they AI had been better at taking/defending planets I would have lost most of my 1.9.1 games(insane+only advanced AIs).

 

[Siri]

With resisting I meant things like defeating roaming crisis fleets. I have seen such things happen in 1.9.1 when a giant AI Federation controlling 2/3 of a 1000 star galaxy(1x habitable planets) manged to contain a 5x Contingency at least for a short time. 1.9.1 was close to what I wanted from a difficulty point of view(at least on warp only). If they AI had been better at taking/defending planets I would have lost most of my 1.9.1 games(insane+only advanced AIs).

Okay, that seems a lot more fair. I think for me, personally, I would still prefer that they lose fairly fast on x5 and gradually hold for longer down until, say, x3 where they can hold pretty much indefinitely if it's a non-scaling Grand Admiral game. I can see the appeal in it, but I'd rather have the AI be stronger relatively to the player without making them too good against the crisis.

 

[B3ndolf]

honestly i think peaople are overly harsh in their criticism of paradox games ai. admitedly the stellaris ai is particularly brain dead right at this point but thats because we have just had a massive game changing update.

compare them to other 4x or gsg games........ever since civ 5 the ai in civ games has been pathetic since it doesnt know how to handle 1 unit per hex combat. distant worlds the ai is appalling unless you mod it, it builds crappy ship designs with crappy weapons and the pop on its planets never seems to grow and like most ai it doesnt know how to wage war. the endless games have crappy ai.......the list goes on, i play all these games and most strategy games on the highest difficulty not because im a super elite gamer but because our ai technology is shitty, at least if you want it to run on a home pc and paradox games tend to be significantly more difficult for an ai to handle than most 4x games.

the ai in stellaris will get better incrementally with every patch until they drop the next big update, although i doubt that any further dlc will cripple the ai as much as the last 2 have since changing the movement and economy of the game as completely as they have in the last 2 dlc basically means they will have had to completely rewrite the ai.

that said the things at the top of my wish list and which are pretty unforgivable are the flagship features of the game and its dlc i.e. fe, crises, war in heaven need to be gotten working properly or else reworked into a form they can get working properly. i can live with crappy empire ai especially now we have decent non war gameplay to keep us interested as long as i know i have interesting challenges coming up that put that feeling of pressure on me to make sure i am ready for them. they should also, at least in theory, well the crises at least, be easier to fix than the general empire ai since they have far less mechanics that they use.

 

[LWE]

My minimum standard for the AI is it at least being aware of the game features. E.g. it’s OK if the AI doesn’t use terraforming, or building upgrading, or whatever, effectively, but it should be able to use features at all. Not a high standard, yet there are games which fail this.

 

[shadowclasper]

I'd like the AI to have a list of several things that it cross references, possibly drawn from player data on Paradox's multiplayer servers

1) A comprehensive list of different kinds of planets, with a 'pop 10' 'pop 20' 'pop 50' 'pop 75' and 'pop 100+' states that give it some sort of guidance on how it should be building it's planets.
2) A comprehensive list of different ship and fleet builds, and whether they are patrol fleets or war fleets, and that it will pick ones relatively based on what sort of builds it encounters in it's opponents (high shields? They go for missiles and guns, High armor? lasers, lots of missles? extra PD, high armor and shields? penetrators.)

Basically, I want them to give the AI a cheat sheet for building well and just see what happens before they tinker extensively with how the AI makes decisions just YET.

 

[pmchem]

The AI should:

1. Be able to use all the features in the game. Maybe not optimally, but it should be able to use all weapon types, building types, logistics/trade options, etc.

2. It should be able to resist Great Khan and Endgame Crisis events somewhat competently. Maybe not defeat them without help from the player, but, it should be more than effectively zero resistance. A useful ally.

3. It should keep up with the player in the first 50 years of the game, having effective growth, diplomacy, and anti-piracy strategies. Hand-tuned as much as needed.

4. It should not make any clearly suicidal decisions unless justified by empire/leader personalities. e.g. it should not declare war or send fleets against things that will annihilate it (excepting inevitable conflict in the endgame crisis).

5. It should not completely ignore friendly or hostile events around it. That is, it should respond to all actions in the game that can affect its empire in the near future, and be able to recognize obviously friendly or hostile events.

6. It should not cheat; that is, it should only have access to the game mechanics or information that a player would have. No free resources, no omniscience.

7. Items #(1-6) should be true on the DEFAULT GAME SETTINGS, that is, default difficulty level.


I think none of items #1-5 is true in 2.2.2 or 2.2.3 today. Not sure about #6, probably not that either (market issues). It's sad state for the game.

It's also just maddening that 2.2.3 includes NO AI FIXES.

 

[exi123]

I want the AI to build shipyards. Not that important in this kind of game. But hey, at least the AI isnt upgrading building and has no clou how to handle the new economic...

 

[anamiac]

I want the AI to be able to:

1. Manage planets. Build buildings and districts, and upgrade them. It doesn't have to have specialized planets, I don't care if every planet looks the same, but I don't want to see planets with 10 paradise domes. When they can get their best planet to 170 pops and it has sufficient jobs, housing, stability and little to no crime, then we've arrived.
2. Manage economy without cheating. None of this starving to death crap. No free trades with the market.
3. Terraform & build megastructures intelligently.
4. Design ships to counter their greatest threat. That's usually me, because I tend to attack the people that hate me, not my allies.
5. Have a war plan. None of this declaring a war and then not invading, or invading a single system only.
6. I expect the AI to know whether or not to attack based on whether my fleet was bigger than theirs - counting any other fleet or starbase in the system. Also, I expect them to prioritize planets and enemy fleets over empty systems.
7. I want empires to actually clash more. I'm playing on max difficulty and max aggressiveness and I've kept my fleet smaller and yet nobody's attacked me. The adjacent Devouring swarm waited 180 years for me to build up a big military and take him out, when he outnumbered me for a century or more.

 

[Sigma 582]

When it comes to AEs decadence should be disabled on max. difficulty.

gonna need a slider for that...
... and for awakening chance, as they almost never awaken in my games

 

[Pyoro]

Mostly I want to feel "fairly" treated. Right now, if I'm struggling in the Early Game, I go "it's all because they are cheating ..." - and then later on they are too pathetic to live anyway. So defeating them at first isn't satisfying because they are basically playing a different game (I mean, why bother with AI economy at this point? Just give them a fixed progression of fleets... ^^) and then because it feels like beating up a moist cookie.

 

[Serenity84]

In the grand scheme of things: don't have it fall behind so soon. That was always an issue with everyone else except FEs being pathetic eventually. But now it happens even faster. If the AI needs cheats to do that that's fine to some degree. All 4X games have to do that.

On a smaller scale: reasonably well developed planets and fleets. It won't be ideal, but it just has to be good enough to make sense and not have the economy collapse from it. Inefficiencies can be made up with the bonus Ressource the AI gets