What do YOU want from the AI?

[Magdaki]

I think one of the main metrics should be it not being crushed by a crisis, because if the AI can at least resist a crisis than that means it must be doing at least ok in all of the main criteria for playing the game:

- It must be building and using its fleets
- It must have sufficient economy to build and maintain the fleet
- It must have sufficient technology to make the fleet a credible threat

I lose sometimes to a crisis (I don't play very optimally), but I never roll over to a crisis. So this seems like a pretty good metric to gauge the AI as a whole.

In a lot of other 4X games I would also normally include diplomacy. In many games it is often very erratic and suicidal. I.e. I've been your close personal ally for 1000 years, but you're winning so I hate you. In Stellaris, one of the things I really love, is that the AI is diplomatically reliable. If it hates you, it hates, and will try to kill you if it can. If it likes you, it likes you and doesn't become upset just because you're more powerful.

 

[Delthor]

I want to see the AI simulate the economy so that AI improvements can focus on properly building and deploying fleets. I think it's a waste of precious dev resources to attempt to make the AI play the economy in all its complexity.

Decide on a base income. Increase it based on empire size, population, and difficulty. Adjust the weight of different incomes based on what they've built and personality. Give the AI some basic blueprints for reasonable world builds so that the planets a player conquers have a bit of reason to them.

Stop trying to make it fair. The AI's job is to provide a reasonable challenge based on the difficulty level of the game. They're not there to show off how well or badly some developers made their AI system. The crises, the Marauders/Khan, the Leviathans, and the smaller spaceborn entities all work on completely different mechanics than the player. Yet these are often the best parts of the game. There's no reason why normal empires can't be adjusted to do the same.

A large part of the reason Galvius's mod has success is that he's willing to do things closer to this. It's mainly a workaround for not having full control, but it's a testament to how well this can work. The dev team should really stop crippling themselves by trying to achieve something that's practically impossible.

 

[Spacemadnesss]

I want to see the AI simulate the economy so that AI improvements can focus on properly building and deploying fleets. I think it's a waste of precious dev resources to attempt to make the AI play the economy in all its complexity.

I think you might be on to something here. It would be important to create this new AI in a way so that it can be thwarted. Say if you're facing an AI personality with the Agrarian Idyll civic who exports a lot of food, hitting one of their food worlds should cut them off from a lot of income. The world itself would be as you said just be based on a generic procedurally generated template based on the AI personality type and what it has decided it wants for it. Shit ton of farms for Agrarian Idyll, a mandatory fortress for Warrior culture.

A planet would have x mount of districts in y distribution with x amount of pops but what is currently BUILT on the world doesn't matter, the AI just has "permission" to change the output of that world over time at will based on the available building blocks every x amount of time to simulate the AI building/retooling the planet. It doesn't actually have to tear down district A to create district B to. It doesn't even need the minerals, just subject it to a temporary % resource penalty from that world.

In fact you could split the AI from the planet building thusly, have the planets transform from one template to another based roughly on the distribution of stuff the AI wants from it so that when the player captures it or spies on it it looks proper.

This would free the AI up from all of the stuff it'll never be any good at (and needs cheats to compensate for regardless) and make it a lot more agile to respond to changes in the wider galaxy.

 

[Kim Hanson]

In war time, add the concept of "Get there firstest with the mostest." Too often the AI does not use it's power to full advantage. Hell, usually it finds a way to fritter away any strategic or tactical advantage it has and allows the crafty human chop it to bits, one fleet at a time. Even in a defensive war it should try harder and know how to crush the enemy.

 

[Eelectrica]

One thing I'd like it to do a better job of is grouping up to fight the crises. In one of the earlier updates, might have been one of the late 2.0.x updates I had a game where the AI empires did band together a massive coalition fleet to fight the unbidden and it was awesome.

In my current game I'm calling the battle against the unbidden a draw, I can't quite deliver the knock out punch, but they can't take me down either. I figure in 200 or 300 years time I'll get it done, but I'd prefer to move onto the next one. It's kind of sad to see the only awakened empire that's trying to something about send in 12k fleets that are dismissed by the unbidden very quickly.

 

[Zentay]

An AI that knows how to fight a superior opponent. That means raiding with fast corvettes while avoiding fights, and trying to catch the enemy fleet while it's engaging a station.

An AI that uses its fleet.

An AI that aggressively declares wars.

 

[Jman5]

1. I want an AI that can manage to build a growing empire from start to finish without crashing it into the ground.

2. I want an AI that can recover from a bad turn of events instead of spiraling into toilet of bankruptcy and inconsequence. If they lose a major planet which create big deficits, they need to be able to execute a pre-set plan that rights their economy. I'm fine with some bailout cheats in this situation but it should be temporary.

3. I want an AI that moves it fleets into position before declaring war rather than declaring war and spending 6 months moving to the front. (other 4X games like the civilization series have been doing this for ages, so it's very, very doable). I also want them to move their fleets forward if they see rival neighbors moving their fleets up.

4. I want an AI that can attack and defend at the same time. Only sending a proportional force to deal with any attackers in their space while their main fleets push forward into enemy territory.

 

[rastro]

AI that can think strategically, that will ally with smaller powers to attack a single larger one, that wont attack the protectorate of an amepire that can kill them instantly. AI with a general sense of where other powers are to better anticipate potential dangers.

 

[daisha]

I want AI so good that the only thing the difficulty slider does is determine the proportion of the AI rulers that actually make full use of it. I don't think it'll happen on a consumer machine in my lifetime, though.

 

[Todie]

Hey guys, this is a really good discussion to have. il be sure to keep an eye on it as i continue to deelop my AI mod
(first 2.2x version published yesterday : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1371727481 )

 

[pryr]

AI should be competitive and be able to resist mid/end-game crisis at normal difficulty.

 

[Tim_Ward]

1) Upgrade buildings
2) Build spaceships
3) Make claims. Anyone noticed that the AI barely does this now, and you see a ton of white peace's and humiliation CBs?

 

[Nakkivene]

Pre-script it into effective ship and planet models and abstract it's income into generic income appropriate for size.

 

[Todie]

upgrading buildings responsibly when they ahve several new parameters of mainenance will take a while to get right. however, the mods we're making are already making strides to build bigger fleets with better design.

 

[B3ndolf]

some people here must be playing a different game to me......i have ai empires claim my systems almost every game, the only time i dont is if i am surrounded by empires that are either some form of pacifist/xenophile or share my ethos and thus fairly quickly get naps and other treaties with me. i have even had pacifists declare ideology wars on me.

if i neglect my fleet at all in the early game with a neighbour that doesnt like me they declare war on me, sometimes it might only be a humiliation war but thats generally because its still early enough for them to just not have the infuence spare for claims.

one game i had an empire on one side of me declare war on me with about 4k fleet total while i had about 2k, i had just enough to hold him off at my border bastion so the war dragged on for a while in a stalemate at which point an empire on the other side of me declared a humiliation war on me which i just decided to surrender to because i had nothing spare to fight them with and frankly since i was gonna lose that one anyway i may as well have gotten it over with without losing the income from having systems occupied.

granted i play on grand admiral but so do some of you guys from what you have said.......also i only play on normal aggressiveness, i often feel that increasing ai aggresiveness in these games is actually counter productive since the ai then end up declaring wars they arent in a sound strategic position for and crippling themselves in the long term because of it.

the problem i find in my games is that the AI just plateaus at some point in the second half of the first century and its fleets go from stronger than mine by a fair margin to pathetic over the coarse of a decade or so.....that and the problem that even when they do declare on me with bigger fleets they dont use them very well, they are far too willing to split their fleets up rather than strike with full force at the start to break through my inevitable defences.

 

[ashbery76]

AI personality is more than just a dip malus.They act differently some invade primitives,some pick on the week,etc..Look at the wiki.

 

[makaramus]

NO!
feed the fed horse
FEED THE FED HORSE
/sarcasm

 

[Peace Weaver]

My main desire right now is that it be able to rebuild ruined buildings. It is sad to know that once an AI has experienced war, it will be permanently handicapped from there on out.

 

[PirateJack]

I'd like a dynamic AI that adjusts its build priorities based on current circumstances and then layer the AI personality on top of that. Each scenario would have a set goal for resources, with certain resources having a higher priority than others. For example, being at war or having 1+ rivals as neighbours/access through to its territory prioritises alloys/minerals/energy credits in that order up to its preferred income for each. Being at peace and surrounded by NAPs with no rivals having access to it would heavily prioritise strategic resources in its territory as well as energy credits to use on the market.

 

[Patrocious]

While I probably can't expect the AI to do anything clever or inventive it would be nice to have it at least build a proper economy. And translate that economy in a proper fleet. This is perfectly achievable with a priority list: If ressource X is missing, build Y. Other games can pull this off as well. While Stellaris does a good job distractiing from it's poor AI with events, crises and whatnot it can only go so far. The 3rd extradimensional invasion isn't as thrilling as the first one...