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What happens if you set your empire to Rule in Absence (full auto, but a small starting help and 1 interruption) on a very hard difficulty ?

I have now won the game on Extreme difficulty, chaos galaxy and hars starting location a few times and think the game is to easy.
So i thought whats up with the AI and what can i do to help it. Below is a few question that i will try to answear.
- Can i win a game on very hard and the AI on full with some really simple startup help ?
- Why is the AI behving that badly vs a player ?
- Is there some quick fixes to the AI ?

I startet a game on Very hard and Unstable galaxy.
Selected Rule in Absence (Full) and changed only 4 things to "Sugest" or manually for the early game, the rest of the game was played full auto, while i watched a movie or looked at how the AI was doing. I started the game selecting 15 techs after that the AI could pick tech as it wanted. They are all basic exploration and colony expansion techs. Diplomacy gifts and treaties i set to suggest for the following reason. I accepted all pirates protection agreements and in the start i refused all sugestion to buy locations, map info or other stuff, that the AI can empty it´s pocket on.

What help did i give the AI
I decided to do it quite simply.
Build 50 scouts and constructionships as required. But nothing else, no escorts and no groundforces.
After i reached that goal I set evrything to auto and the AI could build all the troops and military ships it desired.
The only override i did and thats an important one. I manually designed small spaceport, removed weapons, shileds etc.. added 2 constructionyards (You need that to expand, my spaceport and home planet was building nonstop till i got 50 scouts)
I also added basic recreation and medical system as the AI won´t fit it into a autodsign (roughly 2% less tax rate)

After setting the game back on full auto and 4x speed I went to see a movie and came back.
Here i did the following.
- I canceled all pirate protection agreements
- Forced the AI to gift neutral planets (not conqure) and then building colony ships and send them there. (Took some time, as the AI spending is constant and pointless) after getting most neutral planets in range, i clicked colonize on all planets that was 20+ quality and within range (200mil)
- I build 50 more explorations ships
After that the AI was on it´s own.

So what did i notice

Military
- The AI just can´t make any financial plans. It spends money once it gets it
It kept building escorts even though i had researched cruissers, battleships and carriers. It did´t build any for ages, proberly because the cash wouldent get high enough.

- The AI loves to build fleets, but no fleets are ever full or even close to it. It´s quickly 10-20 fleets with 2-5 ships. Simply fleets that are to week to do anything.

- Later in the game, the AI actualy do alright in invasion, combining the aid of several invasion fleets to take on large well defended planets (Ground wise)

- The AI loves lossing military ships to highly defended planets. I saw the AI warping in 1-2 ships at a time for 30 min 4x speed. against a planets with 8 defence stations. Meanwhile i had evrywhere between 4-8 fleets in the same system refuling at 2 just conqured planets or killing transport ships comming late to these newly conqured planets.
I also saw a fleet of 7-8 destroyers that got destroyed by one enemy station. They were just sitting there outside there own weapon range, while the stations fighters and bombers would kill them (Ofcause the birliant AI designed the destroyers without PD weapons). If they had attacked they would have won.

- Hive ships. Talk about a moster for AI. Never have i seen so many pittfull atempts at killing something. The AI really don´t stand a chance here. I havent seen or noticed a single Hive ship being killed by the AI.
My AI had a fleets power of 9.3 mil and still it couldent gather a fleet or fleets strong enough to take on just one of these things.

Research
This is shocking and i had to control my self not to interven. (Did it twice sorry)
- Enhanced Research stations. Gives "close" to the same research boost as all the 10 techs just below and they cost money. Why just why do the AI always go for these 5-10 techs really early on and skip the Enhanced Research stations, that provides a great research boost and is 1 tech. - Back to Enhanced research station. Why do the AI pick and research the 3rd row of alien diplo tech before the research station (The picture show 1 tech being researched, but no it took all of them 1 at a time) And why oh why do it even pick these tech. At the time these are researched there are no neutral planets left, it´s just a waste.
Oh yearh and not to mention it went for this row of tech even when my hyperdrive tech was stuck at tier 3 Hyper drive technology. Makes abseloutely no sence.

- How can you prefere Indestructable armor over Super armor. When super armor is better and even faster to research - There is no red line in what weapon tech the AI go for. It´s a mix of evrything and no specialization. I don´t need railgun and 2 other different beam weapons as the top tech at the same time. I need only 1 of them.

- The AI is underpriotizing it´s expansion and economic tech. I had 5 different (all offensive not defensive) weapon techs at tier 7-8 but still stuck at tier 3 or lower in these techs.
Hyper drive
Engines
Medical, recreation and crew systems (all tier 2)
All cargo and transportation techs
Faster mining
Energy colletction
Civilian ships

- The AI underpicked powerplanets so badly that it´s designs of destroyers at one time was only ½ powered.

Economy
- The AI needs to make a plan for what it wants. Right now it just spends money when it has them. So if it thinks it needs escort ships it will spam these and not building administartion buildings, not build colony ships, not build bigger warships and so forth, cause it will never get the cash to do this.
This will slow the AI expansion down, if it will never reach the 42K+ a colony ships cost.

- The AI over spams defensive buildings both on ground and also defence space stations.

- AI just love to kill the economy by recruting ground forces thats garrisoned. (I actualy set this to low and not normal)

- I have seen once that a AI planet had a terraforming facility. In the long run it´s a great incomes boost. But the AI do not build them. In my game i have 15.069K cash but can´t find a single terraforming plant. But it´s great that the AI fully researched the tech.

- The AI will rarely build goverment buildings and never upgrade these. I actually did this manualy if i had a huge cash surplus (Cheating i know)

Continued on economics

- Below both is a economic view of a Zenox game taken at the time of victory. One is the AI and the other is me on Extreme difficulty. Guess what picture is the AI right or left ? If you guesed the right one was the AI you are spot on. Due note it had conqured some planets and therefor had some negative income from planets and struggeling with war weariness. If your looking at the income.
But the fact that the AI spends around 50% more in the previous year than i do. But I still manage to spend more than twice the amount of cash of fleets than the AI does, says alot about priority.


So how did it end. Really not a big suprise, sadly.
My AI fought one really long war against the Boskara Hive at the end. They were quite strong at one point. It was a slow game. It was won in 3016.
The other games on very hard and extreme i am playing my self is won by 2830-2860. So yes the AI is really ineffecient with it´s priorities and tech.

Conclusion
The fact that a interuption mid game (to coloznize in a 4X game ) 15 starting tech and some exploration ships, can win the game on even terms, except 2 diffcult levels higher. Gives me hope that this great game can be fixed somewhat easy, so we can get a good challange.

If anyone have some questions about AI behaviour or other funny things that i spoted or you have spoted/think the AI is doing, let me know, i have a bunch of save games so i can go and take a look.

You know how AI economy will be fixed: more cheats.

Really cool observations and write up! This will help a lot when some .NET modders turn their attention to the AI

Half the AI's economy in your screenshot is about supporting a massive ground army that it will never use. Compare that to your ground army expenses making up about 1% of your economy size.

Also, you can tell how little the AI is capable of expanding by looking at the private economy. It's pitiful.

In the old DW1, there was a way to set the order the AI would do it's research.

In DW2; in the file Races.xml there is an entry named <StartingResearchProjectIds>, that i think should force what the AI should research. I tried adding <short>261</short> (For the warp drive), but without success.
For now, the way the AI do it's research seems random to me !

OloroMemez wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 2:37 pm Really cool observations and write up! This will help a lot when some .NET modders turn their attention to the AI

Thanks much appirciated and I hope some one can/will make the game more challenging.

OrnluWolfjarl wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 9:04 pm Half the AI's economy in your screenshot is about supporting a massive ground army that it will never use. Compare that to your ground army expenses making up about 1% of your economy size.

Also, you can tell how little the AI is capable of expanding by looking at the private economy. It's pitiful.

Your post made me think, how is the distribution on expences actualy on my military VS the AI
Can only say one thing, it´s quite shocking the difference in active ships there is for me vs the AI
Also the cost of Other stat ships and stations says alot about the difference.
It almost feels like the AI wanna overprotect evrything with massive groundforces, planetary weapons defences and huge space station and a fleet for each colony. And then failing in doing so.
Where I as a play, i just want big focused fire power and wont care about a pointless defence that might fail once in a while.
As a disclaimer it should also be noted that I had a ship saving of only 30% while the AI had one at 117% The AI has way more combat ships than i do. Where i have my fleets mainly focused on Battleships, in this particualar game actualy only 12 fleets, all with 7 battleships and one command carrier with the big equipment and fleet targeting and fleet countermeasure systems on. Then one fleet with 10 escorts all equiped only with Eclipse Mass Drivers to bombard military ground forces.
The rest of my ships are just leftovers i did´t want to waste my time on scrapping manualy.
While the AI scatters it´s ships over a whoping 67 fleets. It´s just spread way to thin. If it combined it´s forces it could kick a well deserved punch but it wont. Where my fleets can take on evrything with no problems what so ever. It should be noted that this is actually a game i won quite fast and i did´t even had the time or need to build up a big fleet. Usualy i am at around 20-50 fleets of the same firepower or even greater when i win the game.

The ai isn't effected by the difficulty level it only changes the numbers for the player. If you want to increase ai difficulty you have to give them a tech and starting empire advantage over whatever it is you are starting with. This is how it was in DWU if you wanted a nice back and forth game and not a steamroll. At this point in the balance I'm finding starting them on teir 2 tech and young start with excellent homeworld allows them to expand and establish themselves into a viable enemy by the time you meet them. Setting pirates to very few and space monsters to normal or less also helps with ai expansion since they don't get overwhelmed by them. Chosen race vs who you add in as opposing empires also has a large influence. Try playing teekan with a dozen boskara on the map.

SirHoraceHarkness wrote: Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:27 am The ai isn't effected by the difficulty level it only changes the numbers for the player. If you want to increase ai difficulty you have to give them a tech and starting empire advantage over whatever it is you are starting with. This is how it was in DWU if you wanted a nice back and forth game and not a steamroll. At this point in the balance I'm finding starting them on teir 2 tech and young start with excellent homeworld allows them to expand and establish themselves into a viable enemy by the time you meet them. Setting pirates to very few and space monsters to normal or less also helps with ai expansion since they don't get overwhelmed by them. Chosen race vs who you add in as opposing empires also has a large influence. Try playing teekan with a dozen boskara on the map.

I think your misunderstanding the pourpose of this.
This is not a question of figurering out how the enemy AI works but how your own AI empire works
Sure i can easily beat the enemy on extreme and hars starting qcondition.
This was simply to see if you as a play with minimal interruption on the players AI (That should behave as the enemy AI) can win the game even though your own player empire AI is in a disadvante as it´s set on very hard = less income.
It also gives a look into where the AI fails big time and what it does well (Not much)

Yeah, the basic problem is just that the AI is wasting a ton of income. Mostly on troops (trying to protect all planets from invasions, which is very inefficient) and ships (they are fast to build so you only need a lot of ships during difficult wars). It also wastes a lot of credits on crashing research (super super inefficient mid-late-game), reserving 10% of income (you should pretty much never do this) and on excess happiness (the growth boost is minimal in comparison to the added tax income).

The reason why AI goes for the special tech-buildings is because of tech-thresholds. It has a higher chance of not getting stuck, if it goes for those techs. Diplo techs beyond tier 1 are mostly a waste and those need further priority tweaks.

The failure to expand is due to not having enough income or suitable planets.

Ships attacking one-by-one is a general problem with how fleets behave. Probably a high priority right now.

I Also have to say those ships maintenance numbers look kind of strange. Battleships with only 2x cruisers? Destroyers having that low values? Escorts costing that much?

The main thing I have seen from the AI and something I also mentioned even before the game was released was overspending on ground troops in particular but also fleets that you don't need. This is one of the main factors the AI struggle, that and this pointless saving of 10% of the income which will hinder the AI from important research and growth.

In my opinion they need to give the AI much better balance between expenses and income. There is no point in keeping lot's of forces in peace time as you can easily build the fleet when you need it, for the most part. You even can disband ships if you don't think you will be in war for a considerable time after a particular war.

The ground combat model in DW2 is much worse than in DW1 in my opinion as some units are just good at defense while some good at offence for the amount of resource you put in them. There is NO point in even defending planets on the ground rather than have more ships to defend space instead and then counter invade if a planet despite this is invaded, way more efficient as you only need offensive units and way less of them. So the AI waste huge pointless resources on ground troops that is pretty much worth nothing for defending your empire, not to mention ground based defensive structures too.
The game do not promote some social or political reason to protect planets from invasion as you can just counter invade them a few moments later as that is much less resource intensive.

So... in my opinion there are a few issues with game balance and the way the AI approach their economy.

One thing I am not with you is when you say the AI should have lower garnisoned unit...

It should have 10x more and remove the maintenance cost for unit for the Ai then we will talk.

With this, I would not be able to conquer 15 colony in 2 minute after a declare a war.

PsyKoSnake wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 6:22 pm It should have 10x more and remove the maintenance cost for unit for the Ai then we will talk.

plz, less this stellaris sh*t.

PsyKoSnake wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 6:22 pm One thing I am not with you is when you say the AI should have lower garnisoned unit...

It should have 10x more and remove the maintenance cost for unit for the Ai then we will talk.

With this, I would not be able to conquer 15 colony in 2 minute after a declare a war.

No... the game should be balanced so planetary defenses make sense to use... they should be more organic into the planets economy and ground units should ALWAYS be better at defense then offence. There is no way a military unit on a strategic scale would not be better at defense than offence.

Ground units garrisoned on a planet should be cheaper and should be payed from the planet income to a certain degree, not the state. Up to a certain limit of their income of course. This would make ground defenses worth investing in. Garrisoned units should also build up defensive bonuses over time.

Once you take them off the planet their maintenance should perhaps triple or quadruple in cost and be fully payed by the state. You also loose their defensive bonuses when doing so.

This way you can have planetary defenses and offensive forces as you gather them from around your empire to invade somewhere it also make sense to have forces a bit everywhere like you would in reality to spread the cost around on different planets.

It also would help the AI to deal with how ground forces is used in the game.

Well, invasions do cause damage to planets (quality + pops), but that is very seldom significant enough to warrant a a large defensive army. Colonies also get militia based on pops, but since ground combat is pretty much all-or-nothing, they end up not doing much. The invading troops can just resurrect back to life in a few months.

Personally, I would prefer a system where you have to set aside some percentage of pops for troops (like manpower in EU4). There would just be one troop-type, which would get bonuses based on techs. Each troop could cost, say, 100-250M pop and they could only heal by draining pops from friendly planets (no more resurrections).

It is nice to have all the special units, but managing armies tends to be so cumbersome that you just end up spamming armour for attacks and infantry for defence.

The AI should be able to defend its planets with fleets. Also, conquering a lot of planets quickly leads to many riots and rising upkeep costs (assimilations is very expensive). It is often not the best strategy (lesser planets can easily just be bombed down).

Re invasions,

Simplest solution is to increase strength/number of militias raised. Militia cost you nothing, but a large population could/should lead to a significant defense. Stronger militas will make it tougher to invade, as well as make successful rebellions more likely.

Also, all defensive units should probably have a small chance for an 'intercept' to kill/damage units in their landing phase. Aero-defense units would still specialise in this (and maybe be more effective).

Also maybe increase strength of armies but reduce their number, so you get less micro-management.

Omena wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:13 am Well, invasions do cause damage to planets (quality + pops), but that is very seldom significant enough to warrant a a large defensive army. Colonies also get militia based on pops, but since ground combat is pretty much all-or-nothing, they end up not doing much. The invading troops can just resurrect back to life in a few months.

This just make counter invasion that much more appealing as counter invading make the ground war quicker and produce less combat damage.

The invading army only need to fight weak militia and win fast... I only need to fight mostly weak offensive units with my offensive units and win even faster.

This will produce less damage to the planet than making the first combat a slog-fest with a fortified world.

The issue is pure offensive units as they make zero sense... all units should be at least as good at defence as offence if not always better at defence. That would be the only incentive to land them to defend a planet EVER.

The other thing that can be tuned IMO is the 'space control's modifier.

My common strat for invasions is to make a hole in the orbital defenses or clear out one hemispheres worth of defense bases, and then land my troops and invade the planet, gaining a free space station and the remaining defense satellites for instant space defense.

To counter this, I would suggest changing the space control modifier from a base +25% to defense, to at least +100% from space station, and +25% for each defense satellite remaining. That should make invasions harder, force you to clear out the orbitals, or incur some cost to you for gaining free orbital installations.

Well... I think that you should not gain bases in orbit of planets unless you board them.

personally I never build defensive bases around planets or have troops on them unless it is a mobilization center, and in those cases they are virtual fortresses the AI could never hope to ever take over, more or less. So that is my capital and perhaps one or two other planets depending on the size of the empire.

The game give you zero political reason for defending a world with military might other than roleplay. This is one huge problem with most games of this nature. Very weak internal political struggle to reflect the importance of defending territory due to internal political reasons, not just military. In the real "world" almost all conflict are driven as much from the political chair as it is from the military.

I also think that a huge part of the economy in the game can be dodged by simply not investing more than you need on the military and simply build what you need when you need it. This will make your overall economy so strong... in the few games I have played so far I have been able to pay for crash research almost continuously due to my economy and saving on ground troops and many of the buildings I don't need and have a strong fleet as well.

I feel than the balance of the game is around that you should build allot of ground troops and defend you planets when from a military and economy perspective make very little sense. You only need to defend a handful of planets for strategic reasons and simply recapture what you loose as your fleet will be much more powerful anyway due to your strong overall economy.

I also always start with very uneven starts where I'm the only STL empire and other start from large to small with various technological advances ahead of me. I also find pirates to be too weak... I never give them any money in the early game so I can invest it in myself instead. It is usually easy to get a few of them on your side by bribing them... spending bonus income to bribe them is way more efficient than stalling your expansion and research from your basic income, this is a design flaw in my opinion.