AI and budgeting...

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have been working a bit with getting the AI economy to work and there is one value that I would like to have added to the budgeting. You could call it "Development". This would be a percentage value the AI will reserve in the budget for their excess spending. This should be placed just beneath the Reserved value. The reserved is saved directly as cash and the Development goes straight to the Excess spending. The rest the AI can spend on Ship, Troops etc..

The caveat with the "Development" spending should be that it automatically should go to zero during wars and after a war is concluded the AI should again start reserving money for the excess spending.

The "development" value will not directly divert money to development and research but it will be a hard number the AI will try to meat, if it can't meet this value it should stop building ships, troops and buildings unless there is some really strong priority to do so.

I'm certain there are some similar values or function going on in the background, but I think that we should have such a value in the Funding area to help the AI through modding and automation for the player and guide it.

I think this is one of the major issues with the AI being competitive when it comes to economy, that it will not prioritize managing their state budget to make sure it maximise the excess to cover their development and research needs. Unless there is a war there are very little reasons the AI should tap into this area of expense.

Outside of the early game it is OK for the AI to reserve 10% of the state budget for cash, even if that means less development and research, the AI need the cash too... most of the time.

In addition to this the AI also need to be a bit less cautious when to settle new planets, it takes too much time for the AI to settle new planets, new planets might be costly at start... but they will be worth it in the long run. Settling new planets should be budgeted into the "Development" part of the state budget by the AI somehow. The AI should be willing to have a certain amount of negative income based on it overall income at any one time, so it always will contemplate settling new planets as the old one grows into positive territory, just like a player will. They could easily reserve 5-10% if the income for this purpose, including saving up cash to buy the colony ship.
I have seen AI being positive on all worlds and still not able or willing to settle perfectly viable planets in range, mainly because they build too many ships/troops or facilities and not divert state budget for more important things.

My conclusion is the AI must divert a much larger portion of their state budget during peace to development and not just maintenance, this is one of the weakest part of the AI right now.

I'm also not sure if the AI really respect the value I set in the policy files for "cashflow"... the AI seem to still set the ship maintenance to roughly 80% which is insane to allow the AI to spend that much money out of the state on ships and once they meet other factions they seem to build like crazy often times and hurt their own economy in the process. If they meet three pirates and have protection agreements with all there are still no reason to build a fleet for example. But... I still think the AI to some degree follow the values I set in the "cashflow" area... it just go a little nuts on the ship building at times, especially when they unlock a new "Rule" type ship.

[frankycl]

Sorry, although I have no additional input for this (I think I made my position clear in other threads already), I just had to answer, in order to update this damn forum program (because otherwise the thread is always marked as "unread", independent of how often I read the posts.

Just keep on with the discussion.

[AKicebear]

Strongly agreed.