AI building insane number of ground troops

[rasmus]

I had trouble with my money disappearing as fast as I made them - even with the UI saying I made +1000K....
Was really baffling until I found out that the AI had started building/recruiting thousands of ground troops. My "Armoured Brigade" highests number was 6400+

Ofcourse the vast majority of those was still at zero strength/manpower.... but do you know how to disband 5000+ brigades?! Yes... you do it ONE at a time with 2 mouse clicks.... :P

[Tooslow]

You can do it in the military screen, under the troops tab. Quickest way to get there is to double click on on the recruiting troops in the planet screen. You can sort by location, click on a troop, scroll down a bit and shift left click to select multiple, then disband them all at once.
How do I know know this? Because the exact thing is happening to me too. Troop recruitment set to manual but the colony is still soaking up all my money buying more ghost troops.

[mikroship]

So the ground troop recruitment automation has to be toggled per colony. I think the setting in the policy screen is just the default for new colonies or something.

[Tooslow]

Yea. I have it on manual as a policy and also went through and changed all my colonies to manual recruitment. I've sent the save to [e-mail], as per instructions, and I'll see if it gets fixed in the patch notes at some point.

Meantime I'm not wasting any more time on it. This bug is basically game-ending for me as all my money is being soaked up with nothing I can do about it, but I've had a few other bugs that were irritating but not game-ending.

I'll let them bug squash for a month and come back.

[rasmus]

Thanks for the tip about disbanding - will try it out tonight.

[AgentX2006]

Yeah the AI is auto recruiting 34 ground units between my 3 colonies. Half of them don't even have any troops in them yet but I'm still paying maintenance on them. Those 34 units have a combined cost of 8,725. No wonder I'm broke. That's almost half my total income on ground troops.

https://i.imgur.com/6B3ErUs.png

Also setting the colony to manual for automate infantry recruitment and garrison to manual doesn't stop the AI from recruiting troops.

[ERutins]

It's intended that troops under recruitment still cost maintenance and depending on your situation, 34 ground units could be reasonable. However, it should be respecting the automation settings. Is there any chance you have a save file you could zip and share with us that shows this situation?

[Tooslow]

Originally posted by ERutins:

It's intended that troops under recruitment still cost maintenance and depending on your situation, 34 ground units could be reasonable. However, it should be respecting the automation settings. Is there any chance you have a save file you could zip and share with us that shows this situation?

I know you're talking to the other guy, but I sent you one last night. Did you get it? (Can confirm this save, under 1.0.2.0 patch, still building troops with every spare penny it can get its hands on)

[AgentX2006]

Originally posted by ERutins:

It's intended that troops under recruitment still cost maintenance and depending on your situation, 34 ground units could be reasonable. However, it should be respecting the automation settings. Is there any chance you have a save file you could zip and share with us that shows this situation?

Sure how do you want me to get it to you?

[Tooslow]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/discussions/3/5561388294349367570/

Basically zip the save and email with explanation to [e-mail]

[Furluge]

Yeah I had something similar happen to me as well. What I have essentially learned is that the AI cannot be trusted to have access to troop transports or anything to do with recruitment right now. Here's a screenshot of how many troops it tried to recruit in a single go and costing 40K in extra maintenance despite there only being 20K left in the empire budget for troop maintenance. https://imgur.com/a/GYUxzJB

Here's what I have observed so far.

1) It seems like cloning may be what causes the AI to go crazy recruiting. Any colonies that have a cloning facility will end up starting to recruit quite a lot of troops. How much seems to vary but the homeworld loves to recruit massive amounts.

2) The troop levels set in policies (Low, normal, etc.) seem to do nothing. The massive splurge I had that overran the budget has occured when they are set for Low and Normal. I've never ever put it above normal at any point.

3) Even if troop recruitment is set manual, if you have an AI controlled troop transport it will cause the AI to ignore this setting and it will goto a colony and cause it to order troops to fill up it's hold. This can become a lot of troops as the game goes on. This also means I have to watch enlisted ships like a hawk and it's generally not worth it to enlist them because if I miss a troop transport it'll cause a troop recruitment death spiral.

4) It just flat out ignores what the funding levels that are set in empire management. Restricting the troop maintenance budget to encourage the AI not to recruit so much does nothing.

5) You can't leave the budget on auto because otherwise then they'll work off of each other and soon your whole budget will be troop maintenance.

So again, as of right now, AI cannot be used for troop recruitment in any way, you can let the AI control any troop ships, this means you can't reliably enlist foreign or salvaged ships because they'll start breaking the troop recruitment settings, and you need to manage the budget yourself.

Also I have to be honest, I think it's silly that you pay for troop maintenance before they're even recruited. It's normally not a problem when the AI isn't going off it's nut buying ALL THE TANKS though.

[Tooslow]

Gotta agree. Basically I turned off virtually all automation (the most highly rated "feature of the game) and was able to get my budget under control after deleting a LOT of troops.

I think the ONLY thing I left automated was military attacks, otherwise solo ships will Escort and Guard but won't actually attack anything first.

If having automated troop transports is what's causing the problem, then having the AI advisor perpetually begging me to build them is self-defeating.

I'm surprised this isn't more of an issue though.

Edit: Noticed this in the latest patch notes from Friday:

"TROOPS
- changed meaning of colony automation setting 'Automate Infantry Recruitment and Garrison' to now include all troop types, i.e. 'Automate Troop Recruitment and Garrison'
- lowered attack troop recruitment levels, especially for large empires
- added automation icons to Selection Panel to indicate colony automation status for troop recruitment and resource stock levels"

Haven't played since last week so no idea if this fixes the problem but it looks promising.

[Furluge]

I'll have to see if it's been improved in the next game I play. Thanks.

[LykosNychi]

No save available but 2 days ago it was definitely still chewing as much money as It could on troops. I hate do delete 400 battalions of various kinds of troops, and redistribute leftovers across my empire, and then turn off automatic troop building.

Even on manual it won't stop reshuffling my troops if I leave transports on auto.

[Furluge]

So I'm on my third game and which I started after the patch and I have to say things are greatly improved. The AI is staying within it's budget and while it may recruit more than I'd like sometimes it's not recruiting an absurd amount of troops and it does have an upper limit to how much it'll recruit. I'm still not sure if AI Troop transports will cause it recruit tons of troops though.

[Tooslow]

Originally posted by Furluge:

So I'm on my third game and which I started after the patch and I have to say things are greatly improved. The AI is staying within it's budget and while it may recruit more than I'd like sometimes it's not recruiting an absurd amount of troops and it does have an upper limit to how much it'll recruit. I'm still not sure if AI Troop transports will cause it recruit tons of troops though.

Fingers crossed. Still haven't started a new game, as it feels there's a bit more to finish off bug-busting.