advanced AI start

[TextualArc]

I just got completely steamrolled by an advanced AI who spawned next door.
I have played with them on before plenty of times but now make a habbit of disabling them completely to avoid this kind of scenario.
I can identify pretty well when an AI empire has gotten an advanced start, twice the average fleet presence, twice the pops, twice the research, several colonies, a larger presence in space etc..
anyway I disable them, but for some reason I have still been seeing them spawn since the new patch and one just spawned right next door.
They force vassalized me, only option being an uphill defensive war - which I lost - after which I get "integrated" and lose the game.
now I get that is mostly just bad luck and it isn't game breaking - luck of the draw and all that - but it seems like advanced start AI empires are getting spawned now even when disabled.
I did check the details on their pops traits and their civics to see if there was some other explanation for why they had so many pops, so many ships, so much presence in space etc.
but they weren't rapid breeders, intelligent, traditional, materialist, spiritualist, anything that would lead me to think its likely they have a chance at being that big without being an advanced start.

So my only conclusion is that its a bug, advanced stat AI's are in the spawns now even when disabled.
not the worst bug ever, but one worth noting. hope it gets patched.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Did you check to see what their origin was? I ask, because I believe that turning off advanced start AIs doesn't prevent one of the regular AIs from taking the Lost Colony origin, which then adds in an extra AI - which happens to be an advanced start AI. If that is what happened in your case then that AI's origin should be a hint that it is the advanced start AI companion to a Lost Colony origin empire.

[TextualArc]

I did actually, they were prosperous unification.

on that note, if you don't use your own custom empires there's a spawn predisposition to use mostly PU type origins in AI generated empires. not really relevant to the topic, just something interesting I noticed.

Anyway, unless the "source empire" for the lost colony origin is label'd as PU then no I don't think that's what they were.
could be just that however. that and bad luck on the spawn, advanced authoritarian millitarist neighbours.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

I'm not sure what they game labels them, but I'm assuming it isn't just PU, because for example the extra empires that spawn with the Hegemon and Common Ground origins get a special origin to indicate that they spawned as part of one of those origins but were not the "main" empire.

Aside from Lost Colony, I'm not sure what would cause an advanced start AI to spawn with advanced start AIs set to zero - except for a bug. I haven't noticed this myself (I turn advanced starts to zero), but then it could be happening in the case of empires far from me, which I don't contact until their start state would be unknown. I haven't had any my immediate neighbors appear as advanced start, but that could just be luck.

[FD_Stalker]

you just have bad luck thats all

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by FD_Stalker:

you just have bad luck thats all

I'm pretty sure that's not the whole story. Bad luck could cause an advanced start empire to spawn as your neighbor, but bad luck doesn't cause an advanced start empire to appear in your game when the game is set up to have none of them.

[TextualArc]

Just checked the wiki, and I'm not seeing a unique origin tag for the LC source empire.
The wiki page for origins might be new, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
It seems like source empires for LC could be tagged with potentially any other origin, or in this case a PU origin.

Gonna call it and say there is no unique tag for advanced source empires, and that I just got really unlucky being placed next to one.
shame really, it was otherwise a remarkably good start.

[TextualArc]

as an update, I just ran into another advanced start AI neighbour, and noticed a few things worth noting:

-same pop as a lost colony fungoid empire
-generate as prosperous unification origin
-generated as a machine intelligence
-a machine intelligence with a fungoid pop

that last point is so bizarre I cant help but love it, absolute peak new patch jank.

[Astasia]

Ya the empires spawned by the Lost Colony origin don't obey any of the game rules. They have a random origin of their own, and can randomize a lot of other settings in ways they shouldn't be able to, like a robot devouring swarm with tree of life origin, and of course they ignore the advanced start setting.

[TextualArc]

well funny as finding strange rule breaking empires is, I think I'll be going back to playing against my pre-designed empires till some of the jank is ironed out.
The possibilities for patchworked and gamebreakingly powerful AI empires is just too high with the lost colonies being spawned.
Mostly just wanted to avoid the same predictable roster of empires, but this is a bit too far into unpredictability.