Planet & Sector auto-management?

[icarus40]

Like many others, I have had my mid to late games rendered complicated micromanagement drudgery. I have tried to give sectors or planets over to auto-management as my empire grows above 20 or 25. I provide resources to the AI through the "Shared Stockpile." I have tried using the Vanilla AI or 3 different AI mods with similar results!

After setting the planetary auto-management the AI seems to do well initially. However, once each planet becomes more developed the auto-management seems to grind to confusion. I am frequently alerted to return to management to planets on auto-management to correct growing unemployment, no housing being built or nothing but housing being built.

Once my empire reaches about 40 or more the game devolves into constant alerts to deal with growing unemployment, crime or decreased unity. I am forced to run the game on slow or slowest so I can go through the lists fo planets to do the work the AI should be doing. The mid or later game devolves into the above mentioned drudgery!

Anybody have comments or suggestions? Is there any use to turning on both sector management and use planetary management?

[TwoTonTuna]

Tip 1: greater than ourselves

1. Join the galactic community.
2. Buy favors and boost your diplomatic weight until you can single-handedly pass a law
3. keep voting for 'greater good' laws until you boost it up to level 3
4. enable the 'greater than ourselves' edict.

This edict will automatically move unemployed pops to colonies with open jobs. It will cut out a LOT of the micromanagement that comes with multiple colonies, basically a must-have in the end-game.

Tip 2: tiny ui mod
Look for the "Tiny UI" mod in the workshop. It will shrink the icons in your outliner, allowing you to more easily monitor your dozens of colonies. you'll still need to micromanage, but the smaller icons let you absorb much more info at a glance.

Tip 3: go egalitarian
The 'utopian abundance' living standards makes unemployed pops happy and productive. stacking unemployed pops won't trigger negative events, and those pops will produce +1 unity and +2 research each. your pops will eat up a lot of consumer goods though, so you need to boost industry and trade to compensate for that.

Tip 4: crack worlds
If you want your late-game to run decently, you'll need to cull pops from the galaxy. if you have the apocalypse DLC, build a colossus and crack worlds.

if you don't, invade planets and purge their pops via the species management screen. set the purge type to extermination so you kill them as fast as possible.

i personally don't like playing genocidal, but it's the only way any game past the year 2400 will run at acceptable speeds. i tried playing nice, letting the other empires exist up to 2500 in a medium galaxy.

i literally read books while watching the days sputter by every few seconds.

[icarus40]

Originally posted by Kodesh:

Tip 1: greater than ourselves

1. Join the galactic community.
2. Buy favors and boost your diplomatic weight until you can single-handedly pass a law
3. keep voting for 'greater good' laws until you boost it up to level 3
4. enable the 'greater than ourselves' edict.

This edict will automatically move unemployed pops to colonies with open jobs. It will cut out a LOT of the micromanagement that comes with multiple colonies, basically a must-have in the end-game.

Tip 2: tiny ui mod
Look for the "Tiny UI" mod in the workshop. It will shrink the icons in your outliner, allowing you to more easily monitor your dozens of colonies. you'll still need to micromanage, but the smaller icons let you absorb much more info at a glance.

Tip 3: go egalitarian
The 'utopian abundance' living standards makes unemployed pops happy and productive. stacking unemployed pops won't trigger negative events, and those pops will produce +1 unity and +2 research each. your pops will eat up a lot of consumer goods though, so you need to boost industry and trade to compensate for that.

Tip 4: crack worlds
If you want your late-game to run decently, you'll need to cull pops from the galaxy. if you have the apocalypse DLC, build a colossus and crack worlds.

if you don't, invade planets and purge their pops via the species management screen. set the purge type to extermination so you kill them as fast as possible.

i personally don't like playing genocidal, but it's the only way any game past the year 2400 will run at acceptable speeds. i tried playing nice, letting the other empires exist up to 2500 in a medium galaxy.

i literally read books while watching the days sputter by every few seconds.

I am sorry, I don't see what you have written has do with anything I have written.

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by icarus40:

I am sorry, I don't see what you have written has do with anything I have written.

Originally posted by icarus40:

Once my empire reaches about 40 or more the game devolves into constant alerts to deal with growing unemployment, crime or decreased unity. I am forced to run the game on slow or slowest so I can go through the lists fo planets to do the work the AI should be doing. The mid or later game devolves into the above mentioned drudgery!

Anybody have comments or suggestions? Is there any use to turning on both sector management and use planetary management?

first three tips solve your problems with unemployment and managing your increasing numbers of colonies. last tip is one related to performance, which i figured will help your late game if you want to keep the game running smoothly

[Laiziras]

Yeah the AI for managing sectors and planets is completely broken atm, they dont build anything after a while and when they do theyll just replace everything youve builded with useless buildings.
I was running a synthetic empire and didnt need food anymore but they just kept building more agri districts and replacing useful buildings with food ones

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by Laiziras:

Yeah the AI for managing sectors and planets is completely broken atm, they dont build anything after a while and when they do theyll just replace everything youve builded with useless buildings.
I was running a synthetic empire and didnt need food anymore but they just kept building more agri districts and replacing useful buildings with food ones

The only decent AI is the research one since it obsessively builds/upgrades research labs and nothing else. And even then, you'll still need to balance things out by building gas refineries and civilian factories yourself.

[icarus40]

first three tips solve your problems with unemployment and managing your increasing numbers of colonies. last tip is one related to performance, which i figured will help your late game if you want to keep the game running smoothly [/quote]

Thanks! I pretty much always follow the first 2 tips. I do use the Tiny UI mod to keep up on which planets have unemployed or lack of housing. Tip #3 I play egalitarian but have never used the "utopian abundance" living standard. I shall try it.

I play egalitarian, materialist, xenophilic and cannot purge. I have never chosen to crack worlds I will see what I can do.

I do very much appreciate your comments and suggestions. Have you anything to say about auto-planet and auto-sector managements?

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by icarus40:

I do very much appreciate your comments and suggestions. Have you anything to say about auto-planet and auto-sector managements?

Auto-planet is a no-go. The AI that automates planets spams random junk, wasting resources and job slots.

Likewise for auto-sector management. All of them make bad decisions save for research focus. This focus only builds research labs and housing. That simplicity is what makes it useful, though it constructs housing buildings for amenities instead of holotheaters.

just check on your colonies once in a while, replacing luxury residences with holotheaters.

[Sifer2]

The designer of Stellaris switched after they did the economic revamp. And the guy on his way out left a huge mess IMO. The whole economic revamp seemed built with megacorps in mind. That you would play tall as a megacorp, and so not need much sector automation. The Vanilla experience is thus really broken to this day. It's not likely to get better until they let people crate planet presets, and allow pops to auto move between worlds as a standard feature.

[icarus40]

Lots of helpful tips and information here. I am surprised regarding the number of participants in this thread. To my mind, solving or understanding this problem is paramount to this game being playable at all in the mid and late games. Perhaps people have just capitulated to the fact of this part of the game being broken.

[DankDansk]

Originally posted by Laiziras:

Yeah the AI for managing sectors and planets is completely broken atm, they dont build anything after a while and when they do theyll just replace everything youve builded with useless buildings.
I was running a synthetic empire and didnt need food anymore but they just kept building more agri districts and replacing useful buildings with food ones

It's been broken since 2.2, and removing custom sectors didn't help, arguably it made it worse.

I just play on smaller galaxies. Performance is garbage and the AI is crunked, but far less terrible on smaller galaxies. I just stopped buying PDX's products until they plan to fix it.

[Wryson Rose]

This. This thread just helped me majorly. I myself am going to soon be SWEARING by the galactic community movement thing. That the population DOES NOT ALREADY DO THIS is staggering.

Player: Gee, the population has reached the tipping point where no new jobs can be created and/or new houses. We should either move, or not reproduce as much!

AI: No. We're just goin' to tear down housing, make office buildings, then complain that there's not enough housing. Then, we're going to tear down the office buildings, make houses, and then complain there's not enough jobs! We'll WORK IT OUT EVENTUALLY!

.......whoever designed this thing should be beaten about the head thoroughly.

[DankDansk]

Originally posted by Mikal_Serity:

This. This thread just helped me majorly. I myself am going to soon be SWEARING by the galactic community movement thing. That the population DOES NOT ALREADY DO THIS is staggering.

Player: Gee, the population has reached the tipping point where no new jobs can be created and/or new houses. We should either move, or not reproduce as much!

AI: No. We're just goin' to tear down housing, make office buildings, then complain that there's not enough housing. Then, we're going to tear down the office buildings, make houses, and then complain there's not enough jobs! We'll WORK IT OUT EVENTUALLY!

.......whoever designed this thing should be beaten about the head thoroughly.

Nah, they'll just be told to make more DLC.

I'm playing the Ethics+Civics mod as a communist science directorate union (The United Technocratic Directorates. Think space China but with scientists) And every other empire except for the fallen empires are pathetic compared to mine. Literally. No joke. On Grand Admiral.

I checked out some planets I conquered and they just randomly and haphazardly build anything anywhere and never set specializations, meaning they randomize. I saw a mining planet with 3 mining slots (2 with mining districts), no mineral plant, 2 alloy plants and a bunch of unemployed pops. a bunch of their planets are like this and they never have surpluses. They never build tech planets either, or at least as far as I've seen.

This is why the unlimited market exists; so the AI can cheese it to survive and it still fails to do so.

[Penetrator]

The AI is worthless. It will fill up your planet with factories when your consumer goods are +300 and call it a tech world

[icarus40]

Well, well, well! I should hope that others contribute to this with their complaints, advice or suggestions! I hope the developers will take heed. Shalom Kodesh.

[mss73055]

You have to mind happiness. While the planet screen states "48%" it is not explaining what you can do about it. And the effects are self-sustaining misery: less production, less happiness, upto rebellion.

The AI also considers upkeep. If you select "Manufacturing" but do not provide with minerals or energy to process then particular types of factories will not be constructed.The effect may be general unemployment, as Vespene Geysers (or no factories at all) barely provide jobs.

The pitfall of Authoritarian Ethics is to pretend you know the game and adjust the difficulty slider to compensate. Still the AI will not understand you, as you keep steering it into the wrong direction. Also Authoritarian and Military Ethics allow you to make big bad decisions. And this is unconveniently real :).