Anti Player AI

[Soveless]

In this new update the AI seems unwilling to work with the player, and in fact collectively conspires against the player. I have had 2.5k fleets show up 10 years in and claim half my systems. I thought that my fleet of 30k could kill the 20k fleet attacking me, but I didn't leave a dent and the fleet was destroyed in its entirety. along with the 15k starbase. like what am I supposed to do when someone leaves the Galactic council during the crisis Just to wage war with me, as the crisis is destroying HIM. The older AI was better balanced and didn't OVERTLY single out the player. BTW my settings are on Default. I hope the next update fixes this issue otherwise I guess one of my favorite games is just dead. Does anyone know Why everyone hates my guts? I don't attack people, I am constantly trying to improve relationships etc... I'm trying to be friendly.

[mss73055]

If empires leave the council to fight you as the real crisis you didn't make friends :D
Also do not use sapient ship AI during the contingency crisis.

You got to adopt with every patch. Without mods and cheats.

[Maya-Neko]

The diplomacy screen tells you everything you need to know. So actually check, why they hate you. Sometimes it's quite hard to be friendly to everyone depending on your ethics and your friendships/rivalries/event decisions.

And also check how your opponents fleets are build. A fleet countering another fleet can easily handle a fleet twice as strong as itself (and that might randomly happen, if everything you care about is fleet strength). And starbases are weak to begin with. Not really something you should expect to do something meaningfull, especially against artillery ships.

[HyperKnight]

I think this is you being overly friendly to the point of being weak, because in my latest game this patch I joined a militant federation and we were conquering left and right and AI was quite helpful.

[HappySack]

If you're as friendly as you say then you should have lots of other empire protecting you, otherwise it's a dog eat dog galaxy and if you don't have the teeth to bite back then you get eaten by a bigger dog.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Soveless:

The older AI was better balanced and didn't OVERTLY single out the player.

The current AI doesn't do that either.

[Soveless]

Note: this Is not a single playthrough this is Multiple, a few games I never had the chance to make friends before my empire fell because the first two AI started as hostile, and immediately declared a war of conquest and conquered my home system. all before year 15

Originally posted by mss73055:

If empires leave the council to fight you as the real crisis you didn't make friends :D
Also do not use sapient ship AI during the contingency crisis.

You got to adopt with every patch. Without mods and cheats.

1 i've never used mods or cheats
2 The enemies dont care about how many envoys or gifts I give them.
3 I am not the crisis a AI hivemind is that had more diplo weight then the rest of the council combined (32k) before they became the crisis. What I meant to say was I felt like the AI was Leaving the Galactic council to attack me before the AI crisis obliterated them.

Originally posted by Spooderz:

I think this is you being overly friendly to the point of being weak, because in my latest game this patch I joined a militant federation and we were conquering left and right and AI was quite helpful.

Outside of the become the Crisis factions that always spawn, I have the predominant fleets, and there are no federations in my games to actually join.

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

The diplomacy screen tells you everything you need to know. So actually check, why they hate you. Sometimes it's quite hard to be friendly to everyone depending on your ethics and your friendships/rivalries/event decisions.

And also check how your opponents fleets are build. A fleet countering another fleet can easily handle a fleet twice as strong as itself (and that might randomly happen, if everything you care about is fleet strength). And starbases are weak to begin with. Not really something you should expect to do something meaningfull, especially against artillery ships.

Oh yeah I agree with you Starbases are weak trash, and you need to properly counter, but thats not whats happening here, I wish it was that, similar fleet compositions, and similar tech but in order to win I have to be a counter, or if fleets are comparable, I need to double or more my fleet strength.

Originally posted by HappySack:

If you're as friendly as you say then you should have lots of other empire protecting you, otherwise it's a dog eat dog galaxy and if you don't have the teeth to bite back then you get eaten by a bigger dog.

Im friendly, but no one Is friends, they are nearly always hostile, And I am usually one of the bigger dogs but when you have AI who have been friendly for at least 50 years turn hostile, leave the GC because the GC is fighting a hivemind that became the crisis, and decide that they need to attack the player while the hivemind is actually blowing up their systems, and consuming them. Is kinda ridiculous.

[CBR JGWRR]

The most effective way for the AI to win is to make the player ragequit; the longer any given run lasts, the more likely it is the Human will win.

Once you realise that, AI behaviour in games makes sense. Annoying? Yes. But extremely effective.

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Soveless:

Note: this Is not a single playthrough this is Multiple, a few games I never had the chance to make friends before my empire fell because the first two AI started as hostile, and immediately declared a war of conquest and conquered my home system. all before year 15

If you get an early contact, then you've to focus more on military first. If you let your guard down, just because you expect to be friends anyway, then that's a flaw in your strategy, not in the AIs behaviour.

Originally posted by Soveless:

1 i've never used mods or cheats
2 The enemies dont care about how many envoys or gifts I give them.
3 I am not the crisis a AI hivemind is that had more diplo weight then the rest of the council combined (32k) before they became the crisis. What I meant to say was I felt like the AI was Leaving the Galactic council to attack me before the AI crisis obliterated them.

The enemies do care about envoys and gifts, but if the negative impacts on your relationship still outweights the positive aspects, then they'll still attack you. And envoys aren't meant as a "here take my man and now you can't attack me anymore"-joker card, but rather a way to speed up the gainings of relationships. But if you're already at like -500, then addint +1 per month might take a while to get it back to 0 or even onto a friendly niveau.

And it's highly possible, that it's not you in particular, that they left the galactic community. Maybe their sanctions got too big or maybe their xenophobe ethic started to dominate or whatever

Originally posted by Soveless:

Oh yeah I agree with you Starbases are weak trash, and you need to properly counter, but thats not whats happening here, I wish it was that, similar fleet compositions, and similar tech but in order to win I have to be a counter, or if fleets are comparable, I need to double or more my fleet strength.

Overall it's quite hard to give you the real reason for why that happened with you just giving no context at all to the situation, thus i can only guess why that happens and maybe giving you some ideas.

Originally posted by Soveless:

Im friendly, but no one Is friends, they are nearly always hostile, And I am usually one of the bigger dogs but when you have AI who have been friendly for at least 50 years turn hostile, leave the GC because the GC is fighting a hivemind that became the crisis, and decide that they need to attack the player while the hivemind is actually blowing up their systems, and consuming them. Is kinda ridiculous.

AIs of the opposite Ethics tend to be more hostile to you by default (and if you're xenophobe, then it's hard to keep up friendships no matter what). That's just how the game works.

And why some of the more friendly ones turning hostile depends heavily on what happens in your run. For example border friction can cause some empires to start getting envious about your territory, once you start to get a longer border with them.

But again: Hover over the relationship bar to see, why they start to hate you. They doesn't start to be hostile randomly, but there's always a reason to it (because it's pure math after all, given that we're talking about a video game AI).

Originally posted by CBR JGWRR:

The most effective way for the AI to win is to make the player ragequit; the longer any given run lasts, the more likely it is the Human will win.

Once you realise that, AI behaviour in games makes sense. Annoying? Yes. But extremely effective.

The AI doesn't have any incentive to win the game. They just do whatever they're programmed to do, which is mainly acting in a way, that approximately resembles how a country with a similar gouvernment type might act in real live. If they win, then it just happened totally random and not because they tried it.

A human player getting annoyed by a specific AI type (like getting attacked by militaristic xenophobes over and over again), is most likely caused by the playstyle of the human rather than the AI analyzing, what annoys the human most.

And the reason for AIs getting weaker over time is mainly, because their routines getting less effective over time, when the complexity of the situations start to get bigger and their programmed commitment to specific behavior (like focusing specific buildings depending on their ethics and civics) might cause them to be worse at snowballing properly into the late game.

[Soveless]

So, I seemed to have solved the Issue. I believe that the game forces a certain amount of Hostile factions into the mix, and while playing on the standard 9 empires on a medium galaxy You nearly always wind up being directly next to someone who will hate you no matter what. I believe that the AI also spawns AI players diametrically opposed to your government on purpose. As approximately 3-4 empires would consistently have FanSpiritualist when I was a materialist or visa versa. add in at least one fanatical purifier, DE, Etc... and it becomes HIGHLY likely that the vast majority of AI you will never be able to be friendly with. I tested my theory out with a debug mode and it seems to be the case, after testing it a bit with a Huge galaxy with 15 empires, there were always more AI that would be friends with me while still having some empires hate my guts. I believe that the more empires are active the better balanced the game ends up.
(Note: To clarify I have been doing SP, MP games have been working fine for me)

[ScreamCon]

I've spawned next to 3 criminal syndicates before, the game if not statistically, seems to have a seed or something that determines the flavour of what type of empires spawn in the galaxy/next to you.

Some games you will get a lot of something and others barely any. And other other games a mix.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Soveless:

So, I seemed to have solved the Issue. I believe that the game forces a certain amount of Hostile factions into the mix, and while playing on the standard 9 empires on a medium galaxy You nearly always wind up being directly next to someone who will hate you no matter what. I believe that the AI also spawns AI players diametrically opposed to your government on purpose. As approximately 3-4 empires would consistently have FanSpiritualist when I was a materialist or visa versa. add in at least one fanatical purifier, DE, Etc... and it becomes HIGHLY likely that the vast majority of AI you will never be able to be friendly with. I tested my theory out with a debug mode and it seems to be the case, after testing it a bit with a Huge galaxy with 15 empires, there were always more AI that would be friends with me while still having some empires hate my guts. I believe that the more empires are active the better balanced the game ends up.
(Note: To clarify I have been doing SP, MP games have been working fine for me)

The game does not do that. Your small sample size of a handful of games observed means nothing. It would have to be a huge sample size to have any weight to it.

If we are working from anecdotes alone, I've had games where I spawned next to near identical nations whom ended up being my best buds for centuries, likewise I've had games where everyone was a raging psycopath. It's just completely random.

It sounds more like your playstyle revolves around a more middle of the road balanced approach around being diplomatic and friendly, which just so happens to be the playstyle most dependent on spawning certain AIs that you can get on with to begin with.

I mean with just 9 AIs you have to just hope that there is not 5 or more hostile AIs (which statistically there almost definitely will be) and at least 2 or 3 very friendly ones (which again there almost definitely won't be) otherwise it will always feel like your playstyle is being hampered.

By contrast if you played extremely hostile purifier types it doesn't really matter who spawns or what ethics they have.

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Soveless:

So, I seemed to have solved the Issue. I believe that the game forces a certain amount of Hostile factions into the mix, and while playing on the standard 9 empires on a medium galaxy You nearly always wind up being directly next to someone who will hate you no matter what. I believe that the AI also spawns AI players diametrically opposed to your government on purpose. As approximately 3-4 empires would consistently have FanSpiritualist when I was a materialist or visa versa. add in at least one fanatical purifier, DE, Etc... and it becomes HIGHLY likely that the vast majority of AI you will never be able to be friendly with. I tested my theory out with a debug mode and it seems to be the case, after testing it a bit with a Huge galaxy with 15 empires, there were always more AI that would be friends with me while still having some empires hate my guts. I believe that the more empires are active the better balanced the game ends up.
(Note: To clarify I have been doing SP, MP games have been working fine for me)

How about using some simply math to actually clarify things instead of just relying on anectodes?

You've to take at least 2 ethics, thus you've a ~46,4% Chance of facing an foreign empire with at least one opposite trait. If you're playing 3 ethics, then the chances raises even to ~64,3%. So it's HIGHLY likely, that roughly half the galaxy doesn't love you to begin with and a few of those ones will most likely be your neighbors as well. (obviously only counted the normal random empires. If you build like dozens of empires and using them, it might start to shift to whatever you prefer at some point)

So it's not that surprising, that if you meet like 3 empires early on, that at least one of them already leans more towards a war against you, especially when you doesn't build any competitive fleet fast enough. And the chances to meet 2 hostile empires out of 3 is quite realistic as well.

Ultimately i would guess (so not really calculated), that 3 hostile neighbors is quite borderline bad luck and 4+ hostiles starts to be very unlucky.

[Lewis Nixon]

I'm new, but I've had good relations so far. I made a productive trading agreement with some bird civilization. They seem like good people.

[Kalluil]

I just spit my drink out through my nose. Thank you Lewis!!

[videomike_Ultimate_Plushie]

I do not even BEGIN to have an issue with the AI going after me. Hell my last game when I was playing a slaver imperialist boy me and one AI stared eachother down almost all game while slowly taking everyone else. I swear by the time the crisis was at risk of showing up, we held 75-80% of the galaxy between us in vassals, territory, and a hegemony on his part. I certainly haven't seen the AI do something like leave the council to attack me. In fact, I haven't them ever leave the council for any reason. I certainly had to adjust to constantly building fleets early, both in and out of Stellaris, but especially in. I have also -never-, even pre-federation, has no AI federations spawns. By mid game there are always multiple. Post-federation they definitly exist. The AI also tends to make them responding to threats, so the only way I can see them never spawning is no empire ever got big.

I have no idea what your issue with fleets are. If it's not a hard counter situation as you claim, nothing about what you said makes sense. I the AI does not cheat for fleet power. I revered control on empires to check, including on the latest patch. What your describing about AI fleets cheating to just be performing better is not happening without mods or a broken install or something. Maybe there's someething your not picking up on liek evasion, range, engagement time, etc? Also Starbases are excellent, they just need to be in assistance to your forces. They do eventually get phased out post war-drive but that's about when they become necessary for trade protection.

Your example about people leaving the council left a bit out in the initial post as well. Where did you somehow come to they left the council to fight you? They left the council to become the crisis, by your own admission, and attacked you as the threat or easiest oppurtunity.