Ensign AI cheating more than a 13 year old on a mathtest they didnt learn for

[Bakurio]

Greetings everyone,

opened a new game (vanilla plus kitsune race mod) with a friend with Ensign difficulty. We currently are around midgame and waged a war against an AI that sat next to us.
The AI had pathetic EVERYTHING (including but especially fleetpower) in comparison to each of us, my spy network gave me full insight on each fleet on top of that and by calculation sending our 7 fleets of 50k~60k each along with a juggernaut would have not be an issue at all.
But upon declaration of war, suddenly his 2 fleets of 25k and 30k double in power, but he also spawned in 4 more 60k fleets, each able to fight off 2 of our 60k fleets and suriviving with 20k power over the course of the war. We overpowered each of them with pure numbers since we massproduced entire fleets from our shipyard systems.
A reminder: the AI is pathetic in eco, tech and fleet power and cheated itself 60k fleets out of nowhere into their (at that point) occupied systems (7 Systems, of which 3 are split off due earlier wars)
Now, the AI has no shipyards left and we conquered the planets of that area COMPLETELY (this is a war of claim, although we claimed everything before the war, the war didnt end because of another ai thats in the same war)

So we took everything over, with lost of losses, and conquered every system, because of the phyrric victory, our war exhaustion is already at maximum after that, so we couldnt even attack the other AI we had on our plan and simply settled for annihilating this cockroach of an AI (we were really annoyed).
But as we took the "status quo", the AI simply did not accept its death and it cheated its capital back (the capital was the thing we conquered first and made extra sure it would not get reconquered).
This is not even high difficulty, guys... this was supposed to be a chill round, not a tryhard one.

But anyway, tl,dr: AI has no chance of winning, cheats itself fleets, dies anyway, cheats itself capital back.

Did our game bug or did they break the game with the new dlc / update?
And: Is this also happening to you all out there too?

[Sedmeister]

A couple of thoughts.

1) There is a certain amount of finagling regarding making claims prior to declaring war you need to do in order to secure the enemy capital. I can't quite remember how it goes, but yes, I too have been caught out in a similar way.

2) I'm not sure but in regards to the magical fleet's that turned up after war was declared, remember now that mercenary fleets are now available to hire. Again, I've been caught out in a similar fashion, as well as having been in a position where I've hired mercenary fleets which have turned the tide of what looked like a one sided conflict.

Hope this helps.

[jordanleemn]

Status quo can't kill off there empire which is why they got there capital back as for the fleets is it possible they hired a few mercenaries?

[Elitewrecker PT]

It can, I had a war the other day where we were forced to status quo and the other empire was destroyed because it didn't have any more colonies. It might have to do with having allies though, mine was a 1v1

[indeesaint]

Been having similar issues with much smaller AI empire suddenly going from 2 pathetic fleets to 10 fleets each larger than my entire armada. It always makes me laugh since having that much fleet strength would send me into crisis mode almost immediately. I've noticed that if I keep my claims minimal it is less of an issue. Additionally, I'm not sure how the AI is able to generate fleets on a conquered home system (planets conquered as well), but I've found parking a fleet in their home system can prevent this miraculous resurgence from being an issue.

[pete3great]

Originally posted by indeesaint:

Additionally, I'm not sure how the AI is able to generate fleets on a conquered home system (planets conquered as well), but I've found parking a fleet in their home system can prevent this miraculous resurgence from being an issue.

It's not. Those are fleets that ran away returning.

[NoDMoD]

The Ai can also get buffs in home territory from traditions and tech.

[Daan-B]

I have, had a similiar experience, although i wasn't trying to conquer. I was trying to vassalize in my scions name. For some reason their capital system, which i had fully occupied was freed upon status quo, Which i had to sign because it simply refused to surrender. It had vassals which, for some reason, did not abandon them after being left with a single system. When i declared war on someone they held a defensive pact with, this single system empire managed to muster a 60k fleet, which doomstacked with a fleet of his vassal and my victim.

I managed to annihilate their combined forces with the powerboost from edicts. I wiped that basterd of the map, so he could never pull that again. This was also on ensign since i haven't played many games yet (despite quite a bit of playtime, this game feels slow...)

Do these kind of events not happen on higher difficulties?

[Dinvan]

I play on grand admiral, found that by 2300 the ai has multiple 100k fleet running around, wiping out the fallen empires. Its no joke, this new patch is poorly balanced. Lucky I have a cheesy techno empire.

[MyUrp1]

So just to chime in on a related note on this thread rather than start a new one:

I parked a fleet in orbit around a star I wanted to seize. I placed a claim on the system, declared war on my opponent, and was surprised that my fleet instantly vanished in a puff of smoke thanks to the "fleet in occupied territory at start of war" rule that I knew nothing about.

Of course my fleet disappears for over a year, during which the AI proceeds to pound the snot out of me with his fleet. Ragequit, new game.

The rules in this game are... bizarre, to say the least. I'm starting to miss MOO3. I get that Stellaris trying to do more diplomacy / strategy than spaceship combat, but it really should try harder to not be so counterintuitive.

[AceKing47]

Took me a while to figure this out: when you see -/15 in battle results, that means those 15 ships escaped (you need anti-FTL I think it's called to prevent that). They disappear and reappear much later (not sure where, maybe the fleet's home system).

[Ryika]

Originally posted by pete3great:

It's not. Those are fleets that ran away returning.

Or mercenaries.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Not gonna say that the AI doesn't cheat, it does in every strategy game with very few exceptions.

But the stuff you have mentioned aren't necessarily it cheating.

As a example; For the fleet power jump. There is a effect that boosts you in a defensive war. There are edicts and the like that boost your fleets while spending rare resources. Etc. The AI is rather good at turning on every boost it has available the moment its in a war.

When it comes to sudden fleets appearing when they shouldn't be able to build one it may be a fleet returning from being "lost" (aka having retreated), it might be a hired mercenary fleet, etc.

[pete3great]

Originally posted by MyUrp1:

I placed a claim on the system, declared war on my opponent, and was surprised that my fleet instantly vanished in a puff of smoke thanks to the "fleet in occupied territory at start of war" rule that I knew nothing about.

. . .

The rules in this game are... bizarre, to say the least.

This is an extremely common rule in most strategy games, and one of the most intuitive. Of course you can't park your fleets right on top of the territory you're about to seize and then declare war. It's not the rule that's baffling but your reaction to it.

[sono]

Originally posted by MyUrp1:

So just to chime in on a related note on this thread rather than start a new one:

I parked a fleet in orbit around a star I wanted to seize. I placed a claim on the system, declared war on my opponent, and was surprised that my fleet instantly vanished in a puff of smoke thanks to the "fleet in occupied territory at start of war" rule that I knew nothing about.

Of course my fleet disappears for over a year, during which the AI proceeds to pound the snot out of me with his fleet. Ragequit, new game.

The rules in this game are... bizarre, to say the least. I'm starting to miss MOO3. I get that Stellaris trying to do more diplomacy / strategy than spaceship combat, but it really should try harder to not be so counterintuitive.

Most decent strategy games have said rule, precisely to prevent what you were trying to pull. Does it make sense from a realism perspective? Of course not. But from a balance perspective it's crucial. Imagine if the AI did the same to you: fly in to your capital, declare war and immediately decapitate your empire. It would be outrageous and have people spamming threads to complain.

Just put your ships at the closest system, then declare war and rush in while they're unprepared. Similar effect, without the extreme cheese.

Stellaris is still all about war when you get down to it (or more accurately an economics game so you can have a bigger fleet), but it's got some sensible rules in play to force you to actually play said game.

An alternative rule they could have imposed to make it more realistic is to block any armies from ever entering another's territory, but then open borders would be pointless.

[MyUrp1]

From a balance perspective, if an AI parks his fleet over one of my planets, I'm going to be upset and tell him to move it or else.

The correct way to handle that is to be punitive with diplomatic ratings, everyone in the universe is immediately aware that I'm completely untrustworthy. Not make my fleet disappear.

Sending my fleet packing to my nearest star might have made some sense. But penalizing an attempted Pearl Harbor by sending it off into the void for a year is just perverse. But, it is what it is, so I'll manage... also amusing to think I can make any AI fleets in my territory vanish just by declaring war, I'll make sure to remember to take advantage of that.