Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[thesheeep]

Norfleet If I had not played the game myself, I wouldn't have believed that.
It is just outright weird how they programmed an AI that cannot do "put correct building on tile, take current needs into account" and "do not leave pops without a building".

 

[Norfleet]

It is just outright weird how they programmed an AI that cannot do "put correct building on tile, take current needs into account" and "do not leave pops without a building".

You'd be surprised what a difficult challenge that actually is. First, the entire "put correct building on tile" problem is basically the Bin Packing problem, which is NP-Hard. Now you want to throw in "take current needs into account". But WHAT, exactly, are our current needs? Here you find that figuring out what, exactly, our current needs even ARE is often a huge question in and of itself. We're immediately faced with a different problem: The Guns vs. Butter problem. The AI is, similarly, extremely bad at this one. It is almost inevitably the case that the AI will bankrupt itself pursuing a Soviet Union-like arms race against one or more other actors, resulting in no resources being allocated to economic development, which, in a snowballing game, results in utter failure. The flipside of this is that NOT building a military at all results in the AI being easy prey for the player. But at least he'd have nice planets. For you to take.

 

[thesheeep]

It is just outright weird how they programmed an AI that cannot do "put correct building on tile, take current needs into account" and "do not leave pops without a building".

You'd be surprised what a difficult challenge that actually is. First, the entire "put correct building on tile" problem is basically the Bin Packing problem, which is NP-Hard. Now you want to throw in "take current needs into account". But WHAT, exactly, are our current needs? Here you find that figuring out what, exactly, our current needs even ARE is often a huge question in and of itself. We're immediately faced with a different problem: The Guns vs. Butter problem. The AI is, similarly, extremely bad at this one. It is almost inevitably the case that the AI will bankrupt itself pursuing a Soviet Union-like arms race against one or more other actors, resulting in no resources being allocated to economic development, which, in a snowballing game, results in utter failure. The flipside of this is that NOT building a military at all results in the AI being easy prey for the player. But at least he'd have nice planets. For you to take.

While I agree making a really capable AI would be hard, making one that doesn't put nonsense into tiles would not be.
Hell, just putting a building on a tile that fits whatever bonus the tile has (and put misc buldings on other tiles, like invasion defense or others that are never fully wrong) would already be better than whatever it is the AI is currently trying to do.
But whenever I take a look at what sector management has put on a planet, I am just somewhat baffled

 

[Average Manatee]

You'd be surprised what a difficult challenge that actually is. First, the entire "put correct building on tile" problem is basically the Bin Packing problem, which is NP-Hard. Now you want to throw in "take current needs into account". But WHAT, exactly, are our current needs? Here you find that figuring out what, exactly, our current needs even ARE is often a huge question in and of itself. We're immediately faced with a different problem: The Guns vs. Butter problem. The AI is, similarly, extremely bad at this one. It is almost inevitably the case that the AI will bankrupt itself pursuing a Soviet Union-like arms race against one or more other actors, resulting in no resources being allocated to economic development, which, in a snowballing game, results in utter failure. The flipside of this is that NOT building a military at all results in the AI being easy prey for the player. But at least he'd have nice planets. For you to take.

It's NP-hard to get the perfect solution with a wide variety of starting conditions. It's trivially easy to get a good solution with the simplistic environment Stellaris has available.

Min_desired_resources = total_pops * 1/(some constant)
max_desired_resources = total_pops * 1/(some other constant)

Build for resources under min_desired (critical shortage level), build on matching tile otherwise, don't build anything over max_desired (unusable surplus level). Once a year (randomized so that all AIs don't go through the same logic on the same day, lagging the game because the devs are incompetent), check all resources and if any are over max_desired then find the plot with the lowest output and switch it to whatever resource is below min_desired or closest to min_desired.

Very hard.

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, but how much budget do you have to do this with? The problem with the AI is that he blows his entire budget on his military, crippling him economically. This is why the sector AI, which is the exact same AI, builds way too much food while the regular AI starves to death: Because the sector AI's budget is 100% economical and he is not to build any military with it at all.

 

[whatevername]

Yeah, but how much budget do you have to do this with? The problem with the AI is that he blows his entire budget on his military, crippling him economically. This is why the sector AI, which is the exact same AI, builds way too much food while the regular AI starves to death: Because the sector AI's budget is 100% economical and he is not to build any military with it at all.

So that's why these paradox retards made food a global resource. Bet 1 brofist they also removed warp and wormhole drives because their idiots couldn't write a banal AI that could use them properly.

 

[Delterius]

 

[Delterius]

For added immersion I gave Nibirans common human names and moved the capital to a gaia world called 'New Nibiru'.

 

[coldcrow]

I debate the egalitarist ethic for the master race though. Shouldn't they be elitist/authoritarian?

 

[Delterius]

I debate the egalitarist ethic for the master race though. Shouldn't they be elitist/authoritarian?

Mechanically, the Authoritarian Faction gains no happiness bonus from Oligarchic authority. Which you need to have if you're a Corporate Dominion. Also the progressive faction comes from high living standards anyways, and it has no tradition tree. Its a good deal all around.

Storywise, I envisioned the Nibirians as a mix of shapeshifting Reptiloids from conspiracy lore and the patronizingly xenophile Arilou from Star Control. Their goal is absolute control, but their aims are nothing less than perfect symbiosis.

What this means is that humans are serviles kept happy and overproductive under utopian living standards. Their traits are slightly changed from vanilla (from wasteful to solitary/deviants) due to the effects of the Nibirians' own policies of environmentalism and the internet society. But they keep nomadic and adaptive so they can colonize and strip mine what the Nibirians themselves cannot.

Lastly, any good oligarchy knows that democracy's one advantage is that any vote can be rigged. Therefore you deny humans full military service. Its about what (reptilian) faces are on the ballot.

Going down that road even further, you could substitute Corporate Dominion for Shadow Council. There's something very special about how the Progressive Faction is happy as long as you aren't at least a Dictatorship. Having the Deep State on top of it all is just icing on the cake.

Corporate Dominion is rather lovely, though.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

I grabbed some expansions last sale. I don't mind the new hyperlane system as much as I thought I would. In fact, since I am able to limit the number of hyperlanes that get generated on a map, I can ensure that there will be choke points. Wars become about controlling these points. Space stations are now insanely important because of this and also because that's where your fleets are produced. The destruction of a large space station and its shipyards can be more damaging than actually losing a planet because it takes so much time to build them up and once they are fully stocked, they can each work on up to 6 ships at a time.

The new claim system for wars makes a bit more sense than the previous one.

The Colossus is p lame. Mods did superweapons a lot better.

The titans are powerful, but there is a limit on the number you can build.

The L-Gates require a lot of investment for very little payoff, so they're pretty lame.

Spoiler

They unlock a network of stars just outside the galaxy. There's some near Fallen Empire level bad guys there, but no habitable worlds or even cool anomalies. Waste of time. You get a free network of gateways that lead all over the galaxy though, so maybe it's worth something.

Mech civilizations seem interesting, but I haven't played them yet.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I'm waiting for the next expansion or the one after it to drop. As it is, the game really is lacking in some pretty important parts.

 

[Space Satan]

UNEMPLOYED
NOBLE
ROBOTS
ON
WELFARE

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

The L-Gates require a lot of investment for very little payoff, so they're pretty lame.

A minor addendum to this: it turns out that you get

Spoiler

some worlds to teraform and a couple of new resources. Still not sure if it's worth it though, but I guess it's kind of neat to have a sort of base sitting on the outside of the galaxy that you can launch attacks into certain predetermined far off systems with.

If you can

Spoiler

defeat the fleet of replicator ships

that is...

 

[Space Satan]

Ti;es are gone and jobs are in. I suppose the game will be like Victoria in a new patch, with pops allocating to some facilities you build

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

Is this better than Distant Worlds yet

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Ti;es are gone and jobs are in. I suppose the game will be like Victoria in a new patch, with pops allocating to some facilities you build

At this point, I am sick of the tiles. So much micromanaging. Yes, I want you to build mines on the mineral squares and energy reactors on the energy squares. Rocket science this is not.

 

[Lone Wolf]

On the other hand, there are some pretty great mods that utilize the tile system in interesting ways, as unique planetary anomalies/resources.

It does eliminate some drudgery, though.

 

[Delterius]

Death to the tiles!

A lot of people are grieving the supposed loss of unique resources. But with the new Trade System in place, I feel that can't be farther from the truth. Planets will retain their uniqueness, and that will still affect what sorts of building you can make.

What I hope we don't lose is the titles as a sort of visual representation of your planets being slowly occupied. Maybe some artsy panel is in order.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

eta?

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

lol looking more and more like eu4

 

[Average Manatee]

Just trying to dissect that a bit:

- Planetary buildings appear locked behind pop #s? I guess that's a good way to make "tall", high-population planets more valuable. Stellaris has long had the problem of very little differentiation in per-tile pop production from a 25-pop megalopolis and a 15-pop border world.

- Housing needs. I'm guessing this means you need to invest in infrastructure to house pops? That's good, again, problem with Stellaris is that the only mineral cost is 500 to start the colony, all pop growth from then is free.

- Specialists, ripped straight from Civ I guess?

Altogether looks really civ-like, which isn't a bad thing.

 

[lophiaspis]

So I guess every other update from now on is going to remove some fundamental game element. They're basically admitting that Stellaris 1.0 is an irredeemable pile of random, retarded shit, which is good, but would be better if it happened, you know, 2 years ago...

Who is responsible for this mess? And why have they still not been fired out of a cannon?

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

I will give Paradox this: at least they are continuing to work on it.

This latest version with some mods doesn't seem bad. Doesn't seem fantastic either, but it's ok.

I'd appreciate a better political system for my empire with actual lines of succession and maybe the opportunity for unique, government specific interactions between other empires, like marrying your leader's daughter off to a squid prince because their empire is a monarchy.

And the tech tree paths are pretty boring and need a lot more variety. For example, rare temporary shortcuts that have downsides and lead to either the same tech or just end there. There is already a bit of this with techs you can research be exploring certain event chains. An example of what I think would be interesting is would a reactor that generates more power while robbing you of hull points (radiation making your crew unhealthy or something). Or lasers that do as much relative shield damage as a tech two techs ahead, but it's more expensive to produce and doesn't match the armor damage of the more advanced tech. Techs paths for making weapons and hull sections with lower damage, but a much lower cost and faster build time and the inverse for more expensive, but higher quality parts and weapons. So you can be China and churn out an army of lower end ships or you can be the US with a bloated budget and fewer ships.

That kind of stuff is more interesting to me than "wew. do I research torpedo or lasers (hint: I end up researching all of them by the end anyway." Things that actually alter your play style and strategy beyond "more damage points pls!".