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Previous updates were a good start, but the Stellaris team is far from finished. Improving AI is considered a constant goal from now on.
One of the biggest requests made by Stellaris players has always been to improve the performance of AI Empires in sessions so that allies will be more useful and rivals more challenging to defeat. Fear not, for this has been one of the developer’s main goals in updating and improving the game. In a previous update, work was done to make the AI more competent in building up and managing its economy so it didn’t suffer as heavily from resource deficits, incurring the penalties that followed.
However, this was only the beginning, as the team plans to continuously improve the AI so that it keeps up with the sometimes-radical changes made from new updates. Such is the case with the upcoming 3.3 Libra, which aims to make Unity a much more valuable and powerful resource, among other changes that will force players to come up with new methods of Empire rule. This update is currently available in open beta on Steam that anyone can try.
The job assignment system for populations (or pops) is a change that will affect both the AI and players. The current system is that whenever a new population arrives on the planet or a new district is built, every single pop would update their desire (also known as weight) to work each job. Then, all pops would be unassigned from their jobs, and all of them would potentially be put on a new job. Unfortunately, this system is most detrimental to Hivemind Empires, as their pop drones will tend to move in overwhelming numbers to the planet’s detriment. In 3.3, each in-game month will update the jobs on all planets and only remove or add a maximum of one pop per job during the update. Job weights will also be determined based on how many pops are of the same species.
Instead of looking at the number of free jobs on the planet and then creating more when this number is low, the AI will now look at actual unemployed populations and make sure to create a job that the specific population can work. This will improve the AI’s decisions on what jobs to assign the lowest stratum pops, such as drones, slaves and simple robots.
The base economic plan is now very small, setting a minimum target for all types of strictly needed resources such as minerals, energy and food (such as +20 monthly income). Once these targets are met, a small amount of consumer goods, alloys and science targets are added. Later on, rare strategic resources such as exotic gases, rare crystals and volatile motes will be prioritized. These new plans generally mean that the more mature the AI economy becomes, the focus on base resources becomes smaller and the primary focus will shift to military and science production.
Since actual players have the advantage of planning for the long-term interests of their Empires, this gives them an inherent advantage over the AI, which will only be effective in adapting to situations and events it currently finds itself in. To level the playing field, the AI will now gradually specialize planets that begin with a mix of every district type and replace them one by one until only one district type can be found on most worlds. Not only does this work practically, but it provides excellent dynamics for AI Empires as each planet becomes more specialized as they expand.
In terms of the AI’s choice on what to produce with precious alloy, it tended to build defense platforms around its starbases more than anything else and would always keep them up to date whenever possible. This is not only a massive drain on resources that are for something meant only for defense, but it also led to substantial production queues in the shipyards with upgrades. In some cases, this meant it couldn’t build any new ships even if it wanted to. As part of the 3.3 update, the AI’s priorities on what to build with alloys have been restructured. Building new ships until reaching fleet capacity is given the top priority, and building defense platforms is only a last resort.
These significant changes will affect the AI in ways never thought possible by players, but it doesn’t stop here. A complete list of what the update plans to change can be found and read on the most recent Dev Diary #239. It’s also likely that each new update and DLC from now on will be heavily focused on one day making the AI operate as if they were actual veteran players themselves.
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