Paradox has shared more details about the AI improvements coming to sci-fi grand strategy game Stellaris in both the near and far future. The team behind the game plans to mainly focus on its handling of economy and pops, since they’re the main drivers behind any efforts of expansion or conquest.
Although the developer noted that Stellaris’ AI has been performing better since patch 3.2 went live, it did admit that there were multiple areas where it’s still struggling, like when playing as Void Dwellers.
“For example, the AI still has problems when playing as Void Dwellers. They can’t decide where to build habitats depending on what they would need. If they are missing minerals, they don’t know how to build a habitat on mining stations,” the developer wrote in today’s dev diary.
“They still have problems handling slaves and robots effectively and in some cases the AI can, unfortunately, still end up in an economic death spiral. Especially if they, somehow, manage to run out of food and consumer goods at the same time.”
Paradox’s plans for future Stellaris AI improvements, also include improving its ability to remain competitive in the mid-game and late-game stages.
At the moment, it will cease attempting to increase its monthly income once it reaches a value of +500. The goal is to remove this limit and have the system scaling infinitely.
Another pain point that is planned to be addressed is the itss lackluster ability to specialize its planets, rearranging districts to best suit its needs.
“The idea is that the AI starts out like a player, building whatever it needs when colonizing new planets. But as soon as it settles down a bit it will look to rearrange districts amongst its planets to optimize the output of each planet. “
Special pops are another area where Stellaris’ AI can fumble, especially when it controls multicultural planets that also happen to have slaves and robots.
The developer noted that, currently, it can attempt to solve the robots’ unemployment by constructing research buildings where they cannot actually work.
Paradox also plans to encourage the AI to prioritize systems with planets during its early-game colonization efforts, making it expand much faster.
On top of that, it also plans to help it avoid death spirals resulting from running out of food and consumer goods at the same time by making it prioritize net gain.
“The 3.3. patch wasn’t planned to be that big but on the AI side we’re getting a lot of traction now,” the developer added. “Overall the idea was to get the AI back up to speed with its economy, since every other behavior rests on the economical prowess of an empire. And we’re approaching a point where we are quite happy with how the AI performs.”
Further into the future, we might see computer-controlled players prioritizing resources and research differently based on their ideology,
You can learn more about the planned changes in the dev diary linked above. For more on Stellaris, here’s what you need to know about when patch 3.3 might land.
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