AI unfair settings need a revision

Thank you for your feedback, A.I balancing and difficulty balancing is an ongoing endeavor which will be tweaked over time with multiple updates. I'd be interested to see what others opinions on these settings are within this thread

Have you considered scaling difficulty? The AI starts with no bonuses but gains bonuses (to income, research rate, build rate, etc.) over time, scaling up to a maximum after some time. This way the ai is less overwhelming at first and can present a more consistent challenge to a player.

It would also help with another problem I've noticed. The Advent economy starts fairly mediocre but ramps quickly with powerful techs and planet items. Combined with the huge starting advantages the AIs get the end result is advent AIs being an absolute terror in the early game, maxing out their fleet almost twice as quickly as Vazari and TEC AIs, but falling off quickly. By comparison I've found that Vazari AIs seem to benefit the least from their early advantages (because your large starting bank of resources dosnt seem to get modified) and the early economy being bad and ramping slowly.

This also has the effect that Vazari is the weakest against the AI currently. The Vazari have lots of starting resources and the capacity to get two more capital ships before anyone else can to make up for a weak econony. But the massive ai advantages make beating them early impossible. Vazari starbases are also available much later and their weapon and armor upgrades are available even later, so rushing to a chokepoint and fortifying it (the standard strategy for beating the ai) dosnt work, especially on smaller maps. 

Scaling difficulty would fix all this. It would make the AI more manageable early on and keep the Vazati from being completely overrun. It would keep Advent AIs from being so overwhelming early on and keep all AIs from falling behind later on (it's not hard to overtake even the hardest AIs later on). 

Tldr; scaling AI difficulty did great things for Stellaris single player, it should be adopted here too. 

@Lewytz2640

Based on the results of my analyses I cannot agree with you on the subject of “scaling”:

The AI starts on the home planet immediately with the described global resource bonuses. If the AI has colonized another planet/astroid, it also starts immediately with the described resource bonuses, although neither mining nor commerce have been upgraded at the start. These resource bonuses are a base amount on which the mining/commerce upgrades are then based. In addition, the AI cleverly combines the construction of planetary objects (e.g. global military research center etc.), which the human player often forgets.

The AI does not generate any further increasing bonuses during the course of the game, neither for income, building, research nor for faster action execution. This is all exactly comparable with the possibilities of the human player. However, since the resources are the basis for research, building, etc.), only the AI's action speed plays a determining role: and this gives the impression of seemingly increasing bonuses.

Here is my explanation for this impression:

Unlike the human player, the AI makes faster progress working without losing time. Immediately after completing an action (e.g. research, building), the AI starts the next action. The human player can at the beginning achieve almost the same speed by permanently stopping the game quickly and completing the planned actions. BUT: the more extensive and non-time-compliant the actions are, the more the human player loses time. And this loss of time, or the time gained by the AI, is multiplied because the AI can carry out the actions on all planets simultaneously. In this way, the AI gains an ever-increasing lead in research, ship building, etc. over the course of the game because there are sufficient resources available due to the resource bonuses.

This is why the AI settings for resource bonuses are in my opinion the crucial point.

Suggested settings for unfair-ai bei 1vs 1 game

I have now played the 1 vs 1 map “Return to War” (tec enclave vs tec enclave unfair, aggressive) several times with different unfair-ai settings (in this map both home planets are only 1 large planet away, which makes playing very difficult, the other planets are symmetrically distributed). The following settings for unfair-ai have resulted for me as settings for a challenging, exciting and very difficult game:

• global empire resource bonuses + 2.5 credits, + 1.0 metal, + 1.0 crystal.
• global planet resources bonuses 0.0!
• update-interval 2.

With these settings I could win this map with skillful and balanced play before KI could build a titan.With some mistakes you lose quickly.

An even greater challenge and, in my opinion, a recommended real (and not impossible) unfair settings are:

• global empire resource bonuses + 2.5 credits, + 1.0 metal, + 1.0 crystal
• global planet resources bonuses + 0.25 credits, +0.25 metal, + 0.25 crystal
• update-interval 0.

Note: if the home planets are separated by more than 2 planets, the map is just "difficult" because then the player gains some time.

I think you have misunderstood me. My comment was in reply to @ramastardock and was a question to the stardom team as well as a suggestion. I know that the ai does not scale in difficulty with time. I am aware that the ai has many resource bonuses natively, both from the start and on colonized worlds. My suggestion is that scaling dolifficulty would allow for higher ai difficulties that allow for a more consistent challenge. 

The problem with static ai difficulty is that it just turns every game into an exercise in survival. Eventually the human player overtakes the ai and wins as long as they survive the early onslaught. Ai bonuses scaling with time allows the bonuses to be much higher when fully applied without making the early game impossible on small maps. This would lead to a more consistent difficulty curve instead of an overwhelming ai on the first 40 minutes which becomes a pushover after an hour. 

Ah, I see. I fully agree with your “Ai scaling” suggestion, especially for larger maps. In my opinion, there should also be a scaling depending on the maps: lower AI bonuses for small maps with few planets, higher AI bonuses for larger maps.

A few more thoughts on AI:

Basically, I see that the AI progresses quite cleverly, especially in the first 20 minutes, both in research, fleet construction and orbit building on the home planet as well as in the rapid colonization of planets. But I noticed 2 serious AI weaknesses:

1.Colonized planets are not immediately developed further via mining/commerce and logistics, thus lacking solid resources later on. This results in a significant weakening of the AI after lost battles (after approx. 40-60 minutes), which is almost impossible to catch up on.

2. The AI often continues to fight in battle even when the human player is totally superior and thus loses most of the fleet, which also leads to a weakness that is almost impossible to catch up with.

 So my suggestions are:

1. improve the action code so that the AI develops colonized planets quickly.

2. if the opponent is significantly superior, the AI should retreat immediately.

3. when comparing combat strengths, the strength of the stationary defenses of the attacked orbit should also be taken into account for the battle.

4. for large maps, the strength of the AI should start small and be increased over time.

I accidentally made a new post because it's been many a moon since I've been in a forum, but I'll post it here and mold my ideas into a proper response too so it's all in one place.

I personally love where the AI is at right now in terms of outright difficulty. Nightmares are hard but beatable if you keep your wits about you, and impossibles truly feel impossible, but can still be beat. There wasn't an announced patch on 12/30, but my friends and I feel there was some tuning done to make them a step more aggressive and split fleets more which is even better!

I completely agree with @Lewytz2640 suggestion of a scaling AI, but I feel that it should be tied to the "defensive" sub setting. That way, if you're fighting multiple AI and you leave that on random, an AI set to aggressive have this wildly oppressive fleet early that we currently see, and another could be scaling/defensive, and have tons of star bases full of items, a huge fleet, capitols with items, etc.

Both types of AI though, need to scale into late game better than what they currently do. That's where I'd love to see the AI improve. As of right now it feels like once you're over the hump if you will, the AI just give up. I've even seen them retreat comparable fleets from their home world as you're bombing it!? Early to mid game you'll be entrenched fighting and fighting and fighting and you win the battle, and that's it, you just walk them over. I'd love the AI to be able to fall back (not dive deeper into your space which they tend to do often), rebuild, and regroup (enclave even have research specifically for this contingency) and defend their home world as you push into it. I'd also love to see the AI start prioritizing specific targets more based on their fleet comp and yours, if that's even possible, capitols feel far too safe at the moment. I feel that AI don't prioritize building items on starbases, capitols, or titans, which leads to my group of friends not fearing those fleet components even against nightmares and impossibles because you just push them over.

At this point, we're playing on bigger maps with 4-5 AI vs 2-3 of us just so we can enjoy those massive battles that are what I feel make sins amazing.

I'm sure, I'll also get some people saying, well just go play against players, I tried a couple games, the first was a 2v2v2 where we got teamed (it was blatant and obvious not just a coincidence), and the last the enemy just built 28 devastators and a titan and wiped fleets. If that's how you want to play, good on ya, but I'd rather just enjoy the typical style of gameplay with a slightly smarter AI.

I assume that your statements about the Nightmare/Impossible difficulty level were only made on the basis of large maps with several AI opponents. According to my findings, there are 2 important factors that influence/define the level of difficulty:

1. the number of planets/astroids to go to your opponent,
2. the number of planets per player.

For a noticeable effectiveness of the difficulty levels from “unfair” upwards, in my opinion, the following are required:

• max. 3-4 planets/astroids to go to your opponent,
• max. 3-4 planets/astroids/player.

More planets/player and more planets between the home planets reduce the difficulty of a level, as the player has enough time to build his empire. Because 4-5 planets and more are enough to build a strong core of an empire. The rest is then just more a question of playing time and winning big battles, and that's just too easy, no matter which difficulty level was selected. That's why I think scaling (agressive/defending) is especially important for large maps.

 I completely agree with the following points (and this applies to all maps):

• it is not good programming that the AI practically gives up if you are “over the hump”.
• AI only builds up little defense, only when the game runs for a long time, then it gets a little better by building starbases, but these are not expanded.
• I also think it's a pity that the aggressive AI is actually a stupid AI, as it is mainly focused on building a lot of ships and attacking relentlessly, ignoring both the qualitative improvement of the ships and a solid defense.

I admit that I like to play small maps because - in my experience - the small distance between the home planets (max. 3 ways to go to your opponent) and the few planets/players (max. 3-4 planets) mean that the challenge is greatest due to the respective difficulty level.

Incidentally, after numerous matches, I rate the AI action programming as simply - to put it nicely - inadequate.

Here my explanation: AI only has considerable quantitative advantages (increased research, increased shipbuilding), that's all, hardly any reasonable defense, constantly repeating similar attack routines, no qualitative reaction to what is happening. In my opinion, this is too simple and quickly coded.

The solution to a lot of this is scaling difficulty. Making an ai that is a legitimate threat in the late game is impossible because;

A: coding an ai that actually plays well is prohibitively difficult, and

B: An ai with enough buffs to be dangerous late game would be impossible to survive early game. 

The result is that the ai cannot be a significant challenge once you survive the early game where the cheats provide the biggest advantage.

Scaling difficulty resolves this problem by allowing the ai to be manageable early on (so you don't just die to 2k supply in 20 minutes) while also getting enough buffs to theeaten you late game because the ai modifiers scale with time. You can even remove the cap on this scaling to create a truly difficult experience where the human player is on a timer until the endlessly scaling ai buffs become irresistible. 

This also opens up the possibility of non-economic buffs, like increased ship stats and higher max supply. These would be overwhelming early on but could serve to make an ai more consistently challenging late game, so having them start negligible but then scale over time opens up this avenue of modifying difficulty. 

If I understand correctly, scaling means, instead of a static AI setting, primarily the quantitative supply of resources that is adjusted over time and the resulting fleet size and its equipment - i.e. more or less increasing "acquireable" buffs.

That would at least be a partial improvement in the gameplay, but it would be in my opinion not sufficient. Because even without "coding an AI that actually plays well is prohibitively difficult", in my opinion it is possible through coding to make the AI ​​ acting more dangerously and therefore more intelligently.

This includes, among other things, ongoing commercial and military development of the planets and starbases after settlement in the direction of good defense and production, determination by the AI ​​of which of the enemy's planets are poorly equipped and should therefore be attacked, constant monitoring (statistical comparison) of the defense strength of enemy planets (including stationary defense systems!) and only attacking when one's own fleet attack strength is sufficient, statistics of the enemy's fleet structure and the composition of one's own fleet geared towards superiority (e.g. strikecraft against fleet without notable PD).

Ultimately, I feel that the latest updates are more like an experimental tinkering with the quantitative parameters (reducing or increasing), which in my opinion is not very imaginative.