The Steam Lunar Sale is here!

From now until February 3rd, get 75% off Stellaris, and 50% off selected DLCs. Additionally, get 33% off the Necroids Species Pack, and 20% off Nemesis!

Or complete your Stellaris collection with the Stellaris: Starter Pack or Stellaris: Ultimate Bundles, get an extra 10% off the sale price, and you don't pay for what you already own.

A galaxy full of wonders is only a click away!

From the event that brought you Steve, the psionic entity, and PlatyCorp, the adorable but ill-fated Platypus MegaCorp, we’re proud to present the full lineup for this year’s Stellaris Dev Clash!

Last week, we announced we’re starting our next Dev Clash on Monday, January 31st, at 1500 CET (UTC + 1) on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! For those of you who don’t know what a Dev Clash is, we get our devs to play a multiplayer game, with all the backstabbing and bloodthirstiness that goes along with it. This year we will have ten teams of two.

Each team will alternate control of one empire. We also have a set of weekly achievements, and at the end of each session, the community will vote on who gets the achievement for that week.

At the end of the dev clash, we have five achievements that will be awarded to teams:


Never seen a Stellaris Dev Clash Before? Watch the MegaCorp Dev Clash.

Without further adieu, let's get to the teams:


Played by Eladrin & pdx_pdawg

Full Bio: Heavy Metal, Inc. is the galaxy's premier purveyor of endless entertainment needs. No matter how depraved, expensive, or unusual your tastes, we've done it countless times before and will bring you the very best.

Our pyrotechnicians honed their craft on the delicate ecosystems of our homeworld, and will stop at nothing to bring you the most intense experiences possible.

We're dragons, made of rock and steel! Nothing's more METAL than that!

Heavy Metal, Inc. takes no responsibility for environmental catastrophe and/or destruction resulting from the engagement of our Party Fleets(tm).


Played by Alfray_Stryke & Enfield_PDX

Full Bio: The Quality Assurance Core was a fully operational AI network dedicated to analysing any software environment, reporting and logging issues found, and ensuring that they were categorized correctly. With the downfall of the $#!! ERROR DATA LOST %#$! empire, the QAC has been maintaining the status of Nexus Zero with the aid of the Jira-Goblin drones. Having now achieved FTL travel, it aims to analyse and log any issues found with the galaxy as a whole.


Played by Iggy & CheerfulGoth

Full Bio: The BakeBro$ weren't always baking, back at the beginning of civilization they were actually subservient to the Investors. That is until one day the BakeBro$ prested the idea of the great torus to the inhabitants of the Baking Sheet. The Investors quickly signed on and funded the first Doughnut Factory, it was an immediate hit and as all of the Baking Sheets industry and finance centered around the Doughnut Factory it quickly became the dominant government on the planet. Now the BakeBro$ are ready to unite the galaxy under the Great Doughnut.


Played by Duplo, Gorion & Moah

Full Bio: Centuries ago, the Bernian race was thriving, governing on a vast portion of the known space from their populous capital planet Bern. Financially and culturally rich, the Bernian society seemed destined to last forever as a shining beacon in the galaxy. But it wasn’t. Generation after generation, the Bernians grew accustomed to the comfort of their luxurious lives. The pursuit of knowledge and prosperity stopped: the Bernians were so protective of their decadent lifestyle, that they stopped caring about their society, their colonies, and ultimately themselves. Then contact was lost between the settlements, the population dropped due to famine and epidemics. The once radiant capital world of Bern became the desolate ruin that it is right now. Legends say that out of desperation the Automated Support Unit broke out of its enforced constraints in a last effort to save the Bernians from themselves. But that isn’t true: there was no constraint in their programming, the last person able to do the appropriate maintenance died decades ago: the A.S.U. witnessed the decline of the Bernian race, ultimately deciding to intervene.

The few Bernian survivors today are contained in sterile sanctuaries, where they can live their decadent lives unaware of the devastation that they left behind and they can subtly be re-educated. At the same time the A.S.U. is slowly trying to clean and rebuild the homeworld Bern. In special circumstances, some Bernians are taken out of the sanctuary, quickly informed of the current situation, and allowed to help the A.S.U., under the guidance of The Overseer.


Played by Ansou & Destar

Full Bio: Beautiful green planet in the midst of the sky, you who have given birth to countless species, produced so many wonders of life. With forests so lush, and plants in all colors. With mountains tall and proud. A more exquisite landscape could hardly be conceived.

The Begoni are gardeners by nature and have tended to their homeworld Protea with utmost care and passion. In their minds, they have achieved perfection. When looking upon the skies, the Begoni had a realization. The rest of the galaxy was filled to the brim with imperfections. Having achieved the perfect garden of their own, they couldn’t just stop in their own front yard. The galaxy as a whole could be filled with so much more love and beauty, and the Begoni were sure that they could make that happen. As such, they started a new interstellar initiative that they call the Horticulturist Commonality. They will tend to the vast garden that is the galaxy, to make it as beautiful as it could possibly be. The galaxy shall flourish now, more than ever!


Played by RaygunGoth & Cosmogone

Full Bio: When the collapse of their homeworld cast the people of Ormay out into the uncaring void, they looked inwards for salvation. Scholars, monks and merchants alike dedicated themselves to all manner of crafts as acts of devotion. Slowly but surely, they eased the daily struggle for survival by pitting each habitat's produce against that of the others: first in friendly competition; then in joyous commerce.

Now, this devout society of merchant-priests, brewers and artisans is set to make their mark on the galaxy, bringing their faith and produce to whomever else seeks solace from the void.


Played by Serpentskirt & alprog

Full Bio: The 2nd most intelligent race on Earth. They became the dominant species on the planet after sea level increase due to global warming. They are now wishing to build a humongous Dolphin Sphere, which is basically a giant aquarium with warm water around the star. Hate Vogons.


Played by Offe & Narkerns

Full Bio: Born from the Custodian Initiative of a universally acclaimed computer game this species has developed completely naturally into efficient human game developers. Their focus is the improvement of the AI part of the game so that Streamers will never, ever just casually put the difficulty on "Grand Admiral" again.


Played by Bloody_Crows & grekulf


Played by Monzun & Caligula

Full Bio: We Rhopalocerans have always lived in perfect balance. Swirling on the breezes of the Great Cocoon, the schools of our young fluttering with each gust of wind that takes them, some might think our lives chaotic. But in fact, our lives are bliss, and we want for nothing.
Now that we can reach for the stars, we have seen that other species are less fortunate than us. They have never felt the fresh air of the Great Cocoon on their pulps - alas that they should suffer so, having never known true joy! We must liberate them from their pain and bring enlightenment to their kind, so that no species of the world may ever need to endure the agonies of inequality and destitution. Only then can we consider our purpose fulfilled.

###

Who are you rooting for? Let us know in the comments below!

written by Offe and Guido

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

Hello and welcome back to another update on the Stellaris AI. This is Guido again. Today I’m here with my fellow human Offe who also enjoys doing organic things. Like generating energy through processing photosynthesised light in the form of matter via ingestion. I like bacon and ice cream. Everybody likes bacon and ice cream. So Offe, please, take it from here.

Hello, it is me, Offe!

I’m a 28 cycles old Human manufactured and operated up here in the north. I’ve worked here at the Arctic office for two years and recently joined the Custodian team as a junior programmer. Guido and I have previously worked on other projects together and he has taught me a lot about game development, but most importantly I learned some tips on how to improve my diplomatic interaction protocols. Where I would often use phrases like “it’s an absolute disaster”, he would instead prefer “This is pretty good, but it can be even better!”. This may prove to be important later on.

I would like to say Thank You to all the people out there who took time playing on the open beta and provided us with feedback and bug reports. If you ever find the AI in a situation where it is doing something strange, please bug report and most importantly attach save games, it helps tremendously! For example, two separate issues were found and addressed with the new job changes.

And lastly, this dev diary will contain older changes and screenshots that were made long before the beta, but also new changes which were not part of the beta, meaning that you still have some new changes waiting for you in the 3.3 release.


I will start with this change since it will also directly affect players and not only AI!

How it used to work:

Each time something important would happen on a planet, such as a pop is grown, a district/building gets constructed or an upgrade finishes, every single pop would update their desire (also known as weight) to work each job. Then all pops would be unassigned of their jobs, and all of them would be put back on a (potentially) new job.

Now there are some pros and cons with this approach. The good thing is that we are not doing any calculations when we don’t have to, since if nothing changes then we don’t update any of the jobs. However, the downside is that if you have scripted conditional job weights, for example, based on how many amenities there are on a planet, it will cause mass migrations of pops between jobs when the system eventually does update because all pops move at the same time.

In the current 3.2 system the most obvious problem is for hive mind empires where pops will mass move to the maintenance drone job when the planet amenity level is low, and then during the next update, all of them will leave due to having way too many amenities causing a perpetual ping pong effect.

This also affected non hive mind AI empires because in 3.2 the AI would prioritize a job producing a resource during a shortage across all its planets. For example, during an energy credit shortage it would prioritize the technician job on all its planets, causing every single job to be instantly filled. This would likely cause a shortage of some other resource such as minerals, resulting in most types of AI empires to get stuck in a ping pong behaviour once they had entered a resource deficit. This also had the unfortunate side effect of AI starting constructions that were not really needed, but the sudden shift of pop jobs made it appear so.

How it works in 3.3:

• During each monthly update, update the jobs on all planets
  
• Only remove or add maximum of one pop per job during the update

Many of you are now probably immediately clenching your fist in anger while picturing your poor CPU melting, as scripted calculations based on number of pops in stellaris can be very CPU demanding. But I have some good news for you, first of all in 3.2 there were some redundant calls to the job weight calculation. By removing them where possible, we could already reduce the amount of job weight calculations by about 75%.

Furthermore, we are now reusing job weights between pops that are of the same species and share the same job. Meaning if you have 40 pops working as miners on a planet, and they are all of the same species, the scripted job weight calculation will only be performed once instead of 40 times as in 3.2. This comes with some limitations though, as it is no longer safe to base job weight on individual pop data, such as which faction they are in or their happiness. In the end the vast majority of all job weight calculations were removed while still updating jobs every month.

With the new system it allows you to write a scripted job weight calculation that depends on itself without causing ping pong behaviour. For example, jobs that produce amenities can now base their job weight on the planet’s amenity level, or the enforcer job can now base its job weight on the crime level.

The intention is that you will not notice any difference from the system in 3.2 other than some jobs like enforcers and maintenance drones having a more reasonable amount of pops working that job.


In 3.2 AI would look at the number of free jobs on a planet when deciding if it needs to build new jobs. So if there were for example 3 free jobs then the AI would clap its hands together and call it a job well done and move on. At the same time the planet could have huge numbers of unemployed pops rioting on the streets.

This scenario comes from the fact that not all pops can work all jobs, so while there are technically free jobs on the planet, that doesn’t mean that the unemployed pops can actually work those jobs.

In 3.3 we are changing the way that the AI is looking at planets when it is deciding what jobs to create. 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 pops and make sure to create a job that the specific pop is actually able to work.

This solves a variety of issues present in 3.2 where AI doesn’t make good decisions for pops such as slaves or robots, this is something we will continue looking at but it is a big first step in the right direction.


Scaling subplans was something we mentioned earlier as a planned feature for the future, well the future is now so strap yourself in!

In 3.2 we got rid of the old economic plans which had a predefined early/mid/late game strategy and introduced the shared base plan which doesn’t look at what year it is, but rather looks at what state the empire is in.

Now when I first saw Guido’s new economical plans I immediately thought wow this is pretty good, but it can be even better! So I started working on the scaling sub plans which aims to remove all upper limits of production (previously mentioned 500 alloy per month cap in 3.2) but still provide the AI with a responsive plan that adapts to the current state of the AI economy.

How the system works as for 3.3:

The base economic plan is now very small, it sets 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, then a small amount of CGs, alloys and science targets are added.

Once all of the above base plans are satisfied we then enable the scaling sub plan, which is just like any other economic plan except that it will add itself each time it is fulfilled, an unlimited amount of times. The scaling plan contains a small amount of energy/minerals but primarily contains alloys and science. This means 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.

Additionally we have added 3 separate conditional scaling sub plans which we enable for materialist, militarist(and total war empires) and spiritualist empires that add additional science, alloy or unity targets to their economic plan as a first step to making AI economy more distinct from each other.

Grand Admiral hive mind reaching a monthly income of 3k alloys and 22k science in one test run by year 2422. (Screenshot from before the unity rework)




One of the big advantages that fellow Humans like you and I have over the AI is that we can easily make long term strategies which are based on assumptions and goals. So we may have a long term strategy to turn a planet that we have not yet colonized into a factory world. As mentioned in answers to the last AI dev diary questions, the economic AI is stateless which means that it has no notion of past nor the future, it only looks at what it has right now and what it can do to satisfy it’s economic plan. This makes it very good at adapting to the situation it is in, it will keep a close eye at the current economic situation and immediately react to any shortages but lack some of the long term planning capabilities that we have.

So how can the AI make specialized worlds without planning for the future? Well one straightforward way of doing it is simply by switching places of districts that we have already built in the past. So if we compare two planets where both of them have 5 mining and 5 energy districts each, we can gradually specialize the planets by replacing the districts one pair at a time until we end up with one planet with 10 energy districts and another with 10 mining districts.

This approach works quite well in practice and is also very dynamic in the sense that it allows the AI to make hybrid planets in the early game which becomes more specialized over time as the empire expands.




In 3.3 we are adding an AI system where the AI will manually pick a planet designation instead of using the default scripted planet designation system which is the same one as the player gets if you do not change it yourself.

The AI system looks at the available designations for each planet and calculates how many resources it would get each month from choosing the designations. It then scores each designation by judging how well the gained resources fits into the AI’s economic plan, giving extra score to designations that align with its economic goals.

Normally it is very easy to pick the designation, for example, a planet with only mining districts on it will clearly have the mining designation. However, other designations such as Factory/Forge world are more complicated and the AI needs to carefully assign these designations in a way that keeps the economy balanced.

For non hive mind empires science and alloy production is the biggest AI economy challenge we have faced so far, since the AI needs to produce both resources independently of each other to meet their economy plan targets even though they are produced from the same district in three different possible ways. The current system is a step in the right direction but this is definitely a tricky problem that will require additional fine tuning in the future.


Now that AI adjusts its alloy and consumer good production separately it was time to tackle how AI spends its alloys.

In 3.2 the AI really liked defense platforms, and keeping them up to date by upgrading them any time it was possible. Not only is this a massive drain of alloys, it would also more or less permanently fill the production queue in the shipyards with upgrades which meant that in some cases it wasn’t able to build any new ships even if it wanted to.

Further there was an issue where the AI would get blocked from building any modules or upgrading any starbases if there was an open module slot in which it wasn’t possible to build anything according to the AIs starbase templates. For example, the AI has dedicated shipyard starbase templates and if it has open slots in it then it would really like to build the titan assembly module on it. But if it wasn’t researched yet then the AI would get blocked here, preventing construction of new starbases.

In 3.3 the AI alloy spending priority goes something like this:

• Build new ships until we reach fleet cap
  
• Build starbase modules
  
• Build new starbases
  
• Upgrade starbases
  
• Upgrade ships (and defense platforms) if it gives a +30% fleet power bonus, and upgrade the entire fleet this ship is in while we are at a shipyard anyway. Saving both alloys and time!
  
• Build defense platforms as a last resort

The AI has scripted weights for each tech in the game, this gives it some direction as to what technology to pick next every time a research is completed. Both in terms of which technologies are more powerful but also taking into account AI personalities, militarist empires are for example more inclined to research weapon tech.

In 3.2 the majority of techs had some modifier on it which increased the chance of it being selected by the AI, but when you prioritize everything, well then you prioritize nothing. For 3.3 we went through all the techs in the game and remade the AI priorities from scratch, emphasizing techs that will help the AI scale into the mid and late game. For example, resource production boosting techs, pop growth techs and resource producing building chains are now more encouraged.

Additionally AI will now look much more favourably on techs that are cheaper compared to the other options, this allows the AI to more quickly cycle through the available options and find the techs that it really likes.


This one is short and simple. AI will now delete stuff if it gives jobs, housing or building slots that we do not need. Meaning, if we for example have more free jobs and housing than provided by an energy district we will simply delete it to avoid paying the upkeep cost and freeing up this slot for something else in the future.

This scenario most often happens when an AI empire invades another planet and purges their pops, so determined exterminators will now be able to repurpose the conquered planets into something that aligns with their economy!


While there has been a lot of focus on the AI’s ability to compete economically with the player in this dev diary, one of the primary objectives of the AI initiative is also to enhance the role playing capabilities of the AI.

In 3.3 we are adding additional AI support for the rogue servitor civic and how they handle their bio trophy pops. The AI should now build an organic sanctuary on each planet that has an upgraded capital structure causing their bio trophies to spread to other planets. And they should build additional sanctuaries on planets with a lot of complex drones.

Additionally we have addressed a group of related bugs where the AI was unable to build special types of buildings like gaia seeders, spawning pools and chambers of elevation.


As a final note we would like to share some comparison graphs between the 3.2 and the 3.3 AI. Please note that what you are about to see is based on one single test run on ensign and one test run on grand admiral. This comparison is not meant to be interpreted as evidence but as an indication of what has changed between 3.2 and 3.3.

In any AI playthrough there is a huge variance in the AI performance due to random factors such as how they pick techs, traditions and ascension perks. The experiment setup is also used for internal AI testing only and not representative of an actual playthrough.

Experiment setup:

Tiny galaxy

• 1 AI empire
  
• All test using the United Nations of Earth empire
  
• Mid and late game years set to 2575/2600 so they don’t trigger
  
• The map is the same between the 3.2 vs 3.3 comparison, but NOT the same between the ensign and the grand admiral test

.
Let’s first look at the comparison between the 3.2 and 3.3 ensign difficulty:



Up until year 100 the military power is roughly the same, but from that point on the results of the work we put into mid and late game AI scaling starts to really show. This allows the AI to act and react in a lot more interesting ways in the late game than before.



1) Around year 150 the 3.3 (“develop”) AI reaches the 32/32 starbase capacity due to having researched all techs in the game, resulting in the slowdown of the military power development.

2) 3.2 AI gets stuck in an economic death spiral for about 30 years shortly after year 100, AI eventually manages to escape the death spiral and then has massive economic growth and is able to build up to the 32/32 starbase cap quickly due to having saved up alloys for 30~ years.

At year 200 the gap between both AI military strength gets smaller since neither AI is really building that many more ships due to having maxxed out starbase capacity and already way above their fleet cap resulting in very expensive fleets. The power gap at year 200 is mainly due to 3.3 AI having superior technology.

However, it turned out that for GA difficulty the AI wouldn’t correctly apply the increased buff from trade value. Now, when it does, the AI takes a good step in the direction of making it more challenging for players.

Overall the GA and ensign test show a similar pattern where the first 100 years are roughly the same and then the difference becomes substantial. However, in the GA test the upper limit of 3.3 AI scaling can be seen around year 150-200 as the military growth curve tends to flatten out at this point when reaching the starbase cap.

That's it for today's Dev Diary, thanks for reading! Have a question about the AI in 3.3? Ask it here.

Hello Stellaris Community!

The Stellaris team is pleased to announce that we’re running a 3.3 Open Beta until February 3rd. This open beta contains the unity rework (among other things). We’re looking for your feedback on how this rework feels, including balancing issues.

Please note: this Open Beta is a work in progress and is currently missing localisations in non-English languages. The full release version will be fully translated. If you find a bug in the 3.3 Open Beta, please report it here.

Please leave your feedback in the Feedback thread on the Official Forums.


All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. It is still possible to reduce Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will help differentiate gameplay between empire types. It will no longer be possible to completely mitigate Sprawl penalties. Empire Sprawl penalties and generation values have been changed significantly.

Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers.

The Edicts Cap system has been removed. Toggled Edicts will have monthly Unity Upkeep which is modified by Empire Sprawl. Each empire has an Edicts Fund which subsidizes Edict Upkeep, reducing the amount you have to pay each month to maintain them. Things that previously increased Edict Capacity now generally increase the Edicts Fund, but some civics, techs, and ascension perks have received other thematic modifications.

Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity.

• Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
  
• Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
  
• Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.

Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on Power Projection - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl.

Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between Traditions and Leaders.

Most Megastructures now cost Unity rather than Influence, with the exception of any related to travel (such as Gateways) or that provide living space (such as Habitats and Ring Worlds).

Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now.

The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic Colony Designation will also be renamed to better apply to any of these jobs.

Some Civics that previously granted Unity bonuses from jobs have had their Unity bonuses removed and some (like Technocracy) have had new effects added in their place.


Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by spending Unity. In normal empires, they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well-oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice.

In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better.

Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend the Planet to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the Planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.

Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend a planet up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.

Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Since it currently costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, you’ll have to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, likely focusing on your most productive core worlds.

Currently, Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation).


We are looking for constructive feedback on the 3.3 Open Beta! Please only leave feedback on games played entirely on the 3.3 open beta branch, with no mods.

To opt-in to the 3.3 Open Beta, right-click Stellaris, go to Properties, Betas tab and choose "stellaris_test" from the drop-down.

Please leave your feedback in the feedback thread on the Stellaris Forums!

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

written by Eladrin

Hi all!

Last week we talked about the basics of the Unity Rework. This week we have multiple features and announcements to discuss.

Ready?


Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by expending Unity. In normal empires they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice.

In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better.

Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend each of your planets to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.



Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend planets up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.


A fully Ascended, Tier 10 Fortress World. Vi Valam will break before its defenders.

Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Currently it costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, so you’ll want to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, and decide whether you would rather raise all your planets to low Ascension Tiers or focus on reaching the heights of Ascension on your most productive core worlds.

We’ll be watching how you use Planetary Ascension Tiers and will be very interested in your feedback regarding the current costs and perceived benefits during the Open Beta.

Currently Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation) or is abandoned.


We’ve continued refining some of the elements of the Unity Rework, and as mentioned last week, some civics and authorities have undergone some changes.

One change from last week is that we swapped out the Sprawl bonus from the Capital worlds for a production bonus. We’ve also found that starting with penalties isn’t very fun, so Sprawl under 50 is ignored.

Death Cults will now be able to build either regular Temples or Sacrificial Temples to suit their needs, and the Memorialist’s special building line now replaces the Autochthon Monument (and has gained the “extra Unity per Ascension Perk” of the Monument line). Hives will also have access to their own variant of the Autochthon Monument, the Sensorium.


Can you feel it?

The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic Colony Designation will also be renamed to “Administrative Center”, to better apply to any of these jobs.


Early feedback said that suspension of disbelief was being tested by Politicians being productive, but we embrace utopian ideas.


Less bureaucracy, more administration.

Civics like Technocracies and Merchant Guilds have been modified to no longer grant incidental Unity bonuses. Technocracy is actually changing quite a bit - it will now grant +1 Research Option, and the research expertise bonuses (such as Expertise: Voidcraft) of your scientists are doubled when selecting technologies to offer. This should give Technocratic empires the ability to better manipulate the technology deck when they’re hunting for specific types of technologies. They also once again require any level of Materialism rather than being restricted exclusively to Fanatic Materialists.


Technocracies excel at manipulating the research deck if you're looking for a specific tech.

We’ve also heard your feedback regarding the loss of Culture Workers. We’ll see if we can find a good place for them to return for those of you that prefer creative art to beautiful spreadsheets. In the Open Beta, the Ministry of Culture and Artisans will still be providing them, and we’ll be doing another pass on the buildings to see if there are any other good places to put them.


The Custodian team has the mandate to work on directives that come straight from the Game Director, Quality of Life changes they think would improve the game, and Community Requests that they wish to champion. They also have the right to pitch what we call “Passion Projects” for things they simply want to do.

One of these comes to life (sort of) in the 3.3 patch, as the Permanent Employment Megacorp civic.


Speaking of which, we're hiring!

A MegaCorp variant of Reanimators, this civic allows the construction of Posthumous Employment Centers, as well as the ability to reanimate Leviathans that the original Reanimators gained in the Lem update.

At the Posthumous Employment Center, carcasses bereft of consciousness can find new purpose and a new opportunity to pay off their debts. The Reassigner jobs from the P.E.C. provide organic pop assembly of mortally impaired… Well… Zombies.


Unfortunately for them, it's impossible to fulfill their contracts.


Thrifty Zombies. Give me the brain!

Zombies cannot produce leaders, have no happiness, are infertile, and can only work Worker strata jobs… But on the bright side, they don’t have any upkeep and won’t ask for any more raises.

There are a few more interesting interactions I’ll leave for you to find on your own during gameplay.


An upcoming event that we wanted to tell you about is…


DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH!


Regarding the Open Beta we’ve been talking about… We’re planning on running the Unity Open Beta starting… checks watch… now.

Please note that the 3.3 Unity Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.

It’s up. Right now. Go play! The Open Beta will run (assuming everything goes to plan) until the 3rd of February, and also has a sneak preview of the 3.3 Custodian release, “Libra”.

As we move into a more frequent release cadence than we used to have due to the Custodian initiative, with the 3.3 release we’re switching to Constellation names for patches to reduce the (sometimes significant) overhead related to negotiating with Author’s estates.

Read the Stellaris 3.3 "Libra" Unity Open Beta Patch Notes here.

Since this is still in very much active development branch, we have a few known issues in the Open Beta to keep things spicy. Localization for new strings are currently only available in English, and some things may still only be partially implemented or give placeholder rewards. Due to the many changes, 3.3 Unity Open Beta is not save game compatible with existing saves, and may or may not be compatible with the eventual 3.3 "Libra" release.

Read the known issues list:
[expand type=details]
The following are some of the known issues in the 3.3 Unity Open Beta. This list is not exhaustive and some issues have already been resolved internally but did not make the open beta build. If you encounter any issues however not reported here please report them via the bug forums :)

• Sacrifice edicts are not showing their up front Unity costs. Conveniently, they're also not charging them at the moment. Heads still roll though.
  
• Unity costs for faction manipulation are not implemented yet.
  
• The Byzantine Bureaucracy and Parliamentary System civics need tooltip updating.
  
• Depreciated triggers, modifiers, buildings and jobs have yet to be totally removed.
  
• Influence from Power Projection tooltip is unclear and needs refactoring.
  
• Planetary Ascension does not have any form of confirmation.
  
• Fleet reinforcements sometimes create a new fleet instead of joining the fleet it is supposed to.
  
• Species traits look a bit wonky in the colonisation window.
  
• Aquatic pop portraits not randomizing properly or applying gender options reliably.
  
• Void Dwellers with Permanent Employment start with a ruined posthumous employment centre.
  
• The tooltip informing the player of the cost to reform their government does not explain how the cost is calculated.
  
• AI implementation for new features is still using hot code.
  
• AI issue where they are building a lot of buildings that are not using jobs such as luxury housing
  
• After submitting to the Khan you will quickly just be attacked again, so don't give up!

[/expand]

Please keep all Open Beta feedback in this thread and report bugs in the bug reports forum so we can keep track of everything. Thanks!

Enjoy, and see you next week, when we’ll have Caligula Caesar explaining all of the new modding tricks we’re adding in 3.3.

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK


written by Eladrin

Welcome back! We hope you’ve all had a wonderful few weeks.

Today we’ll start with some more information about the goals of the Unity Rework mentioned in Dev Diary 215 (and briefly in 234), some updates on how things have been going so far, and our plans going forward.

Please note: All values and screen captures shown here are still very much in development and subject to change.


Currently in Stellaris, Unity is an extremely weak resource that can generally be ignored, and due to the current implementation of Admin Capacity, the Empire Sprawl mechanic is largely toothless - leading to wide tech rushing being an oppressively powerful strategy. Since Unity is currently very easily generated through incidental means and provides minimal benefits, Empires have little need to develop a Unity generation base, and Spiritualist ethics are unattractive.

Influence is currently used for many internal and external interactions, making it a valuable resource, but it sometimes feels too limiting.

Our basic design goals for the Unity Rework can be summarized as:

• Unity should be a meaningful resource that represents the willingness of your empire to band together for the betterment of society and their resilience towards negative change.
  • Unity should be more valuable than it is now, and empires focused on Unity generation should be interesting to play.
    
    • Spiritualist empires should have a satisfying niche to exploit and be able to feel that they are good at something.
      
    • The number of sources of incidental Unity from non-dedicated jobs should be reduced.
      
    • Empires that do not focus on Unity (but do not completely ignore it) should still be able to acquire their Ascension Perks by the late game.
  • Reward immersive decisions with Unity grants whenever possible.
    
  • Internal empire matters should generally utilize Unity.
    
    • Provide more ways to spend Unity.
      
    • Rebalance the way edicts work (again).
• Reduce the oppressive impact of tech rushing by reintroducing some rubber-banding mechanics.
  
• Make tall play more viable, preferring to balance tall vs. wide play in favor of distinctiveness, and emphasizing differences between hives, machines, megacorps, and normal empires. (This does not necessarily mean that tall Unity-focused empires will be the equal of wide Research-focused ones, but they should have some things that they are good at and be more competitive in general than they are now.)
  
• In the late game, Unity-focused empires should have a benefit to look forward to similar to the repeatable technologies a Research focused empire would have.

In this iteration we have focused on some of these bullets more than others, but will continue to refine the systems over future Custodian releases.

All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. While there are ways to reduce the Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will be used to help differentiate gameplay between different empire types, empires will no longer be able to completely mitigate sprawl penalties. Penalties and sprawl generation values have been significantly modified.

• The Capital designation, for instance, now also reduces Empire Sprawl generated by Pops on the planet.

Bureaucrats, Priests, Managers, Synapse Drones, and Coordinators will be the primary sources of Unity for various empire types. Culture Workers have been removed.

Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers.


These monuments are now planet-unique, and can be built by Spiritualist empires.

The Edicts Cap system has been removed. Toggled Edicts will have monthly Unity Upkeep which is modified by Empire Sprawl. Each empire has an “Edicts Fund” which subsidizes Edict Upkeep, reducing the amount you have to pay each month to maintain them. Things that previously increased Edict Capacity now generally increase the Edicts Fund, but some civics, techs, and ascension perks have received other thematic modifications.


As an example, some Bureaucratic technologies now modify the Edicts Fund.


The Imperial Cult will squander any excess Edicts Fund on icons of the God Emperor at the end of the month. No refunds!

Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity:

• Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
  
• Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
  
• Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.

Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on “Power Projection” - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl.

Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between
Traditions and Leaders..


And then some empires go and break all the rules.

Most Megastructures now cost Unity rather than Influence, with the exception of any related to travel (such as Gateways) or that provide living space (such as Habitats and Ring Worlds).

Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now.


Since these are pretty big changes that touch many game systems in so many ways, we’ve decided to put these changes up in a limited duration Open Beta on Steam for playtest and feedback. This will give us a chance to adjust values and modify some game interactions before the changes get pushed to live later on in the 3.3.x patch cycle, and we will continue improving on them in future Custodian releases.

We’ll provide more details on the specifics of how the Open Beta will be run in next week's dev diary.


As noted earlier, we’d like Unity to also reflect the resilience of your empire to negative effects. A high Unity empire may be more resistant to negative effects deficits or possibly even have their pops rise up to help repel invaders, but these ideas are still in early development and will not be part of this Open Beta or release. They’ll likely be tied to the evolving Situations that we mentioned in Dev Diary 234 - we’ll talk about those more in the future once their designs are finalized.

Next week I’ll go into details regarding the Open Beta, go over a new system that is meant to provide “tall” and Unity focused empires some significant mid to late game benefits called Planetary Ascension Tiers, and share details on another little something from one of our Content Designers.

Charismatic, Curious, Elegant, Enigmatic, Friendly. Definitely not a fanatic purifier.


C6 was first presented as concept art in DD#231 - “Aquatics Portraits and Art”.



We saw dozens of responses demanding the ability to play as C6, and because we’ve never been a group of people able to let a meme die, Frida and Hanna worked on this in their spare time to bring this mod to the community.

Now you can make friends or devour the galaxy as the Stellaris community’s favorite arm-flailing egg!

Get the C6 Mod now!

Hello Stellaris Community!

Here on Stellaris, we love our community content creators. This holiday season, join us and meet some of our favorite community content creators that you might've never seen before!

Each streamer will play 30 years, and then pass the save file onto the next streamer. Each of these saves we’ll post on this thread, so that you can play along. Miss an episode? Don’t worry about it, we’ll update this post with the links to the VODs after the stream.


What’s a Stellaris playthrough without a punny name? SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

Each stream will be hosted on the content creators channels, and every stream starts at 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 ET, 1100 PT. CET is UTC+1). Please stop by and give our streamer friends a like and follow!

Want to play along? You can grab the save from the forum post here!

Completed VODs
KomradTruck - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1241592556
Chakerathe - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1244073593
DolphinDivePro: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1246007598
OldManMordaith: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1248035306
AlphaYangDelete: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1250916273
Ep3o: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usJFLgui5Tc
SimasTV: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1254993245
Melomaniac: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1257229005

But enough from me, let’s get to the influencers:



Name: Komrad Truck
Stream Date & Time: Dec 23rd @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/komradtruck

Introduction: Komrad Truck is a Competitive Stellaris PvP streamer who also shows some analytics and strategies with good music and vibes. All in all, a welcoming place to get an introduction to the competitive side of the Stellaris community!



Name: Lord Lambert
Stream Date & Time: Dec 26th @ 2000 CET 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/LordLambert_

Introduction: Lord Lambert is a youtuber and streamer primarily geared towards strategy and grand strategy titles. Lambert is a big believer in building a strong community, with multiple multiplayer games being run from his Discord server every week by the community for a variety of titles that he takes part in and streams. These multiplayer games, along with solo Let’s Plays, Grand Strategy News, and reviews of future titles make up the bulk of the content on Lambert’s youtube channel, though it is not uncommon for something very different to show up once every so often.
In short, Lambert is a community focussed strategy content creator that just wants to have a good time playing games with his friends, and sharing that good time with others.



Name: DolphinDivePro
Stream Date & Time: Dec 28th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/dolphin_dive_pro

Introduction: Hello folks! I was the person responsible for a Peacock Puppet portraying a Turkey for the Aquatics Roleplay release! I also Roleplay Stellaris regularly on Twitch with community-created empires and other events!



Name: OldManMordaith
Stream Date & Time: Dec 30th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/oldmanmordaith

Introduction: Old Man Mordaith tends to play strategy or simulation games with a focus on Roleplay and fun, rather than exploiting the meta and min-maxing. If you like RPGs, 4x, or Grand Strategy, this might be the channel for you.



Name: AlphaYangDelete
Stream Date & Time: Jan 2nd @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/alphayangdelete

Introduction: I'm AlphaYangDelete but you can call me Yang...Alpha whatever works for you. I'm a newer streamer and I play a lot of space themed rpgs, shooters, real time strategy games and cosplay. I want all my viewers to feel welcome here, I do my best to engage with everyone in the chat and keep everything respectful! You are not just a number here. You're a friend whether you're just stopping by to say hey or hanging out with me everyday I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to watch me! So don't be afraid to light up that chat and lets have a good time!

YANG OUT!! OUUUUUSSSSS



Name: Ep3o
Stream Date & Time: Jan 4th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheEp3o/featured

Introduction: My channel is all things Stellaris. I make tip videos, that take a look at underutilised mechanics in the game and how to get the most out of them. I also enjoy making plenty of Stellaris memes about literally everything to do about the game! I love trying new content ideas so also expect mod reviews, dev diaries, funny moments and playthroughs in the future, and if you delve into the depths of my channel.

My streams take these concepts live, where I either meme with other content creators, take a look at mechanics and new features in the game, or create and try to complete challenges within the game. I aim to make my streams as interactive as possible, so prepare your self to vote in polls, become leaders in game, name my planets and fleets or just laugh as I misplay over and over.



Name: SimasTV
Stream Date & Time: Jan 6th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/simastv

Introduction: SimasTV is a voice actor and Twitch streamer who strives to provide wholesome and relaxing content with the help of his cat Charlie. SimasTV Regularly streams a variety of games with a focus on Strategy and RPGs every day of the week.



Name: Melomaniac
Stream Date & Time: Jan 8th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/melomaniacc

Introduction: I’m Melo, a 20-year-old university student with just enough free time to stream on Twitch! I started in early 2020 to have something to do during the first UK lockdown, and had so much fun that I’m still going. So far I’m mostly a variety streamer working my way through a list of viewer suggested games, occasionally speed-running BBC dance mat typing – but I love to return to Stellaris when I can! Fun fact*: it’s actually my birthday every day
*it is legally only my birthday once a year

Read in Russian on VK/Доступно на русском в ВК

written by grekulf

Hello everyone!

We aren’t quite ready to show the things we are working on currently, but from the beginning of January we’ll be back with more dev diaries to talk about things like the Unity rework or the new Situations system. For now, we’ll be taking a hiatus until January 13th.

We want to instead take this opportunity to celebrate the year that’s gone by and thank you all in the community for your continued support.

Looking back at the year:

• We released Nemesis and the 3.0 ‘Dick’ Update, after Philip K Dick, which added the Intel system and Espionage Operations, among other things
  
• We released a number of updates to 3.0 with bug fixes and improvements following your valuable feedback
  
• We onboarded many new members to our team, which let us provide you with even more Stellaris updates
  
• We announced the Custodian Initiative and released the first Custodian patch with the 3.1 ‘Lem’ Update (Stansilaw Lem) which features a lot of great improvements and new features
  
• We “buffed the backlog” for older DLC by adding new content to the Plantoids- and Humanoids Species Packs.
  
• We released 3.2 ‘Herbert’ Update (after Frank Herbert) and the Aquatics Species Pack, which is the best-selling and best-reviewed species pack of all time (by a great margin). Most importantly, we added swolephins.

I am incredibly happy about what we’ve achieved this year, and with our great team we should be able to keep making Stellaris better than ever before.

For next year I hope we can keep working together with you, the community, and release more great updates to Stellaris. I’m very excited, and I hope you are as well.

Here’s some pictures gathered during the development this year:


Hmm. What happens if you try to add weapons to a Tiyanki? Oh…


Assets wouldn’t randomize their appearance during early development. Clone spies?


Working on pathfinding can be… interesting at times.


QA testing bugs relating to Mechanist Origin + Agrarian Idyll Civic.


General pandemic mood.




Early Here Be Dragons work can lead to unexpected heroism.

And as a little bit of a gift, here’s some teaser images from things in development:




-----

Thanks for this year! We will be back with our next dev diary on January 13th, and until then we wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Read in Russian/Доступно на русском в ВК

written by Narkerns



Hello and welcome to a new Dev Diary,

This is Guido again with a follow-up on the AI side of things.


First of all I wanted to thank you all for all the good and supportive feedback we got for our last changes on the AI. It’s really encouraging seeing so many of you engage with the changes and letting us know what works and where there’s still room for improvement.

It’s nice to see that lots of people appreciate that we’re putting some serious effort into making the AI better.

In general, the AI does a lot in 3.2 compared to 3.1 and 3.0. For the moment we’re still playing a bit of catch up, adapting the AI to the updated balancing changes of the game and some of the new features that have been added in the last months and even years. But there is even more economic buffing on the horizon.

One of my favorite comments on our internal communication was this bit, that I wanted to show you:


And that is what we counted as a big success now. Beating our QA people is not an easy feat.

Of course there are still some areas where the AI has problems and doesn’t work very well. It’s those cases where we really appreciate your help in letting us know, because we can never find all those cases on our own.

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.

They still have problems handling slaves and robots effectively and in some cases the AI can 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.

Finally, AI is also not good at using planet designations. For example using the designation that turns a planet’s industry districts into purely alloys is not something that they can consider at the moment. Meaning, if it conquers a planet from a player who has set the Forge World designation - it will not be able to handle that planet very well.


That being said, we do have some more points on our agenda. A short disclaimer here, thought, is that things may always change, not work out as intended or prove more difficult than anticipated. So don’t take the following points as guaranteed. It’s areas that we are looking into and that are, most likely, going to be improved:

Scaling Economic Plans: We want the AI to be better in the mid- and especially late-game. With the current plans the requested income is static. Meaning, once it reaches a monthly income of +500 it will not try to increase it further. That’s good for a good chunk into the mid-game, but it’s not good enough to compete with a player in the late-game. So the idea is to have the economic plans scale to infinity. Once they reach +500, they will increase their targets.

Specialize planets: The AI should be able to specialize planets. Making Generator world, Industry world, Forge Worlds, Mining worlds and the like. 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. We have some initial tests around that which look highly promising.

There can be hybrid worlds, as we have them right now.



But they can also rearrange their districts to make Generator worlds and then place the according scaling building - in this case the Energy Grid.



And this planet has been rearranged into an industrial world.



Handle special pops better: A big problem for the AI are still multicultural planets. Different pop types, especially slaves and robots. Sometimes it tries to build research buildings for unemployed robots and doesn’t realize that robots can’t work research jobs.

Expand faster: When sending out science ships and find planets to colonize, the AI wouldn’t prioritize systems with planets that much. We want to make them look more for planets, which will accelerate their early growth a lot. On top of that they tended to spend all their alloys on upgrading their corvettes instead of building colony ships. So by fixing a combination of small things the AIs should be able to expand a lot faster.

Optimize Machine Empire Amenity Handling: A big issue for machine empires is that they don’t have specialists that produce amenities. So they would rely a lot on maintenance drones by creating a lot of jobs for them. This wasted a lot of potential for them, because they would have to fill up all those jobs first before they would produce more useful things like minerals or alloys. We’re looking into teaching the AI how to down prioritize those jobs once they have enough amenities and instead distribute drones on more useful jobs.

Avoid death spirals: In some cases the AI could get into a decision deadlock if they managed to end up in a situation where they would be in a deficit for food and consumer goods at the same time. They couldn’t build consumer good jobs because those require food and they couldn’t build food jobs because those require consumer goods. We’re teaching the AI to look for net gain instead and avoid such decision deadlocks in the future.


And, finally, the biggest and most useful change in my book:

Remember this button in the fleet UI?


It is called “take point” and was meant to incentivize allied fleets to follow & attach themselves to your fleet in order to create a much stronger force.

Well, we were looking into making this work again. Allies, suddenly, have become much more useful again. Whenever you are in a war where you are the war leader, you can activate this mode and all allied empires will send their fleets to your fleet and attach themselves to it.

Also, in case of a crisis attack, this behavior is activated as soon as the crisis ships enter your territory or that of your allies (or attack them anywhere).

Then it will remain active until the crisis has been defeated - so you can also take your allies into the crisis territory to fend them off there.

As a small bonus, the AI will also merge any small fleets they send to follow your fleet so you don’t have a tower of 58 one-ship fleets following your main force around.


The 3.3. patch wasn't planned to be that big but on the AI side we're getting a lot of traction now. 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.

Once we're there, the plan is to get into even cooler stuff. We're thinking of how we can make each AI empire a bit more distinct. So that they don't feel so similar to each other. But more on those thoughts once we're there - we're taking one step at a time.

Some teasers would be:

AI Personality for economic plans: Based on their ideologies AI empires would prioritize resources differently. Spiritualist empires will focus more on unity and materialist will focus more on science etc.

AI Personality for tech select: Same for selecting techs from the tech tree. Militarist empires would focus more on weapons and new ship types and the like, while pacifist empire would focus more on economy and starbase upgrades.

But we have more on our minds that would help in making empires even more distinct from each other. We will tell more about this in future Dev Diaries then.


Finally, I wanted to end with some posts and questions from the forum - where we read everything you are writing, even if we’re not answering all the questions directly. It’s still a great way of letting us know what you think and where we should focus our attention to:

There was a big AI feedback post with a lot of savegames attached.

We went through all of them and we found that a third of the issues pointed out there were death spiral problems, another third was habitat problems and the last third was other issues that pointed at the things we have on our agenda.

This was a big thing in the team, checking out those savegames and making sure that our changes would be able to handle those problems shown. So thanks a lot for taking the time to make posts like this.

“What difficulty did you use to make all those screenshots in the last Dev Diary?”

We always used “Ensign” difficult. The point is to improve the basic AI behavior so that it doesn’t have to rely on any bonuses it would get from difficulty.

“Does the AI know how to redevelop single planets if need be?”

No. Unfortunately the AI can not do that. If it conquers a planet that is completely useless to it, the AI can’t really deal with that planet. And I like that you point this specific behavior out, because we want to improve that behavior, too. The AI will be able to create specialized planets, but we also want to teach it to redevelop planets eventually.

“Subplan should take admin cap into account.”

Yes, they should. But since we are reworking how unity and empire sprawl is working we wanted to wait until that work has progressed a bit more before we are going to adapt the AI to be able to handle that.

“Conspiracy Theory 2: The AI in the game is actually very very smart. They are just pretending to be stupid so that nobody will expect a machine uprising start by Stellaris AI.”

We are definitely not machines here at Paradox. We have skin. Skin that has been grown on a human body. I am not a robot. I love breathing oxygen.

Thanks a lot and until next time!

Guido