~ StarNet AI

Small announcement

Heavily recommend trying another AI mod, Startech. It's more science-oriented and, I believe, will provide more fun experience for most players.

Description

This mod intends to create an action-packed experience with AI not only being able to manage their economy, research and military but also willingness to put their fleets to use.

It's my best attempt to create the galaxy that will feel as "alive" as possible, with AI empires attempting to create their own destiny. Everyone will be trying to grow by all means necessary, be it peacefully, forcefully and if despite all efforts somebody else manages to grow better, unite against the galactic threat.

This version of the mod is compatible only with live version. If you are playing a version between 2.2 and 3.0 check my workshop, it has legacy version for every patch.

What are the main differences with vanilla?

• AI is drastically less likely to drive themselves into an economic crisis, even at low difficulty levels.

• Unlike in vanilla economical priorities of AIs will depend on surroundings and their empire. There isn't that much value in alloy-spam when you are a technocrat surrounded by federation allies and it's not really a good idea to try to tech-rush to megastructures when you are a swarm neighbouring a purifier.

• Tech-choices are more streamlined. Instead of picking a random or a slightly-weighted random tech, AIs will try to climb the tech tree and get the juicy technologies asap.

• Economical recovery is much quicker (and more importantly, it happens) compared to vanilla. Whenever anything goes wrong AI will be able to recover and get back to join the galactic race.

• With better crisis management and smaller chance of crisis occurring, the mod can afford to focus harder on what the empire is trying to achieve. AI is able to specialise planets and squeeze much more alloys/research than vanilla.

• Better growth management. The 3.0* patch introduced logistics planetary growth that makes planetary management more complicated than it used to be, this mod will exploit some of this potential.

Note that starnet does not add any bonuses to AIs, everything on this list is achieved in a fair fashion.

Recommended settings

Unless you are totally sure what you are doing, I recommend playing the first game on Ensign or Captain. Once you get used to how the mod works you can try increasing the difficulty.

Heavily recommend to use the max possible amount of AI, this was the most tested setting and the most eventful, AI tend to work much better in crowded galaxies.

Advanced starts add quite a lot to experience, heavily recommend using them. I believe that adding few advanced start empires is more engaging way to increase the difficulty, you will face strong opposition and an option to unite with weaker AIs.

How much different is it from Vanilla and how does it achieve it?

Exact difference depends on galaxy settings, difficulty settings and how lucky the AIs were at the galaxy generation stage. For a rough estimate, Ensign Starnet in 2350 will have three times larger economy score, 4 times larger science score and 8-15 times larger fleet. At the same time when best vanilla AI will wield 300 navalcap worth of corvettes/destroyers, the strongest Starnet AIs will have 700 navalcap filled with state-of-the art spinal battleships.

How? Does it get more bonuses than in vanilla? If you just increase the bonus to grand admiral and call it commodore there is no point!

I will repeat, there are no additional boosts to AI. Everything Ensign AI is doing you can be doing too. Commodore AI doesn’t get any more perks apart from vanilla boosts and so on. To accomplish this, the mod changes every aspect of AI decisionmaking, the most impactful of those are the following.

Economy

Main source of performance gain is the economy changes. In most cases AI will be much better in balancing their resources, and has better grasp on how many specialists it can afford while not killing yourself with upkeep.

Note that among other things AI will not use clerks unless it's a good idea. So as a side-effect branch offices will be less profitable. You might consider spawning few empires with merchant guilds to make it easier.

Technology

Default AI picks techs more or less at random. In contrast Starnet will climb the tech tree rapidly and prioritise techs which will make it as deadly as possible. Fleet composition, weapon composition and tech choice are improved to create a coherent gameplan, you should experience AI having spikes of power when it reaches next milestone.

AI will try to build what I believe to be optimal AI composition (a lot of battleships) but if it's something that you do not want to see, take a look at a submod that will instead force AI to use mixed fleets.

Diplomacy

The way Stellaris is balanced, having fleet is a huge investment which won’t ever pay off unless you go to war. Starnet changes opinion modifiers to make it so AI will go to war and be happy to feed on weak neighbours. This should make AI actions have a "realpolitik" look. In addition, in this mod I've drastically increased AI response to common rivals and threats, the idea is that was the best way I could achieve AI uniting against common enemies and common threats.

In addition, AI is more likely to federate with long-term allies (especially in presence of common rivals). Diplomacy isn't too moddable in stellaris, but I think I managed to tweak the constants in a way that every galaxy will eventually contain multiple competing federations.

If you do not like these changes, you can use the Patch which reverts them and makes diplomacy closer to vanilla.

Compatibility

CHECK THIS THREAD FOR MORE INFO

To use this mod in combination with NSC2, follow the instructions at Starnet for NSC2.

To use this mod in combination with ESC, follow the instructions here.

This mod is not compatible with any other AI mod . In general