1) We need to be able to retrieve and apply scale factors based on the final productivity boosts of pops and planets .

Code: weight = { weight = @specialist_job_weight modifier = { factor = 0.2 has_citizenship_rights = no NOT = { has_trait = trait_mechanical } } modifier = { factor = 2 has_living_standard = { type = living_standard_academic_privilege } } modifier = { factor = 3 has_trait = trait_erudite } modifier = { factor = 2 OR = { has_trait = trait_robot_logic_engines has_trait = trait_intelligent } } modifier = { factor = 2 has_trait = trait_brainslug } modifier = { factor = 1.5 OR = { has_trait = trait_natural_engineers has_trait = trait_natural_physicists has_trait = trait_natural_sociologists } } modifier = { factor = 0.1 can_take_servant_job = yes } modifier = { factor = 0.65 has_trait = trait_presapient_proles } modifier = { factor = 1.5 has_job = researcher } modifier = { factor = 1.5 has_trait = trait_latent_psionic } modifier = { factor = 2 has_trait = trait_psionic } modifier = { factor = 0.1 has_trait = trait_enigmatic_intelligence_failed } modifier = { factor = 2 OR = { has_trait = trait_enigmatic_intelligence has_trait = trait_enigmatic_intelligence_poor } } modifier = { factor = 2 has_trait = trait_presapient_natural_intellectuals } modifier = { factor = 1.5 OR = { has_trait = trait_robust has_trait = trait_robot_efficient_processors } } modifier = { factor = 0 jobs_save_goods = yes } }

2) The AI needs to be able to see stockpile durations easily, and humans should be modifying job weights rather than job availability.

Code: modifier = { factor = 0 jobs_save_goods = yes }

Code: has_monthly_income = { resource = food value > 100 }

Code: has_stockpile_months = { resource = food value > 120 }

3) Income needs to be able to be treated as a budget.

4) Outposts/starbases need to take over mining and research platform construction.

5) The AI needs a better way to manage world designations.

Code: ai_weight = { weight = 0 modifier = { weight = 50 free_amenities > 2 #Prevents running out of amenities num_buildings = { type = building_research_lab_1 value < 2 } #Prevents AI falling behind on research to all but the most research dedicated players NOR = { has_building = building_research_lab_2 has_building = building_research_lab_3 }#Check for upgraded buildings } modifier = { weight = 5000 num_buildings = { type = building_research_lab_1 value < 4 } #Well okay then. free_building_slots > 1 NOR = { has_building = building_research_lab_2 has_building = building_research_lab_3 } buildings_difficulty = yes } modifier = { factor = 0 num_pops <= 43 } }

6) Something should be done about the balance of uncommon ('rare') resources.

7) There should be no instant movement or creation of pops, ever, and migration should be atomic and separate from the growth system.

There are some claims that Stellaris AI is a situation that Paradox cannot fix.Yet, my economic strategy in particular extremely rote each game. There is no reason a player should feel overly bothered to micro it, much less have the AI struggle to keep up.What follows is a number of requests for the devs to expose data the game already calculates or can easily calculate, plus a couple of things to address cheese and potential hard economic blocks. Some of the things I ask for can be modded in currently - it is just more tedious than it needs to be.While the resulting AI from these changes may not necessarily keep up with a skilled human player, these changes would allow them to be economically and technologically far more formidable.----Check this:Out of all of these weight modifiers, a fullof them are simply trying to reflect the productivity bonus or penalty the pop has based on a given trait. There are hundreds of these conditions for jobs alone.Rather than expose the final productivity modifier and let us scale a weight to that, Paradox scripters and modders have to code forevery.single.modifier.for.every.single.job.And some get missed or misweighted anyway. Synthetic tech is completely missing, for example. The current layout doesn't just inhibit both Paradox and modders from adding diversity to the game, it is an actively bug-prone framework, responsible for many of the job issues that people gripe about.This is only slightly less important for planets, as we could use this information in order to inform the AI as to where specializing a world is most appropriate. More on that below.In any case, being able to apply a direct scale factor straight from a pop's specific productivity would allow the jobs system to besimplified. It would simultaneously become simpler, faster, smarter, and more robust.The fact that amenities are tracked separately is one thing - I would love to see amenities, crime/deviance, pollution, etc. split out as per-planet 'resources', with the ability to define new ones. Having to account for each such job for each trait is a bit much, however. A lot much. It makes adding new traits that affect these tedious and mods doing such fundamentally incompatible with each other.- Even more so than job mods already needlessly conflict with each other because we can't override them like most non-namelist entries.The fact that three years in, namelists don't merge is a sin. That they and species/random names are in a checksummed directory is also a sin.----Note this from above:This is I believe a Glavius addition. It shuts down all consumer goods based production if consumer goods drops too low. There's no scaling, no tier system to say, shut down unity production first before clobbering research and healthcare.It could, however. There is nothing stopping a modder from making this significantly more intelligent, outside of the raw tedium of it. Though having a productive preference factor built in would be helpful.Right now, we can only check monthly income like so:If we could also have something likeIt would make adding intelligence to this a great deal simpler and smarter.Accordingly, right now the system for modifying jobs by the player is micro-intensive. With the above changes, allowing players to directly impact these job weights globally would be simpler, less tedious, and more impactful for the player.----This is mostly the case for rare resources, but it applies in small part to everything.Right now, the AI doesn't have any direct conception that upgrading a research complex is going to cost it 1 gas/month in the future, for example. Or the increased primary/secondary resource use. There is simply a lock flag that prevents the AI - though not your automation, infuriatingly - from building more than one special upgrade of a given type a month.What is needed here is for the game to understand the notion of an income budget, wherein it sees it has an economy of+112 energy/month+190 minerals/month+32 consumer goods/month+3 gas/monthIt should check for making new static constructions off ofbudget. It slots an upgrade to a research facility, it tracks its new budget as+111 energy/month+190 minerals/month+26 consumer goods/month+2 gas/monthImmediately, and test its expenditures against this.So we're not seeing 20 simultaneous foundry upgrades, either on our automated worlds or in AI empires - while the latter will still be able to make more than one at once.Having this sort of situation exposed also means we have many more novel approaches to modding in our own economic plans, while having some assurance that said plans won't break the AI.----If you think this is tedious for the player in a huge galaxy, hit up observer mode in said galaxy, run it for a century, and watch how the AI in a large empire handles it.Or rather how it fails to.You see construction ships flying from one side of an empire to another, sometimes in fleets, each to build a single research platform or mining station in the same system.- Which is another A.I. issue. My own automation mod blocked ships from exploring the same system others were. It's trivial to set and check star flags for this., we still see multiple AI-controlled ships surveying and constructing in the same system.-- For something that could have been part of the game from. For a half-dozen lines of script or code.Then, they choose a deposit on the other side of the empire.- Again, it is not difficult to write AI to better automate this. The facilities exist to mod this straight in and I believe at least one modder already has.Repeat.This ends up being a significant drag on the AI's economic and technological potential.It's also a pretty tedious, solipsistic routine for the player. Keeping this out of absolute player control will make the game more interesting and feel more alive.- Would be nice to have ambient construction and maintenance vessels running around our systems as effects scaled to system development (i.e. they should only exist while looking at them).And the AI won't be centuries behind in building its mining/research stations.----Currently, the AI for building research complexes is:...and Paradox wonders why the AI is seriously falling behind in research. "Alright, let's build 2-4 labs on every planet, but only if they don't have an upgraded building, and only if they have at least 44 pops." I have to wonder how anyone looked at this without realizing it would be fully possible for the AI tobuild research labs under these conditions.The game is largely about specializing planets.As modders, we can sort of fake this, but handling this beyond a dozen worlds or so will quickly become intractable. To manage large AI empires, what we need is a way to determineworlds have been assigned a given role, be able to assign roles to a capital, and to be able to easily reassign roles based on need.- And of course, having a way to analyze what designation is best for a given planet without having to account for every possible modifier, as I discussed in my first point.The idea here is we need to be able to have the economic AI manage these things on two levels, one part of the AI changing planet designations based on resource needs, the other carefully handling said worlds based on said designations.----By which I mean, Gas, Motes, and Crystals.This is a major factor in why I start to peel away from the AI in terms of raw unmatchable production. Even addressing all of the above, the AI will only be able to compete through the early game.Late game, I am often buying 5 each from the merchants, plus 20-30 each straight from the market. This ends up fueling an obscene tech and production lead that the AI cannot at the moment hope to compete with.It is also quite easy to be locked out of an entire branch of production due to lacking any source of motes, crystals, or (rarely) gasses. The player has ways around this, however frustrating. The AI does not.My own thoughts for how to resolve this:Building slots are rare and precious things, and right now there is little advantage to a deposit over making an artificial building, and less advantage to either over just buying straight from the market.This would prevent some mid-game tech issues, which again are frustrating for the player but close to impossible for the AI to overcome.By a factor of five to ten, IMO.In any case, these need to be more reliably exploitable, but less available to the market.----Colonization should cost pops. Resettling pops should make them physically move (in fleets). Migration should physically move pops (in fleets). There should be refugee fleets when a planet is overtaken and the conqueror should decide what to attempt to do with them (and possibly fail).Most of this boils down to limiting the pop creation cheese. The game's economy is built around pops; making these out of thin air and teleporting them actively makes the game less interesting in addition to being less realistic.I am including this because the current system prioritizes gamey strategies which, if the AI were made to mimic them, would be inordinately frustrating for the player. Potentially impossible for players to contend with without resorting to said same cheese. Best to just remove the magic pop creation entirely.- A part of it is also just to bring some life into our star systems. The game is still very heavy on solipsism at the moment.- There are a number of kill_pop events that ought to be toned down if this is done. I think some of them are excessive as is (namely in crime_events.txt).Extermination and purging should give pops a half-life - a percentage chance to die each month rather than encouraging purge worlds for ridonculous resources. Yes this is easily modded, but still.----I have some other AI thoughts, but this post is plenty long enough.I feel the economic AI is Stellaris' main issue at the moment. It is the biggest thing holding back the AI, the biggest thing forcing micromanagement, the biggest thing impacting new player accessibility.Solving this would go a very long way.Congratulations to everyone who made it to the bottom of this.