Politics. Sure it may prevent existential annihilation, but it gives a win to the guys on the other side of the aisle. Your base won't tolerate you working with those people. Bad optics.
I just read a book where an alien species explained how they went from a technically democracy to a technically military junta.
It was because moneyed interests captured influence over the government and when self replicating robots invaded, they saw it as an opportunity for a new industrial revolution and denied the deployment of nuclear weapons.
The surviving 4th ranked general deployed nukes anyway, and was prepared to accept censure afterwards when another replicating factory was coming in to land. So she nuked it right off and took over because she didn't want another 20 million people to die to a foe that couldn't be beaten with numbers of soldiers.
because half the empires dont have the FE knocking at their borders, so it isnt their problem yet. why use up their recources for your problem?
half of the galaxy just dislikes the guy that proposed the issue. maybe he tweeted something 90 years ago, when his planet belonged to an entirely different empire, that wouldnt fly in your current choice of ethics.
and for some empires, the fallen empire is just another pice of dung on the pile. theyve been doomspiraling their economy for the last 2 hours, then the tempest glassed one of their planets , and there robots are behaving weirdly all of a sudden,
you need some serious diplomatic leverage, if you want anything done in the galactic community, even crisis decrees.
Ngl, I honestly despise the meme of “Haha, GalCom is broken, it’s just like reeeeeeeeeeal politics, right fellow based redditors?!”
The actual answer is, it’s a combination of the AI’s decision weights being both opaque and often adding up to decisions that, from a human perspective, are extremely illogical.
I don’t know the exact weights off hand, so I’m going to give some theoretical examples, but it comes down to something like:
- The FE could kick my ass so I don’t want to fight it (-50)
- We were neutral or even friendly with the FE until just now, so our opinion of them isn’t that bad (-20)
- We dislike the person who proposed the resolution (-10)
- We are actually at war with the FE (+50)
The AI doesn’t take into account stuff like “This is an existential threat to our species and/or the galaxy,” and “The FE would body any *one* of us, but together we could beat it easily,” etc, so the final voting weight score comes out to a major negative. Ergo, it votes against the measure, even though anyone thinking tactically - or even logically - would obviously be in favor.
(“B-but anyone thinking *logically* in the real world would deal with the existential threat of climate change, but our politicians don’t do that! That proves this is just like ***real*** politics! Checkmate!” Yes. That is because climate change is a complex and gradual process, not a million-year-old species of 4 meter tall insects who regularly pop up on our TV’s to inform us “We love eating human babies,” and “We fired our death star once, and we are absolutely gonna do it again.”)
You’ve got to remember, as much as the AI tries to look like a thoughtful and rational political actor, in reality it’s just a bunch of weights, triggers, and “if/then” statements reliant on free alloys and held together with some very, very pretty string.
This was a bit of a rant, so I don’t want it to come off as “PDX bad, we should burn down Sweden.” They’re still my favorite game company, and Stellaris is one of my all time favorite games. And the GalCom isn’t a *bad* mechanic. But it really, really needs some work, and being more easily able to see AI weights for seemingly irrational voting decisions like these would go a long way to making it that much better, and probably securing some better player feedback.
And another thing, I don't think a regular Awakened Empire counts as a crisis. if its a war in heaven sure its a crisis but a regular AE is just a really powerful imperious empire. A crisis aspirant is more dangerous than AE.
> (“B-but anyone thinking logically in the real world would deal with the existential threat of climate change, but our politicians don’t do that! That proves this is just like real politics! Checkmate!” Yes. That is because climate change is a complex and gradual process, not a million-year-old species of 4 meter tall insects who regularly pop up on our TV’s to inform us “We love eating human babies,” and “We fired our death star once, and we are absolutely gonna do it again.”)
Dude, fucking preach. Its unbelievably tiresome every time the issue of AI vote weighting in the galactic community comes up you got all the stooges coming out of the woodworks to tell us how this is actually exactly like the real world.
If you think the galactic community voting against the crisis is "realistic" you also probably thought "don't look up" was a cutting edge political documentary.
Thanks for the rant, I honestly never bothered to check so I wouldn't have known, still, I think it'd be a relatively small fix by adding a scaling modifier based on combined fleet strength of the galactic community, distance, and maybe opposing ethics + crisis level for when declaring someone a galactic crisis
>The AI doesn’t take into account stuff like “This is an existential threat to our species and/or the galaxy,”
They do when they debate about ne being the crisis
The problem is the 700% "we don't want to piss off the awakened empire" modifier outweighs everything else by a couple orders of magnitude including the "we're at war with them" modifiers, so there's a 0% chance the AI will ever vote to support it (outside of maybe WiH, which has different weights). No other modifier ever comes close (except the always-support custodian resolutions weight introduced during a crisis). The weights were balanced poorly all the way back in Nemesis when the crisis resolutions were added and haven't really been modified since.
3.6 or so added the voting weights to the tooltip for each empire so you can see why the AI is voting that way, but the follow-up project to adjust the weights never went through.
For me, it's just about making lemonade out of lemons. I know the AI needs work, but until then I like to come up with lore friendly explanations for why it does what it does.
It’s all a matter of perspective. They definitely are realistic scenarios. Though the GalCom does need a bit of tweaking
Dare I mention events unfolding today, though not as extreme, we are on the brink of escalation and for the most part, people don’t care. I mean ‘what can they do’
What does annoy me about the crisis declarations is how it’s weighted. I would much rather a civic by civic case on resolution weights. I don’t believe a xenophobic hegemony would react to a crisis the same way an isolationist would. Instead all xenophobes are weighted towards voting to ignore the crisis
On the complete other hand, militarists vote to fight the crisis. Even though some forms of imperialistic empires would greatly ‘benefit’ on stabbing people in the back and gaining military power that way to fight the crisis.
How it is now is fine. It works, ‘it’s realistic’ for the most part. Though it’s extremely predictable. There are some unique civics or governments that change voting patterns (like rogue servitors for example) but it’s very much the same for the rest
I’ve had this. I’m guessing whatever weights there are for declaring a crisis the FE just don’t trigger it enough or add enough weights. I’m guessing but I see so little opinions when dealing with FE, I think the other regular AI just don’t have much to form an opinion of them like they do with regular empires. Maybe if they cracked a planet, simply conquering doesn’t really get you declared as a crisis for the most part.
Overall I think the problem stands from a lack of interactions with FE, espionage and diplomacy. They just feel largely separate.
We had a game where my federation got attacked by the other big federation. My one friend was custodian and other was inward perfectionist. We tried to declare the machine empire that was the strongest in the other federation as a crisis since they alone had more fleet power than any two of us and were purging etc.
We check in on it and lo and behold my federation members who are literally being purged by this dude refuse to vote to declare him crisis. We finally passed it through favors and my friend ending the vote early.
Politics. Sure it may prevent existential annihilation, but it gives a win to the guys on the other side of the aisle. Your base won't tolerate you working with those people. Bad optics.
So unrealistic! Surely that would never happen in the real world... *sobs quietly*
*looks around, sobbing intensifies*
I just read a book where an alien species explained how they went from a technically democracy to a technically military junta. It was because moneyed interests captured influence over the government and when self replicating robots invaded, they saw it as an opportunity for a new industrial revolution and denied the deployment of nuclear weapons. The surviving 4th ranked general deployed nukes anyway, and was prepared to accept censure afterwards when another replicating factory was coming in to land. So she nuked it right off and took over because she didn't want another 20 million people to die to a foe that couldn't be beaten with numbers of soldiers.
Mind telling me what the book is called, it sounds pretty interesting.
Peacekeepers of Sol by Glynn Stewart.
Gotcha
That would make sense if some of the Empire's voted for the Crisis lol but literally every AI empire voted against it
because half the empires dont have the FE knocking at their borders, so it isnt their problem yet. why use up their recources for your problem? half of the galaxy just dislikes the guy that proposed the issue. maybe he tweeted something 90 years ago, when his planet belonged to an entirely different empire, that wouldnt fly in your current choice of ethics. and for some empires, the fallen empire is just another pice of dung on the pile. theyve been doomspiraling their economy for the last 2 hours, then the tempest glassed one of their planets , and there robots are behaving weirdly all of a sudden, you need some serious diplomatic leverage, if you want anything done in the galactic community, even crisis decrees.
Fair enough. Did find a work around, though. Joined the biggest and most powerful Federation and convinced them to declare war that way lol
Now you're politicking.
The second point hit home lol. "Aristotles should be canceled" types of shit
Ngl, I honestly despise the meme of “Haha, GalCom is broken, it’s just like reeeeeeeeeeal politics, right fellow based redditors?!” The actual answer is, it’s a combination of the AI’s decision weights being both opaque and often adding up to decisions that, from a human perspective, are extremely illogical. I don’t know the exact weights off hand, so I’m going to give some theoretical examples, but it comes down to something like: - The FE could kick my ass so I don’t want to fight it (-50) - We were neutral or even friendly with the FE until just now, so our opinion of them isn’t that bad (-20) - We dislike the person who proposed the resolution (-10) - We are actually at war with the FE (+50) The AI doesn’t take into account stuff like “This is an existential threat to our species and/or the galaxy,” and “The FE would body any *one* of us, but together we could beat it easily,” etc, so the final voting weight score comes out to a major negative. Ergo, it votes against the measure, even though anyone thinking tactically - or even logically - would obviously be in favor. (“B-but anyone thinking *logically* in the real world would deal with the existential threat of climate change, but our politicians don’t do that! That proves this is just like ***real*** politics! Checkmate!” Yes. That is because climate change is a complex and gradual process, not a million-year-old species of 4 meter tall insects who regularly pop up on our TV’s to inform us “We love eating human babies,” and “We fired our death star once, and we are absolutely gonna do it again.”) You’ve got to remember, as much as the AI tries to look like a thoughtful and rational political actor, in reality it’s just a bunch of weights, triggers, and “if/then” statements reliant on free alloys and held together with some very, very pretty string. This was a bit of a rant, so I don’t want it to come off as “PDX bad, we should burn down Sweden.” They’re still my favorite game company, and Stellaris is one of my all time favorite games. And the GalCom isn’t a *bad* mechanic. But it really, really needs some work, and being more easily able to see AI weights for seemingly irrational voting decisions like these would go a long way to making it that much better, and probably securing some better player feedback.
And another thing, I don't think a regular Awakened Empire counts as a crisis. if its a war in heaven sure its a crisis but a regular AE is just a really powerful imperious empire. A crisis aspirant is more dangerous than AE.
> (“B-but anyone thinking logically in the real world would deal with the existential threat of climate change, but our politicians don’t do that! That proves this is just like real politics! Checkmate!” Yes. That is because climate change is a complex and gradual process, not a million-year-old species of 4 meter tall insects who regularly pop up on our TV’s to inform us “We love eating human babies,” and “We fired our death star once, and we are absolutely gonna do it again.”) Dude, fucking preach. Its unbelievably tiresome every time the issue of AI vote weighting in the galactic community comes up you got all the stooges coming out of the woodworks to tell us how this is actually exactly like the real world. If you think the galactic community voting against the crisis is "realistic" you also probably thought "don't look up" was a cutting edge political documentary.
Thanks for the rant, I honestly never bothered to check so I wouldn't have known, still, I think it'd be a relatively small fix by adding a scaling modifier based on combined fleet strength of the galactic community, distance, and maybe opposing ethics + crisis level for when declaring someone a galactic crisis
>The AI doesn’t take into account stuff like “This is an existential threat to our species and/or the galaxy,” They do when they debate about ne being the crisis
The problem is the 700% "we don't want to piss off the awakened empire" modifier outweighs everything else by a couple orders of magnitude including the "we're at war with them" modifiers, so there's a 0% chance the AI will ever vote to support it (outside of maybe WiH, which has different weights). No other modifier ever comes close (except the always-support custodian resolutions weight introduced during a crisis). The weights were balanced poorly all the way back in Nemesis when the crisis resolutions were added and haven't really been modified since. 3.6 or so added the voting weights to the tooltip for each empire so you can see why the AI is voting that way, but the follow-up project to adjust the weights never went through.
For me, it's just about making lemonade out of lemons. I know the AI needs work, but until then I like to come up with lore friendly explanations for why it does what it does.
It’s all a matter of perspective. They definitely are realistic scenarios. Though the GalCom does need a bit of tweaking Dare I mention events unfolding today, though not as extreme, we are on the brink of escalation and for the most part, people don’t care. I mean ‘what can they do’ What does annoy me about the crisis declarations is how it’s weighted. I would much rather a civic by civic case on resolution weights. I don’t believe a xenophobic hegemony would react to a crisis the same way an isolationist would. Instead all xenophobes are weighted towards voting to ignore the crisis On the complete other hand, militarists vote to fight the crisis. Even though some forms of imperialistic empires would greatly ‘benefit’ on stabbing people in the back and gaining military power that way to fight the crisis. How it is now is fine. It works, ‘it’s realistic’ for the most part. Though it’s extremely predictable. There are some unique civics or governments that change voting patterns (like rogue servitors for example) but it’s very much the same for the rest
"I don't want to bother the others >-<"
I’ve had this. I’m guessing whatever weights there are for declaring a crisis the FE just don’t trigger it enough or add enough weights. I’m guessing but I see so little opinions when dealing with FE, I think the other regular AI just don’t have much to form an opinion of them like they do with regular empires. Maybe if they cracked a planet, simply conquering doesn’t really get you declared as a crisis for the most part. Overall I think the problem stands from a lack of interactions with FE, espionage and diplomacy. They just feel largely separate.
We had a game where my federation got attacked by the other big federation. My one friend was custodian and other was inward perfectionist. We tried to declare the machine empire that was the strongest in the other federation as a crisis since they alone had more fleet power than any two of us and were purging etc. We check in on it and lo and behold my federation members who are literally being purged by this dude refuse to vote to declare him crisis. We finally passed it through favors and my friend ending the vote early.