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[umiman]

In a ridiculous change of pace from my regular Stellaris games, I'm currently in a crazy shitstorm where I'm panicking my balls off.

I turned the difficulty to maximum for a new game and had two other AI empires alongside 4 Fallen Empires in a large map. Also to make it harder for myself, I decided to only have one single planet and just chill and take my time.

Well...

It's the year 2474.

This is the map:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm the little pink guy on the top and kinda the bottom. I'm currently the weakest of the starting empires. The only things weaker than me are the single planet protectorates I've raised here and there.

I had to actually colonize planets after I noticed how dramatically far ahead the AI empires were. I still haven't caught up and I've researched the entire tech tree alongside every single tradition.

I'm currently fighting both awakened FEs as well as the Contingency. None of my fleets even remotely stand a chance against any of them, as you can see in my fleet power. The contingency is spamming the map with 170k fleet power fleets and their homeworlds are protected by 500k fleets. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to deal with those.

Also the purple FE is going around putting every single planet it finds under a force field. It's pretty funny.

At this point my plan is to hide in a corner and cry. I'm hoping to turtle until my Dyson Sphere finishes, then spam as many fabricators as I can and suicide fleets at the enemy.

[Rolan7]

What's a good size for sectors, AI-wise?  I have a planet I'd love to add to a sector, but it would be planet 6.  An old thread said the sector AI gets particularly dumb after 5.

It's also a Betharian-rich sector I've handcrafted for amazing energy production, so I've turned off redevelopment.  The 75% income I'll get is fine. 

I guess I'm just worried that the sector AI does something especially stupid if it gets too large, since people complain about it so much.  If it just builds tile-appropriate buildings (which is checked), and upgrades, that's great.  It'll be massively food heavy (I've paved over so many food tiles in this Egalitarian-xenophile Human, Star Trek Federation run), but whatever.

[Criptfeind]

I'm at the point for sector AI that I just turn off their ability to do everything, and put old planets in them, developing new planets myself and once they are fully developed adding them to the sector.

They still manage to fuck up the only thing they can do, controlling where population is, they'll gladly put mining focused pops on research as they throw research focused pops in the mine.

But it seems like the best way to handle sectors, if you do that they can't fuck it up too badly, so they'll be at least able to run that planet with 75% of the efficiency you yourself would, no matter how many planets are otherwise in the sector.

[ZeroGravitas]

What's a good size for sectors, AI-wise?  I have a planet I'd love to add to a sector, but it would be planet 6.  An old thread said the sector AI gets particularly dumb after 5.

It's also a Betharian-rich sector I've handcrafted for amazing energy production, so I've turned off redevelopment.  The 75% income I'll get is fine. 

I guess I'm just worried that the sector AI does something especially stupid if it gets too large, since people complain about it so much.  If it just builds tile-appropriate buildings (which is checked), and upgrades, that's great.  It'll be massively food heavy (I've paved over so many food tiles in this Egalitarian-xenophile Human, Star Trek Federation run), but whatever.

the 5 planet limit doesn't exist anymore, i think - as i recall there was a bug that applied the core planet limit to sectors, so going over 5 (the base Core Planet limit) meant that sectors took penalties for "going over" just like your empire would if it went over. but that's gone now.

so if you've turned off redevelopment and hand-crafted all the buildings, there's really no problem and you can dump them all in. afaik.

although i have to say... why would you put your best energy planets in a sector? you should always keep your best planets/systems out of the sectors, and only put the worst planets in, because you want to take the 25% penalty on the smallest base possible.

[Hanzoku]

Honestly? I don't have problems with the sector AI. I mean, sure, I could probably eek out some more productivity if I hand-crafted every planet, but I don't have the time or patience for that. I play wide, and I run exactly two sectors at the moment - and the second grew up after I conquered a khannite world that they had founded themselves, and I couldn't link the colony into my main sector because a vassal owns the worlds inbetween. So my main sector is ~50 planets, and my subsector is ~15 now.

[Rolan7]

the 5 planet limit doesn't exist anymore, i think - as i recall there was a bug that applied the core planet limit to sectors, so going over 5 (the base Core Planet limit) meant that sectors took penalties for "going over" just like your empire would if it went over. but that's gone now.

so if you've turned off redevelopment and hand-crafted all the buildings, there's really no problem and you can dump them all in. afaik.

Ah, cool!  I guess it makes sense, but hopefully it's gone.  It's not the end of the world if it does have that limit, since I'll increase my planet capacity eventually.

I'll try it and see.  If the limit doesn't exist, it'll be tempting to combine my four sectors into one.  I've only got two governors, since I'm using scientists to assist research (unity boost from Discovery tradition).

although i have to say... why would you put your best energy planets in a sector? you should always keep your best planets/systems out of the sectors, and only put the worst planets in, because you want to take the 25% penalty on the smallest base possible.

Due to geography, mainly.  I have 5/5 planets in my starting area now, and the energy-rich planet is pretty far away and close to the big sector.
Also I'm getting close to my energy capacity a lot, even with silos, so letting a sector store some of those energy credits isn't a problem for me.

[Damiac]

I've found that the sector AI handles itself OK, I started playing after the worst of the sector AI bugs were fixed, apparently.

However, I tend to only ever have 1 sector, and I jam all the planets in it that don't fit in my core.  I try to keep the best worlds my core worlds, but sometimes the general layout doesn't permit that exactly.

I tend to ignore the sectors for the most part, unless I find myself with excess materials.  Then I may spend some improving sector planets.  I find giving the materials directly to be inefficient, as the sectors spread it around all the projects they have planned, so you give 200 minerals and get 66/100 for one thing, 66/100 for another, and 67/100 of a third.  Instead I just build the thing directly.

I find when the sectors start actually stockpiling materials, I usually tend to have a ton of materials as well, and I usually have plenty of influence to spare.  So then I'll occasionally pay the influence for a big chunk of resources.

What sectors are bad at is prioritizing.  They'll develop a 1 mineral tile before a 4 mineral tile because the 1 mineral tile is closer to the top-left (or whatever they start from).  The AI seems to just look for the first spot for the resource they want, rather than the best.  So manually building for them can help overcome this.  They are also bad at pop assignment, seemingly, but I don't know what to do about that.  I tend to just have 1 or 2 pops, but I assume this is a bigger deal for some people.

So I can say for sure there's no planet limit for sectors, at least not one you could reasonably reach.  And the sector AI seems to do better with more. Also, having just 1 sector means you only need 2 governors, one for core and one for the sector.  Not sure what benefits could exist for multiple sectors, aside from not having to be connected.

[Cruxador]

To be honest, I haven't used sectors at all since the very beginning. Now that it's core systems instead of core planets, and you can increase the amount more easily, I rarely find it worthwhile to exceed the cap.

[forsaken1111]

To be honest, I haven't used sectors at all since the very beginning. Now that it's core systems instead of core planets, and you can increase the amount more easily, I rarely find it worthwhile to exceed the cap.

I don't know how you do that. I end up with hundreds of planets in most playthroughs, across dozens of systems.

[ZeroGravitas]

To be honest, I haven't used sectors at all since the very beginning. Now that it's core systems instead of core planets, and you can increase the amount more easily, I rarely find it worthwhile to exceed the cap.

I don't know how you do that. I end up with hundreds of planets in most playthroughs, across dozens of systems.

hundreds of planets?? lol but why

i mean i guess if that's your actual goal, fine. but there's no reason to do that within the scope of the any challenge the game presents.

[forsaken1111]

To be honest, I haven't used sectors at all since the very beginning. Now that it's core systems instead of core planets, and you can increase the amount more easily, I rarely find it worthwhile to exceed the cap.

I don't know how you do that. I end up with hundreds of planets in most playthroughs, across dozens of systems.

hundreds of planets?? lol but why

i mean i guess if that's your actual goal, fine. but there's no reason to do that within the scope of the any challenge the game presents.

well my last game was max difficulty and 5x crisis strength on a 2500 star map, I was crushed by waves of 1 million strength swarm fleets at the end and I was over 200 planets strong. It was a challenge run just to see if I could.

That said I do end up with well over 100 planets in most late game runs, if I survive that long.

[umiman]

To be honest, I haven't used sectors at all since the very beginning. Now that it's core systems instead of core planets, and you can increase the amount more easily, I rarely find it worthwhile to exceed the cap.

I don't know how you do that. I end up with hundreds of planets in most playthroughs, across dozens of systems.

hundreds of planets?? lol but why

i mean i guess if that's your actual goal, fine. but there's no reason to do that within the scope of the any challenge the game presents.

You don't even remotely stand a chance against larger crisis events unless you go massive and max out stations.

In getting rid of doomstacks, the Stellaris devs forgot to remove the AI's ability to make doomstacks (lololol 500k fleet strength fleet). So the only way to fight their doomstacks is to expand so massively that you can afford your own doomstack. Or play MP. Cause MP balancing boys~

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

You don't even remotely stand a chance against larger crisis events unless you go massive and max out stations.

In getting rid of doomstacks, the Stellaris devs forgot to remove the AI's ability to make doomstacks (lololol 500k fleet strength fleet). So the only way to fight their doomstacks is to expand so massively that you can afford your own doomstack. Or play MP. Cause MP balancing boys~

Excuse me if I take that with less than a grain of salt.  I know they can go over fleet cap, but I've never seen going over command limit.

[umiman]

You don't even remotely stand a chance against larger crisis events unless you go massive and max out stations.

In getting rid of doomstacks, the Stellaris devs forgot to remove the AI's ability to make doomstacks (lololol 500k fleet strength fleet). So the only way to fight their doomstacks is to expand so massively that you can afford your own doomstack. Or play MP. Cause MP balancing boys~

Excuse me if I take that with less than a grain of salt.  I know they can go over fleet cap, but I've never seen going over command limit.

From my current game, which is making me shit my pants:



That's AFTER I tried to suicide run that world without realizing each planet comes with a giant-ass fortress defending it too. Hence the slightly reduced fleet size.

Reddit post at 5x crisis strength:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1.4 million fleet strength. You don't get a boost by the way so you're stuck at fleet cap.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah, I wasn't kidding about the 1 million strong swarm fleets guys. It's scary. I don't think you're intended to win against 5x crisis strength