Food production issue

[jtg0d]

Something really weird happened to me on my current play-through - so I have about 10-15 planets, 2 food producing planets (2 balanced), about 4-5 ocean and the rest mining. I've had my food at fairly constant positive 25K-ish. Then, I found a 3rd food producing planet, so I colonized it and figured id make it agrarian (strictly food producing to sponsor my expansionism). As soon as I did this, my food production plummeted to negative 30-40K and very soon my 25 million food reserves disappeared. I couldn't build farms fast enough on all 3 planets to compensate skyrocketing baby-boom. so question is, what gives? Does suddenly the planet management AI considers potential food output of the planet and starts increasing pop on mining planets? Im in the early stages of the game - just researched heavy ion cannon, I think im like 100-150 years in after the start.

Thanks

[Mojamaguena]

Something really weird happened to me on my current play-through - so I have about 10-15 planets, 2 food producing planets (2 balanced), about 4-5 ocean and the rest mining. I've had my food at fairly constant positive 25K-ish. Then, I found a 3rd food producing planet, so I colonized it and figured id make it agrarian (strictly food producing to sponsor my expansionism). As soon as I did this, my food production plummeted to negative 30-40K and very soon my 25 million food reserves disappeared. I couldn't build farms fast enough on all 3 planets to compensate skyrocketing baby-boom. so question is, what gives? Does suddenly the planet management AI considers potential food output of the planet and starts increasing pop on mining planets? Im in the early stages of the game - just researched heavy ion cannon, I think im like 100-150 years in after the start.

Thanks

Happened to me something similar, If I were you I'll go to check micromanaged planets and see hows the population doing, if in your micromanaged planets there are a lot of people disponible apply inmediatly population regulation measures, and try to colonize more planets with those disponible citizens, but if you want a rapid solution and don't mind genocide just build and exodus ship load it with people and give them tickets to the "Gods Planet", hope that helps

[Firefox440]

Perhaps you have created too mines, the workers will need a lot of food and if you have not too temperate planets, you will need research other farms as the oceanic farm and the hydroponic farm.

[jtg0d]

Yes, my mining colonies are growing large, but I would imagine AI to be smart enough not to build up large pops on those if there is no food to feed them with. The point i'm trying to make is why did AI suddenly decided to increase pop on all those AI-managed worlds?I mean, the whole point of setting up AI-management is so that I don't have to manage it. Eventually I did manage to take a hold of the situation, but not before 2 of my distant planets declared independence and became pirates (why pirates?). But this makes me feel like I have to micro-manage this side of the game too, which I didn't want to.

[jtg0d]

Perhaps you have created too mines, the workers will need a lot of food and if you have not too temperate planets, you will need research other farms as the oceanic farm and the hydroponic farm.

I am not sure about this, as I wrote in my original post, I was doing fine until the moment I colonized a planet that I set up as agrarian - right after that my food started to collapse. Its as if the AI saw the new planet, saw the 'potential' output as the 'real' output and started rapidly increasing pop on other planets. That's the only explanation I could come up with.

[von Runstedt]

I've had this happen too and while I don't know what causes it I can tell you how to get around it. turn any non-food producing planets except a few mines to the austere food policy this will stop any construction and limit production of resources but it will drastically curtail food consumption. The just wait for your food to rebound and start repealing the austere food policy.

[Mojamaguena]

Yes, my mining colonies are growing large, but I would imagine AI to be smart enough not to build up large pops on those if there is no food to feed them with. The point i'm trying to make is why did AI suddenly decided to increase pop on all those AI-managed worlds?I mean, the whole point of setting up AI-management is so that I don't have to manage it. Eventually I did manage to take a hold of the situation, but not before 2 of my distant planets declared independence and became pirates (why pirates?). But this makes me feel like I have to micro-manage this side of the game too, which I didn't want to.

Thats weird, because in my game every AI controled planet have population control measures as you can see in this pick they only remove it in the event that they want to expand constructions there.

As you can see this pick it's take after I had some problems with food but it's not because overpopulation but for the lack of farming colonies which it's solved as I found a Gaia planet that it's going to be a vergel.

[jtg0d]

If I understood you correctly, I would have to manually set the food austerity initiative on all mining planets? Doesn't/shouldn't the AI take into the account gross food production capabilities? This is a solution for the problem, but it does add micromanagement element i was trying to avoid.

[von Runstedt]

unfortunately yes, As I've said in my othe rposts the AI isn't exactly terribly intuitive in the way it works.

[Firefox440]

If I understood you correctly, I would have to manually set the food austerity initiative on all mining planets? Doesn't/shouldn't the AI take into the account gross food production capabilities? This is a solution for the problem, but it does add micromanagement element i was trying to avoid.

The problem here is not what you say. You have a balance problem. You must conquer less mining planets and more agricultural or give to your builders more time for balance it.

But if you have not researched the ocean farm or the hydroponic farm, you can not build a agricultural planet in a ocean or desert planet. You need temperate planets.

[jtg0d]

If I understood you correctly, I would have to manually set the food austerity initiative on all mining planets? Doesn't/shouldn't the AI take into the account gross food production capabilities? This is a solution for the problem, but it does add micromanagement element i was trying to avoid.

The problem here is not what you say. You have a balance problem. You must conquer less mining planets and more agricultural or give to your builders more time for balance it.

But if you have not researched the ocean farm or the hydroponic farm, you can not build a agricultural planet in a ocean or desert planet. You need temperate planets.

You are right about my initial statement, I found my old save before I colonized the Earth Like planet, I was already in the negative food balance.
However, the AI that was advertised very good is actually very lacking. My 2 HUGE beefs with AI are:
- if I am not micromanaging a planet, I would expect AI to realize I don't have enough food and to STOP raising pop like crazy! And no, setting up initiative to no pop does NOT help - it either expires or AI removes it, I've set up no pop growth initiatives several times and it just disappears in time. This is a huge deal to someone like me that hates micromanagement (including 1 economic screenshot showing off my earthlike planets);
- enemy strategic AI - this guy declared war on me because my ships kept crossing his borders and he refused to open borders with me. At the time I only had about 15-20 planets and 1 ship (that's how I play, expand super fast, then secure and build military). So, he was bordering my main space through a single planet, plus 2 of my planets were outside my main space and kind mingling within this guy's space, easy picking's I would thing. None of the 2 planets had any defenses, one of the planets was freshly colonized and didn't even have factory so I had to spend 10 years building a factory first and THEN spend 50 years or so building lots of fighters because, well, I expected a fight. Well, nothing happened, the guy never attacked me or my defenseless colonies. When I spent 50-100 years building up a fleet of about 7 carriers and 3-4 troop ships he never gave me a fight, only a few local fighters and troops left as defense. So WTF? Why are you declaring war if you cannot and will not attack/defend? This is on HARD difficulty. The guy has no other wars with anyone else. I included 2 war screenshots before I started conquering and after.

In summary, AI is very lame and weird. My playstyle usually involves heavy expansion at the beginning with struggle in the mid when my military tries to catch up with my expansion or any wars that come out of it. So I usually either lose right away because I get steamrolled or I survive and then steamroll at the end. With Polaris, there seem to be no way of losing because enemy AI never bothered attacking me with 2 juicy and undefended (for a long time) planets right among their space.

[jtg0d]

Here are the planetary screenshots again, I couldn't post 2nd planet screenshot in my previous post, limit of 3 screenshots.
I don't get why would AI go into a big food deficit.

[Ufnv]

AI governors do not follow the big picture, they just do their best in developing their planet according to the policy. So, they will continue to build new factories and mines, rising the population, even if your empire cannot support that population globally. That's the player's task to wisely assign planetary policies and colonize appropriate planets to make the whole empire be balanced.

[von Runstedt]

I've had the same problem with the Ai making very poor decisions. On the Domestic level it just requires micro-management, which is annoying but not necessarily a deal breaker I think. Its much harder to justify the Ai's behavior on a larger scale but it also offers a lot of opportunities to exploit it. As I said in a different posting I have been able to ask other races for peace the minute they declare war and without fighting any battles, conquering anything or offering concessions, 5 times out of 1 they will agree to peace. That and just waiting and not doing anything seems to help the AI realize that war isnt accomplishing anything and to make peace

[jtg0d]

AI governors do not follow the big picture, they just do their best in developing their planet according to the policy. So, they will continue to build new factories and mines, rising the population, even if your empire cannot support that population globally. That's the player's task to wisely assign planetary policies and colonize appropriate planets to make the whole empire be balanced.

Do policies like 'do not increase pop' persist until I remove them manually? cause it seems like it doesn't. I've had the food shortage issue several times, the first time I set up all mining planets to never increase pop and I am 99.9 % certain that policy eventually gets removed on its own. I am very very sure I never removed it.

[von Runstedt]

if you leave the planet on auto-control and the planet still has room for development the AI will immediately revoke the control population order. otherwise, if the planet runs out of resources, industries, farms, etc to develop it will automatically enforce the no-population increase order on its own. Its kinda stupid like that but then, such is the way the AI works. The only way to have population control orders followed is to set the planet to micromanage which takes the AI out of control of the planet's initiatives and production

[jtg0d]

if you leave the planet on auto-control and the planet still has room for development the AI will immediately revoke the control population order. otherwise, if the planet runs out of resources, industries, farms, etc to develop it will automatically enforce the no-population increase order on its own. Its kinda stupid like that but then, such is the way the AI works. The only way to have population control orders followed is to set the planet to micromanage which takes the AI out of control of the planet's initiatives and production

I was afraid of this, I was hoping it was a bug, but basically your answer confirms - the AI planet management is not good enough and I have to micromanage almost every planet. That sux!
Thanks for the confirmation.

Suggestion to Devs:
- if setting planet to be managed by AI, make sure AI takes into consideration global food production. Do not mass-produce pop if global food production is below X (configurable by players);
- any setting player sets the planet to (I forget what they are called, but basically 'do not increase pop', etc) should NEVER be removed automatically, even if the planet is set to be managed by AI. Player set that setting up, let him/her remove it manually;
- please please please improve strategic AI - the one that declares war on me, never attacks my undefended colonies and then 100-150 years later, when I build a fleet of ships I go through a third of his planets and half of them don't even have fighters and/or troops (never encountered any ship bigger then a fighter and only one satellite on one of the planets);
- please improve your QA process to filter out silly and inconvenient issues like when trying to assemble ships I picked up from anomalies and I don't have a full set of them, I just get a 'not enough containers' error message. That is totally not-user friendly. The error tells me nothing. The button should be disabled but visible with a tool tip message like 'You need X number of same type containers in order to assemble' or something like that. This is not a bug, just a convenience, but from personal experience it was driving me nuts when I was trying to figure out whats going on.
- have some kind of automated exploration on scouts with automatic return to resupply option. With a large galaxy, trying to explore with 3 scout is a micromanagement hassle on its own. Add the planet micromanagement and the game just bogs down with micromanagement;
- carriers seem to be OP and will most likely win vs a strike ship;
- have a suggestion sticky so everyone (hopefully including devs) would be able to post there with their suggestions;

[Mojamaguena]

if you leave the planet on auto-control and the planet still has room for development the AI will immediately revoke the control population order. otherwise, if the planet runs out of resources, industries, farms, etc to develop it will automatically enforce the no-population increase order on its own. Its kinda stupid like that but then, such is the way the AI works. The only way to have population control orders followed is to set the planet to micromanage which takes the AI out of control of the planet's initiatives and production

I was afraid of this, I was hoping it was a bug, but basically your answer confirms - the AI planet management is not good enough and I have to micromanage almost every planet. That sux!
Thanks for the confirmation.

Suggestion to Devs:
- if setting planet to be managed by AI, make sure AI takes into consideration global food production. Do not mass-produce pop if global food production is below X (configurable by players);
- any setting player sets the planet to (I forget what they are called, but basically 'do not increase pop', etc) should NEVER be removed automatically, even if the planet is set to be managed by AI. Player set that setting up, let him/her remove it manually;
- please please please improve strategic AI - the one that declares war on me, never attacks my undefended colonies and then 100-150 years later, when I build a fleet of ships I go through a third of his planets and half of them don't even have fighters and/or troops (never encountered any ship bigger then a fighter and only one satellite on one of the planets);
- please improve your QA process to filter out silly and inconvenient issues like when trying to assemble ships I picked up from anomalies and I don't have a full set of them, I just get a 'not enough containers' error message. That is totally not-user friendly. The error tells me nothing. The button should be disabled but visible with a tool tip message like 'You need X number of same type containers in order to assemble' or something like that. This is not a bug, just a convenience, but from personal experience it was driving me nuts when I was trying to figure out whats going on.
- have some kind of automated exploration on scouts with automatic return to resupply option. With a large galaxy, trying to explore with 3 scout is a micromanagement hassle on its own. Add the planet micromanagement and the game just bogs down with micromanagement;
- carriers seem to be OP and will most likely win vs a strike ship;
- have a suggestion sticky so everyone (hopefully including devs) would be able to post there with their suggestions;

I guess you are looking to this it tells you exactly the number of parts needed and the space each take in cargo hold.

Scouting it's one of the strong points of this game, at least for me, finding new planets exploring and studing wormholes, collecting blueprints, I designed a ship exclusively for that Stealth/fuelregen/800 cargo hold “To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before”

[jtg0d]

if you leave the planet on auto-control and the planet still has room for development the AI will immediately revoke the control population order. otherwise, if the planet runs out of resources, industries, farms, etc to develop it will automatically enforce the no-population increase order on its own. Its kinda stupid like that but then, such is the way the AI works. The only way to have population control orders followed is to set the planet to micromanage which takes the AI out of control of the planet's initiatives and production

I was afraid of this, I was hoping it was a bug, but basically your answer confirms - the AI planet management is not good enough and I have to micromanage almost every planet. That sux!
Thanks for the confirmation.

Suggestion to Devs:
- if setting planet to be managed by AI, make sure AI takes into consideration global food production. Do not mass-produce pop if global food production is below X (configurable by players);
- any setting player sets the planet to (I forget what they are called, but basically 'do not increase pop', etc) should NEVER be removed automatically, even if the planet is set to be managed by AI. Player set that setting up, let him/her remove it manually;
- please please please improve strategic AI - the one that declares war on me, never attacks my undefended colonies and then 100-150 years later, when I build a fleet of ships I go through a third of his planets and half of them don't even have fighters and/or troops (never encountered any ship bigger then a fighter and only one satellite on one of the planets);
- please improve your QA process to filter out silly and inconvenient issues like when trying to assemble ships I picked up from anomalies and I don't have a full set of them, I just get a 'not enough containers' error message. That is totally not-user friendly. The error tells me nothing. The button should be disabled but visible with a tool tip message like 'You need X number of same type containers in order to assemble' or something like that. This is not a bug, just a convenience, but from personal experience it was driving me nuts when I was trying to figure out whats going on.
- have some kind of automated exploration on scouts with automatic return to resupply option. With a large galaxy, trying to explore with 3 scout is a micromanagement hassle on its own. Add the planet micromanagement and the game just bogs down with micromanagement;
- carriers seem to be OP and will most likely win vs a strike ship;
- have a suggestion sticky so everyone (hopefully including devs) would be able to post there with their suggestions;

I guess you are looking to this it tells you exactly the number of parts needed and the space each take in cargo hold.

Scouting it's one of the strong points of this game, at least for me, finding new planets exploring and studing wormholes, collecting blueprints, I designed a ship exclusively for that Stealth/fuelregen/800 cargo hold “To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before”

I saw the 1 of X and unfortunately it didn't ring a bell to me. Especially after 'not enough containers' message. What containers? Its a not a container, its a partially assembled ship. I don't know, its a subjective thing, call me stupid but I had to google for it

[Mojamaguena]

Yes, it's how the dev describe the loading cargo mechanic, think of it like a team of enginers disassemble the ship or part and load it into containers to better stow them inside the cargo hold.