Planet Stripping Revisited

from Stardock Forums
I was reading the "frustration" thread through again, trying to glean the comments on planet stripping. What I got was

a) planets are stripped through land-based conquest, not intentional action (my comment)

b) planets are stripped for economic reasons

c) planets are stripped as a scortched earth policy when cultural pressures indicate the planet will be lost.

I have indeed noticed that some planets show the red circle icon instead of the skull 'n crossbones and still flip. The fact that there aren't improvements will certainly cause the morale to be low, and I assume the system can only display one icon at a time since I have never seen both the red and skull icons at the same time.

I just don't see any causal relationship between cultural pressure and stripping. I suspect the AI gets stupid when it has too many building choices and chooses to build terraforming or hyperion shipyard after taking a planet over. (or the previous owner was building that and the AI chose to complete the current project before starting its own queue). Without a planetary infrastructure the social project takes hundreds of turns, and the population grows rapidly because of the AI's growth bonuses.

In short, I see it as a defect in the AI, rather than an intentional tactic. I can't think of a way to prove any of these hypotheses, but I would sure like to know what the truth is.
359 views 6 replies
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I just don't see any causal relationship between cultural pressure and stripping
End of quote


Are you saying you don't see a correlation? Or that you do see the correlation but you don't think it's causal?

I have never invaded a planet and found it stripped. I've often had planets flip to me that were stripped. This to me indicates that we're seeing a response to cultural pressure... of course, whether it's an *intentional* response or a bug is unprovable, as you say.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
When I play I usually use culture flipping to take the ais planets. Sometimes an ai will have a planet or two a long way from most of their other planets. After I have culture flipped the majority of their planets the ai will completely strip the planets they have left instead of scrapping some ships. These planets are under NO cultural pressure at all but when I invade they have zero improvements.
Often they are building terraforming or hyperion shipyards or some such expensive building instead of soil enhancement as a logical human would.
What I find extremely odd is that the ais seem to sell of the zero maintenance social projects. This makes absolutely no sense.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Essex I concur.
I believe the AI can't handle debt to well and will begin to strip its planets first.I have had same experience as well.Why doesn't AI reduce fleet size alittle to help offset maintenance especially when it has no trading partners left?I know this seems like SDC doesn't want the AI to become vulnerable at end game but driving their own economy into the toilet by stripping needed improvements such as moral/pq would seem necessity rather than detraction to keep AI competitive with economy. It wouldnt start to drop its moral and thus make flipping harder if it disbanded older ships first.But the way it is now if you can get the AI into serious financial trouble it will strip planets causing moral to sink and this in turn makes flipping easier and still keep a large fleet of ships that sucks all its money away.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok, now that I've started paying attention it makes less sense. I just flipped a star that had two planets after at least a year of being "under pressure" (skull icon). One of the planets was stripped, but not the other. This is statistically unlikely if the improvements were lost to an invasion, as I had postulated.

I cannot agree with idea of stripping a planet due to debt. manufacturing, cultural restance, research, ship improvements, defenses etc. are a drain on economy, but banking, PQ, and most morale improvements are essential to maintaining a solid economy. I can't imagine an AI programmer doing this on purpose.

Perhaps the stripping was designed to simulate a society collapsing . . .

Anyway, my vote now goes to the scorched-earth theory. Any way of getting the AI programmers to come clean on this one?
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I also believe it is scortched-earth. I believe the AI looks at all planets under threat of flipping and makes a determination based on planet quality. If the planet is among the lower PQ planets the AI has left, it resigns itself to the loss and eliminates all the improvements as a final snub. I have had times where a system with multiple planets flips, and the highest PQ planet still has everything, but the lower one has been stripped. Also, I've had the AI down to two systems, and almost always it will collapse the lesser system, even though my cultural pressure may be stronger at the higher PQ planet.

The AI also sometimes miscalculates when a system is going to flip. I've seen systems get stripped then not flip for many more turns, and by the time they do flip the AI has rebuilt many of the basic improvements.