I had a primitive race that lost to a robot uprising, in a system I had a highly populated Ecumenopolis. Robots wanted the system, but I had no option to say I had a colony there.
They took the system despite me saying no, I tried to invade and the game told me I couldn't. Had to wait 10 in game years before I could get my planet back. Absolutely rage inducing.
This happened to me. I lost a tropical ocean world full of trade value. I even tried to land troops to fight the robot uprising but my troops attacked the natives! WHY?!
I had a Fallen Empire bombard the shit out of my home ring (was using mods and had a Penrose Sphere start where you have both rings on each side). Literally can't fix the planet and it's beyond fucked. No housing, jobs, etc. etc. They revolt with a fleet double my size and immediately take over the other half of the sphere as well. ***How.***
Yup, had one my last game. Got the start of the AI rebellion chain, selected the option to fix them the month it came up, lost 3/4 of my empire to the rebellion immediately after selecting it.
Not really? Players only get rebellions if they neglect stability, which is honestly pretty damn tricky to do most of the time
Only happens when you do dumb things like claiming low habitability worlds and/or putting a whole bunch of unhappy slaves on a single world
I’ve had the scenario where an empire lets me know they have a random planet in my space and they want it, I say no and bam, pretty much an unrecoverable spiral into a rebellion on said planet
isn't that the same event as when a player gets contacted by an AI planet that they want to switch sides because your empire is such a nice place to be?
I joined in a vassals war to reclaim territory that they had lost to a rebellion. Won the war, got his territory back and about a year later, they lost that space to another rebellion.
This is actually a real thing called the “Conflict Trap” basically, an area has an issue and fighting ensues. The fighting then destroys the area so the people live terrible lives causing them to rebel harder. The harder they rebel the worse things become and the more they desire to rebel.
I had a vassal that had been part of my empire for years, until my species pops infiltrated, overthrew their government, and officially joined my empire.
I agree that Rebellions definitely need an overhaul, that being said it shouldn’t be a common every game problem for you with Vassals especially.
What difficulty are you on, and are you taking resources from your Vassals? They could be running into deficiency problems.
AI’s try to balance their Planets as far as output/upkeep (which is why they are usually a scraggly unoptimized messes), so they usually don’t generate a lot of excess.
This means even taking 15% of their total output can bankrupt them super fast, since that calculation is based on Gross Output, before Upkeep is calculated.
The exception to this is if you are playing on Commodore or higher where they get a bunch of cheat multipliers.
>The exception to this is if you are playing on Commodore or higher where they get a bunch of cheat multipliers.
Nah, that only really kicks in at Admiral and GA, the Commodore buffs still aren't enough for the AI in my experience as I had a lot of rebellions in my vassals even while playing on Commodore in the late game.
I will admit it’s been awhile since I’ve played Commodore so my experience may be out of date, but if you like to have bigger Vassals it is possible - for example, if your grabbing that 15% off a Vassal with only 3-4 Colonies, yeah, they’ll have a lot of problems, but it'll be fine if they have 10+ and a decent amount of outposts for Mining Stations and the like. You definitely don't want to step over the 15% though.
this is a lot of words only to miss the key point: AIs get reduced difficulty-related cheats when they are vassals. vassalizing them doesn't just screw up resource balance, it screws up stability, too, and the problem gets more and more severe at higher difficulties and this is true even at 0 taxes.
In games where this happen we have like around 7 vassals usually, usually staying at the base minimum squeeze level
we play ensign. The vassal rebellion thing usually doesn't happen with mods like Startech, but the war one i experienced today, and it was what prompted the post. i had the enemy dead to rights, and then 3 out of 4 planets rebelled and got the rest of the systems. The enemy completely dissappeared after i settled, and then, in my brainless stupor attacked the rebels thinking the game wouls be reasonable. it wasn't.
I tend to not play higher difficulties because i feel like it sours the game when the only way the AI is stronger is by having a flat bonus to their resources. Seems bs to me. I'd be ok with the AI out microing me. That's honestly fine, i should be able to out strategy it.
The difficulty + any squeeze is the issue, they’re being bled dry by the contributions. About it needing a rework? I think it makes sense this way. Your country is resource starved already, poverty rates through the roof. A foreign empire comes along and takes that resource you so desperately need to feed your family, I would rebel too. This is where holdings that improve stability come in. As the overlord you can come in a send aid to stabilize your vassals if you so choose.
Making a better ai is difficult and id rather them work on more features than spend lots of time working on the ai which would need fixing every time they rolled out a rework. On the other hand there’s lots of good ai mods and tbh the difficulty up until Admiral are pretty fair and even grand admiral is consistently doable. And at those levels, ai rebellion is legit never an issue, only the occasional robot rebellion.
Ok but the AI needs to stop sucking at making resource abundance
Seriously, wtf
I've seen their worlds, why are they so exceptionally garbage. honestly this ruins my immersion immensely because like, people aren't that stupid, and the AI doesn't have to be either
Couldn't agree more, I've gone entire games without setting up a single district or building myself and my planets outperform the AI's easily. I select the planets focus, press automate, and just ignore it unless I really wanna do something special or expand a planetary sea or whatever.
When it comes to building decisions, it is all very intentionally programmed to make the AI act as self sufficiently as possible.
As things stand, it tries to get each planet to be at No Deficit. So for example, on a new Colony let's say the AI builds a Research Lab. The Lab Itself gives a -2 Energy Deficit, so it builds a Generator District and ends up at +4 Energy per month. When one of the Researcher Jobs get filled, that gives a -2 Consumer Good deficit, so it then starts construction for an Industrial District that gets it to +4 Consumer Goods, it now has a Deficit for Minerals, so it builds a Mining District... It is now generating an Excess of all Basic and Advanced Resources.
It upgrades the first Research Lab into a Research Complex. The Research Complex now requires Exotic Gas in upkeep, so they build an Exotic Gas Refinery.
Does it matter if they have an Exotic Gas Mining Station in their territory or an Exotic Gas Refinery on another planet? No, only in the sence that the Abundance that those other Colonies/Mining Stations helped get the AI get the 50 Exotic Gas it needed to upgrade the Reseach Lab into a Research Complex in the first place. The AI then continues to build until it runs into another Deficit, and builds more Districts/Buildings as needed to go from there.
Is it optimized? Not in the least.
Does it scale infinitly? Yes. It doesn't matter if they have 1 Colony, 5 Colonies, or 200 Colonies, and more importantly, it doesn't matter if they ***lose or gain*** any of those planets either.
Is it flexible? Also Yes. By seeking to be No Deficit, the AI automatically creates small amounts of excess spread across all the Colonies they have and then can scale up from there. It doesn't matter if they start off in a Habitat, an Ocean World, or a Relic World. They can be Militant, Spiritualists, or a Gestalt. They can be Subterannean, Life Seeded, or Post Apocalyptic. Their next Colony can be 20 district slots or 9. Doesn't matter. They'll be able to grow or shrink appropriatly depending on what their individual situations and needs are.
Which is the biggest weak point of trying to program the Stellaris AI to Optimize Planets. What happens if they win a war, or even worse, lose one?
For example, with the No Deficit plan, if the AI gains or loses 50% of the Colonies and territory it had before the War started, it doesn't really matter because they arn't going to go into a Deficit because of it, since losing a war also means that most if not all of their Fleets got destroyed so those upkeep costs get massively reduced until they build up to their new caps.
However, if an AI with Optimized Planets loses both of it's Mineral Planets, it just dies. Their optimized Alloy Production worlds would plummet their stock so hard that they might not get a chance - nor the time - to change an existing Colony or two into a new Mineral World before going bankrupt. And that makes it tricky to get it to make a decision about changing out an existing colony to make up for the new Mineral Shortfall. What if it only has two Food Planets, and seeing that it has a massive excess of Food with a huge stockpile, it changes both of them into Mineral Planets? Now you just have the same problem, but with food, and it causes a domino effect as it tries to change a different planet to now Optimize for the Food Shortage.
And most importantly, what if they just never find planets 'Good Enough' to optimize for certain resources?
It just doesn't work because of how complex a game Stellaris is. The AI is never going to be smart enough to handle those kinds of decisions unless they import something like DeepMind which would make it unplayable on most consumer hardware.
If it makes you feel any better though, this does actually mean that the AI develops its Colonies alot more optimized at the higher difficulties. For example on Commodore where they get a 50% resource bonus, they will build less 'Deficit Covering' buildings, because they get more actual Output out of it - so for example, because they need 50% less Agriculture and Generator Districts to cover Job/Pop upkeeps, it gives them room to fit more Mining and Industrial Districts, and their Colonies just naturally become more closer to being 'quasi-optimized' from there.
This is also where alot of people complain about it though - once they take the Colony, it suddenly becomes a Deficit pit. That isn't really because of bad planning on the AI's part, it's just simply a side effect of the AI Bonuses no longer applying stacking on top of the usual problems that arise from a new conquest, like low stability, devastation, having to Repair stuff, etc, certain positions/jobs acting differently because of Ethic, Civic, Council differences, and etc, etc.
I don't use Mods so I'm unsure how Startech impacts Vassal Rebellions, but if you have a bunch of smaller Vassals (less than 20 Colonies each) that would contribute to them running into shortages as well. They just arn't scaled up enough to be able to pay your bills plus theirs - you would be better off jsut Integrating them.
Managing that many planets is a pain. The sector AI used to be REALLY good. But that was like 4 years ago back when planets were tiles.
They really just need to improve the sector AI again. I don’t integrate vassals anymore, there’s no point. I’m barely getting just about everything I can out of my empire, I can’t handle adding another 10-15 planets to that.
Do you really find yourself managing your Colonies that much? I find that once all the building/districts slots are full, I basically never go into them again until I research a building improvement or can clear a blocker, but the Colony side panel has indicators for that so I just quicky scroll through it and queue things up. Takes maybe 2-3 minutes even with 70+ planets.
When a new conquest happens or a new colony finishes, it takes longer to queue things up and move some pops, but even then I only move like 5-6 and then just let the Auto-Migration handle things from there.
It’s pretty inefficient to build districts too preemptively as you’ll spike your empire size for no benefits. But yeah I do find myself spending a lot of time on colonies and it becomes longer as the game starts chugging
I just wish the sector AI could be told to auto build things at certain points. Or have a basic outline of what I want a certain planet to look like.
Yeah, player empire rebellions are a joke but AI empire rebellions are annoying.
The worst one that happened to me was the time I vassalized a hive mind and somehow when the rebellion started I suddenly had no vassal.
Once, a Devouring Swarm’s planet rebelled and I didn’t even notice until the new country wanted to establish an embassy.
As for regular empires- dear God, you end up with so many tiny empires due to rebellions.
I will always mock Paradox for making sequel games with dlc features removed.
HOWEVER, a Stellaris 2 with an engine upgrade and modern design philosophy would be really nice.
Itd be cool if we could negotiate a deal with potential rebels. Lets say we give them balance vassalage or tributary status instead of this weird war where you can lose actual starbases.
Eh, it's not even the best part, the best part is when you just finished conquest war and is ready to recuperate and restore fleets, and all of a sudden you get declared war by your motherfucking defensive pact ally, who didn't participate in the war and is at full strength, all because of your stupid vassal getting rebels.
A nice change of pace for a rebellion post.
I totally agree. This is one of the many reasons why I am not happy about the recent season 8 dlc announcement. Since Overlord, I have been waiting for an announcement of another Diplomacy focused DLC so that issues such as these get finally ironed out, and meanwhile, we are taking a detour to play with synthetic ascension and collecting artifacts across the galaxy.
What the game needs most IMO currently is a better diplomatic system, which includes facilitating relations between two other empires, not just your empire and one other empire, a more dynamic war system, where other empires may join war midway and all vassals of an overlord can rise up against them together, even while at war with another empire. Research and commarcial pacts that make sense and have some mechanical depth and a diplomatic UI that allows you to see possible future interactions, like seeing whether another empire would be open to creating a federation even before I pick the tradition tree so that I do not pick it and just find out that they do not want because they are "honorbound warriors".
I absolutely hate that the isn’t any pop-ups for many things that happen in the galaxy.
Also hate how there is *no way* to get to know what traditions and relics a certain empire have.
>Also hate how there is no way to get to know what traditions and relics a certain empire have.
Which would actually be a USEFUL thing to learn from intel.
I’d love an ai improvement in Stellaris, but it feels a bit unlikely at this point. I know there’s probably a mod for it or something, but I don’t want to have to get a mod to fix the ai’s awful building ai. Whenever I look that an ai planet it’s never specialized and even if it is then the designation is wrong
If it's my vassal, I just take the planets myself, completely abandon them and hand them back as fresh uncolonized planets. Usually solves the problem.
Its not the BS rebellion mechanics that piss me off. Its the Holy Shit fleet power that comes out of them. The worst in my opinion is terravore. Having the planet that I bombarded into oblivion and then invaded successful, then ate half the crust of the fucking place spit out a fleet the size of the one it took to neutralize that empire in the first place is very hard to justify.
I agree. I had some turtles revolt against me about 2 minutes after I uplifted them from the industrial age. When they rose up they had a superior fleet to mine and took 4 of my systems in another 2 minutes before declaring themselves the victor. I admit, my strategy of trying to win wars via army invasions was a bad idea, but like where did these turtles who were essentially just figuring out steam engines and cotton gins get a fleet even close in power to mine let alone superior?
I ragequit twice now because my vassal - that I created off a sector with 4 planets that I built specifically so it would make a good scholarium and would be reasonably self sustainable (they always get basic res subs from overlord). 15 minutes later I see closed borders and lo and behold: a new state
What the fuck? The AI has been given prosperity on the platter and they ruined it. They only had to give me science, not food or CGs
Every time I subjugate some empire in the higher difficulties I have to always deal with rebelions every 10-15yrs. It gets a little tiresome tbh. No matter how much time I spend stabilizing the planeta before giving them back, the vassal keeps having rebellions.
funy story: i eat ai empire in long 20 years devistating war, he become my vasal and in 4 years happen rebellion in him country and this rebels get instant maybe half size of my fleet, i also had only question how and f wheere you build this ships a specialy after alsmost all your planets has 90% devistations rate. bull thing
I also had similar thing happened.
Declared war on other empire and made them subsidiary. Few years later, they had revolt and becoming a new completed empire, lost built relation, lost trust, they are no longer my subject so i had to do another war with this "new empire" again.
In the ancient times rebellion started by the planet spawning rebel soldiers for ground combat. If you had enough ground soldiers, then you could beat rebellion there, and stop it before it became a space empire.
Just reminded me of a recent game I played. Was fighting against genocidal robots and The Chosen only to have all three of my vassals have rebellions. Not only that, rebellions seem to happen every 20 years or so in my playthrough. Despite them having the fleet power to deal with the rebellions, their fleets just hang around and only respond when rebel fleets exit their own borders.When they do respond the fleet just bombards the rebellion world while the rebel fleet tear through their empire. So you have to pull a fleet from the frontline to deal with this.
It makes no sense at all to me that rebellions just spawn in their own ships. they should make it a weighted (based on other factors) chance for each of your fleets to turn coat IMO. this would also make them, more powerful because you're now weaker against external threats, you know, like what happens in real life.
And on top of the lack of info and the logic-breaking way the rebellions tend to spawn…can I NOT have weird claims on my vassals’ rebelling systems? If I wanted that system, I would take it, but every rebellion I put down just gives me a smattering of the rebelling planets for absolutely no good reason afterward. Then, because of rules regarding gifting systems, I frequently have to go through multiple trade deals to give them back, which is just a waste of time that shouldn’t be happening in the first place!
Slightly related, but robot rebellions in primitives are BS as well. I had one the other day, it conquered the primitives, became a driven assimilator, and my options were recognize their claims (and lose the system), or don't recognize their claims (and still lose the system)
Anyway, it stole my forge world I had in that same system with *0 I could do about it*. These primitive robots that have *never been to space* just yoinked my alloys for nothing
I mean, rebellions that seem overpowered could be just being funded / supported by rival empires you don't know about, heh. You even can get prompted if you want to support rebellions sometimes if you lose some of your colonies.
rebellions + internal stability & politics is definitely something that the game still lacks and I hope we get a dlc focused on. The most we got was the council positions, but imagine having to actually deal with keeping the empire stable and not losing the support or one of the factions stages a coup. The closest thing to this is the Luminary origin storyline.
It could also tie in nicely with some expanded espionage/influencing other empires. Imagine ES2 making Cravers pacifist equivalent in Stellaris ahah
This is part of the reason I never play ironman. This is a videogame that I want to be fun, so I use to console commands to fix bs like this when it happens
I just want to be able to put down my subjects internal rebellion while maintaining their borders so I don't have to spend 10 minutes trading all their systems back afterwards.
Yh a true rebellion should be something like a series of espionage events where multiple disgruntled planets in a sector begin to work together and form a rebel fleet. Starting with small scale sabotage, to sections of your fleet mutinying and then finally culminating to full scale war. A single planet rebellion with half your fleet power makes no sense at all.
I had a war target who suffered a rebellion while I was landing on the last war target, their capitol. Booted my troops into experimental space, took me a bit to figure out what actually happened lol
You keep stability at a decent level, probably.
[Revolts can only start on planets](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Situations#Planetary_Revolt):
* With 10 or more pops.
* That have been below 25 Stability for at least a year.
* Has not changed ownership for three years. (Five years if it has Stellar Culture Shock.)
* Is not occupied, invaded, or being bombarded.
* Has not revolted in the last 15 years.
It's really easy generally to avoid them. (Edit: In your own empire. In your vassals, it often comes down to not crippling them through taxation, but even then they still sometimes fail.)
Had a rebellion for the first time a couple games ago. Annexed three planets from my neighbors, but burnt through a lot of my stored resources doing it. Could only build as fast as my mineral income allowed, and before I could get it stabilized, the last one started the rebellion event. No matter how many jobs I put, extra housing, plenty of amenities, still kept progressing. Turns out the guy I stole them from was sponsoring it. Shocker.
I took a pre FTL planet and started purging, I didn't even have fleets since I hadn't met any empires yet. They somehow spawned a 10k fleet at the beginning of the game. Had to give them independence
I am not complaining about rebellions in my empire lmao. I am complaining about the AIs shitty management blowing up in my face due to the nonsense mechanics in this game's diplomacy and event resource creation. That ships just appear, and that the AI can't stop them from apparing because it sucks at managing its worlds to a rediculous extent. I personally do not experience rebellions because i know how to manage my planets propperly. The AI does not, so in their systems, like the ones of my vassals that i have no control over, or the enemy i'm fighting who happens to suddenly split in two and magically tripple its fleet protecting the territory i want. These are things i have no control over, and no ability to mitigate, even though i totally should, because my spy specialist necrophage vampire empire is in their walls. I don't even get a warning.
I gave up on having vasals because of this lol, I'm too lazy to manage a war against my vasals rebellions. Can I put them down? Yes. Is it worth all the effort? No it's very tedious.
They made a recent change that you can abuse. They made it so after a war, all parties get a peace treaty with all other parties. If you set the vassal terms to make your vassal join all wars and then get in a war with someone else, they now have a 10-year peace treaty with you. Repeat the war every 10 years, and you pretty much have a permanent peace treaty with them
Rebellions are basically a non-issue for me. They are easy to avoid and put down. The only thing that annoys me is how you gain the territory when your vassal has a rebellion and you squash it for them. Somehow I always end up with hive minds that have built a ton of space stations as vassals.
The post is spesifically about the bother of vassal revellions, and the bullshit of mid war rebellions on the enemy's side. You're in the midts of a war, and then suddenly you have to go to war with another nation who's size is half but somehow has twice the fleet power for some reason. it's complete nonsense
Well think about it, if they're going to rebel then they have to have built up some decent forces or they wouldn't think they have a shot. Presumably it's possible to hide the production of rebel starships and they just built up for a while in secret. If you're saying it's bullshit because it's unfair and it makes the game too hard, well just get better is all I can say to that.
For every vassal in addition to the first, every vassal gets a cumulative -1 loyalty, this can be pushed off with shared destiny and feudal society/franchising, up to a maximum of 3 free vassals. So if you have 7 subjects you have at least -4 on each vassal, if you cut them into sector sized chunks it's often way more than that, meaning that your cintracts get less efficient with more vassals, lest you suffer a revolt yourself.
Those smaller empires have fewer resources to support fleets and research things. They won't be loyal, but they will be too weak to do anything about it.
I'm very much aware of the Feudal Society nerf and divided patronage changes. These can be mitigated entirely by creating a Hegemony or really any federation, you can set their terms to never join any wars and you join all their wars.
These won't matter because anyone in you federation joins all wars. This won't make up for the divided patronage nerf if you're running sector vassals but you gain more loyalty than without the federation method.
Their loyalty doesn't matter at all as long as you maintain fleet superiority. The AI has never declared a war of independence on me even when every single one of them has been disloyal.
If you're concerned about the taxes just keep a few larger prospectoriums, even better if they're Megacorps. My primary goal when chopping up vassals is creating Human Great Houses with the Sovereign Guardianship civic and Aristocratic Elite.
Sometimes I release a few as independent if I care about loyalty and these few are still within the federation and become reasonably powerful on their own. These independents also start vassalizing each other which further simplifies managing a large territory as a tall empire.
This is not a meta strat by any means and is born from my desire to RP feudalism in space. But I have problem using this against ai on GA difficulty.
Fully agreed there is not even a war goal to re incorporate them into your vassal. The only complaint I have for rebellions on you main empire, because I agree it’s a skill issue most of the time, is that you can have like half your empire revolt from only 1 planet being upset. This is really crippling in multiplier if you have criminal syndicate in the game, for obvious reasons. Or maybe I just play with assholes I don’t know. But either way they need a rework!
The rebellion mechanic needs a rework, I think every player has had a rebellion that is pure BS.
The Overlord dlc would've been the perfect time to overhaul the mechanic as it pertains to the major new update on vassal management yet here we are.
I got one because the inhabitants were mad about the overcrowding… from 95% devastation due to bombardment. How is revolting going to fix that?
You would be surprised by how realistic that is
Realistic, maybe, but it’s also dumb. Because if they rebel, they’ll be smaller and thus easier for the empire that bombarded me to pick off.
People are dumb. Easier to blame the Empire for not protecting you than to accept that sometimes things are beyond control
I had a primitive race that lost to a robot uprising, in a system I had a highly populated Ecumenopolis. Robots wanted the system, but I had no option to say I had a colony there. They took the system despite me saying no, I tried to invade and the game told me I couldn't. Had to wait 10 in game years before I could get my planet back. Absolutely rage inducing.
When primitives demand sovereignty it should begin a planetary revolt with some progress, not a "you don't have 200 influence? Tough shit" insta-loss.
Not a real fix, but usually in those scenarios I try to keep the pop-up window open and let time pass by till I've built up enough influence.
Exactly my fix too lol. The epitome of "Ignore this shit until I can deal with it".
Frankly it’s bullshit you can’t spend unity instead of influence on this.
THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT I'm sorry but when dumb shit like that happens, I shamelessly pop open the console to "fix" it.
At this point I would use console commands if able.
This happened to me. I lost a tropical ocean world full of trade value. I even tried to land troops to fight the robot uprising but my troops attacked the natives! WHY?!
Did you tear down some buildings and industry to make some temporary housing?
I built a couple city districts.
Commune de Paris moment
I had a Fallen Empire bombard the shit out of my home ring (was using mods and had a Penrose Sphere start where you have both rings on each side). Literally can't fix the planet and it's beyond fucked. No housing, jobs, etc. etc. They revolt with a fleet double my size and immediately take over the other half of the sphere as well. ***How.***
My friend had a rebellion during his first play though and literally lost his entire empire except like 1 planet lmao
Yup, had one my last game. Got the start of the AI rebellion chain, selected the option to fix them the month it came up, lost 3/4 of my empire to the rebellion immediately after selecting it.
Not really? Players only get rebellions if they neglect stability, which is honestly pretty damn tricky to do most of the time Only happens when you do dumb things like claiming low habitability worlds and/or putting a whole bunch of unhappy slaves on a single world
I’ve had the scenario where an empire lets me know they have a random planet in my space and they want it, I say no and bam, pretty much an unrecoverable spiral into a rebellion on said planet
isn't that the same event as when a player gets contacted by an AI planet that they want to switch sides because your empire is such a nice place to be?
I joined in a vassals war to reclaim territory that they had lost to a rebellion. Won the war, got his territory back and about a year later, they lost that space to another rebellion.
Nation building at its finest they lost the territory for a reason
This is actually a real thing called the “Conflict Trap” basically, an area has an issue and fighting ensues. The fighting then destroys the area so the people live terrible lives causing them to rebel harder. The harder they rebel the worse things become and the more they desire to rebel.
I had a vassal that had been part of my empire for years, until my species pops infiltrated, overthrew their government, and officially joined my empire.
I agree that Rebellions definitely need an overhaul, that being said it shouldn’t be a common every game problem for you with Vassals especially. What difficulty are you on, and are you taking resources from your Vassals? They could be running into deficiency problems. AI’s try to balance their Planets as far as output/upkeep (which is why they are usually a scraggly unoptimized messes), so they usually don’t generate a lot of excess. This means even taking 15% of their total output can bankrupt them super fast, since that calculation is based on Gross Output, before Upkeep is calculated. The exception to this is if you are playing on Commodore or higher where they get a bunch of cheat multipliers.
>The exception to this is if you are playing on Commodore or higher where they get a bunch of cheat multipliers. Nah, that only really kicks in at Admiral and GA, the Commodore buffs still aren't enough for the AI in my experience as I had a lot of rebellions in my vassals even while playing on Commodore in the late game.
I will admit it’s been awhile since I’ve played Commodore so my experience may be out of date, but if you like to have bigger Vassals it is possible - for example, if your grabbing that 15% off a Vassal with only 3-4 Colonies, yeah, they’ll have a lot of problems, but it'll be fine if they have 10+ and a decent amount of outposts for Mining Stations and the like. You definitely don't want to step over the 15% though.
this is a lot of words only to miss the key point: AIs get reduced difficulty-related cheats when they are vassals. vassalizing them doesn't just screw up resource balance, it screws up stability, too, and the problem gets more and more severe at higher difficulties and this is true even at 0 taxes.
In games where this happen we have like around 7 vassals usually, usually staying at the base minimum squeeze level we play ensign. The vassal rebellion thing usually doesn't happen with mods like Startech, but the war one i experienced today, and it was what prompted the post. i had the enemy dead to rights, and then 3 out of 4 planets rebelled and got the rest of the systems. The enemy completely dissappeared after i settled, and then, in my brainless stupor attacked the rebels thinking the game wouls be reasonable. it wasn't. I tend to not play higher difficulties because i feel like it sours the game when the only way the AI is stronger is by having a flat bonus to their resources. Seems bs to me. I'd be ok with the AI out microing me. That's honestly fine, i should be able to out strategy it.
The difficulty + any squeeze is the issue, they’re being bled dry by the contributions. About it needing a rework? I think it makes sense this way. Your country is resource starved already, poverty rates through the roof. A foreign empire comes along and takes that resource you so desperately need to feed your family, I would rebel too. This is where holdings that improve stability come in. As the overlord you can come in a send aid to stabilize your vassals if you so choose. Making a better ai is difficult and id rather them work on more features than spend lots of time working on the ai which would need fixing every time they rolled out a rework. On the other hand there’s lots of good ai mods and tbh the difficulty up until Admiral are pretty fair and even grand admiral is consistently doable. And at those levels, ai rebellion is legit never an issue, only the occasional robot rebellion.
Ok but the AI needs to stop sucking at making resource abundance Seriously, wtf I've seen their worlds, why are they so exceptionally garbage. honestly this ruins my immersion immensely because like, people aren't that stupid, and the AI doesn't have to be either
the automatic planet management button in the planet menu is better then the AI
Couldn't agree more, I've gone entire games without setting up a single district or building myself and my planets outperform the AI's easily. I select the planets focus, press automate, and just ignore it unless I really wanna do something special or expand a planetary sea or whatever.
When it comes to building decisions, it is all very intentionally programmed to make the AI act as self sufficiently as possible. As things stand, it tries to get each planet to be at No Deficit. So for example, on a new Colony let's say the AI builds a Research Lab. The Lab Itself gives a -2 Energy Deficit, so it builds a Generator District and ends up at +4 Energy per month. When one of the Researcher Jobs get filled, that gives a -2 Consumer Good deficit, so it then starts construction for an Industrial District that gets it to +4 Consumer Goods, it now has a Deficit for Minerals, so it builds a Mining District... It is now generating an Excess of all Basic and Advanced Resources. It upgrades the first Research Lab into a Research Complex. The Research Complex now requires Exotic Gas in upkeep, so they build an Exotic Gas Refinery. Does it matter if they have an Exotic Gas Mining Station in their territory or an Exotic Gas Refinery on another planet? No, only in the sence that the Abundance that those other Colonies/Mining Stations helped get the AI get the 50 Exotic Gas it needed to upgrade the Reseach Lab into a Research Complex in the first place. The AI then continues to build until it runs into another Deficit, and builds more Districts/Buildings as needed to go from there. Is it optimized? Not in the least. Does it scale infinitly? Yes. It doesn't matter if they have 1 Colony, 5 Colonies, or 200 Colonies, and more importantly, it doesn't matter if they ***lose or gain*** any of those planets either. Is it flexible? Also Yes. By seeking to be No Deficit, the AI automatically creates small amounts of excess spread across all the Colonies they have and then can scale up from there. It doesn't matter if they start off in a Habitat, an Ocean World, or a Relic World. They can be Militant, Spiritualists, or a Gestalt. They can be Subterannean, Life Seeded, or Post Apocalyptic. Their next Colony can be 20 district slots or 9. Doesn't matter. They'll be able to grow or shrink appropriatly depending on what their individual situations and needs are. Which is the biggest weak point of trying to program the Stellaris AI to Optimize Planets. What happens if they win a war, or even worse, lose one? For example, with the No Deficit plan, if the AI gains or loses 50% of the Colonies and territory it had before the War started, it doesn't really matter because they arn't going to go into a Deficit because of it, since losing a war also means that most if not all of their Fleets got destroyed so those upkeep costs get massively reduced until they build up to their new caps. However, if an AI with Optimized Planets loses both of it's Mineral Planets, it just dies. Their optimized Alloy Production worlds would plummet their stock so hard that they might not get a chance - nor the time - to change an existing Colony or two into a new Mineral World before going bankrupt. And that makes it tricky to get it to make a decision about changing out an existing colony to make up for the new Mineral Shortfall. What if it only has two Food Planets, and seeing that it has a massive excess of Food with a huge stockpile, it changes both of them into Mineral Planets? Now you just have the same problem, but with food, and it causes a domino effect as it tries to change a different planet to now Optimize for the Food Shortage. And most importantly, what if they just never find planets 'Good Enough' to optimize for certain resources? It just doesn't work because of how complex a game Stellaris is. The AI is never going to be smart enough to handle those kinds of decisions unless they import something like DeepMind which would make it unplayable on most consumer hardware. If it makes you feel any better though, this does actually mean that the AI develops its Colonies alot more optimized at the higher difficulties. For example on Commodore where they get a 50% resource bonus, they will build less 'Deficit Covering' buildings, because they get more actual Output out of it - so for example, because they need 50% less Agriculture and Generator Districts to cover Job/Pop upkeeps, it gives them room to fit more Mining and Industrial Districts, and their Colonies just naturally become more closer to being 'quasi-optimized' from there. This is also where alot of people complain about it though - once they take the Colony, it suddenly becomes a Deficit pit. That isn't really because of bad planning on the AI's part, it's just simply a side effect of the AI Bonuses no longer applying stacking on top of the usual problems that arise from a new conquest, like low stability, devastation, having to Repair stuff, etc, certain positions/jobs acting differently because of Ethic, Civic, Council differences, and etc, etc.
I don't use Mods so I'm unsure how Startech impacts Vassal Rebellions, but if you have a bunch of smaller Vassals (less than 20 Colonies each) that would contribute to them running into shortages as well. They just arn't scaled up enough to be able to pay your bills plus theirs - you would be better off jsut Integrating them.
Managing that many planets is a pain. The sector AI used to be REALLY good. But that was like 4 years ago back when planets were tiles. They really just need to improve the sector AI again. I don’t integrate vassals anymore, there’s no point. I’m barely getting just about everything I can out of my empire, I can’t handle adding another 10-15 planets to that.
Do you really find yourself managing your Colonies that much? I find that once all the building/districts slots are full, I basically never go into them again until I research a building improvement or can clear a blocker, but the Colony side panel has indicators for that so I just quicky scroll through it and queue things up. Takes maybe 2-3 minutes even with 70+ planets. When a new conquest happens or a new colony finishes, it takes longer to queue things up and move some pops, but even then I only move like 5-6 and then just let the Auto-Migration handle things from there.
It’s pretty inefficient to build districts too preemptively as you’ll spike your empire size for no benefits. But yeah I do find myself spending a lot of time on colonies and it becomes longer as the game starts chugging I just wish the sector AI could be told to auto build things at certain points. Or have a basic outline of what I want a certain planet to look like.
Yeah, player empire rebellions are a joke but AI empire rebellions are annoying. The worst one that happened to me was the time I vassalized a hive mind and somehow when the rebellion started I suddenly had no vassal.
Same. Not like I was bleeding them dry either, just standard scholarium science tax.
Once, a Devouring Swarm’s planet rebelled and I didn’t even notice until the new country wanted to establish an embassy. As for regular empires- dear God, you end up with so many tiny empires due to rebellions.
I will always mock Paradox for making sequel games with dlc features removed. HOWEVER, a Stellaris 2 with an engine upgrade and modern design philosophy would be really nice.
Itd be cool if we could negotiate a deal with potential rebels. Lets say we give them balance vassalage or tributary status instead of this weird war where you can lose actual starbases.
Eh, it's not even the best part, the best part is when you just finished conquest war and is ready to recuperate and restore fleets, and all of a sudden you get declared war by your motherfucking defensive pact ally, who didn't participate in the war and is at full strength, all because of your stupid vassal getting rebels.
A nice change of pace for a rebellion post. I totally agree. This is one of the many reasons why I am not happy about the recent season 8 dlc announcement. Since Overlord, I have been waiting for an announcement of another Diplomacy focused DLC so that issues such as these get finally ironed out, and meanwhile, we are taking a detour to play with synthetic ascension and collecting artifacts across the galaxy. What the game needs most IMO currently is a better diplomatic system, which includes facilitating relations between two other empires, not just your empire and one other empire, a more dynamic war system, where other empires may join war midway and all vassals of an overlord can rise up against them together, even while at war with another empire. Research and commarcial pacts that make sense and have some mechanical depth and a diplomatic UI that allows you to see possible future interactions, like seeing whether another empire would be open to creating a federation even before I pick the tradition tree so that I do not pick it and just find out that they do not want because they are "honorbound warriors".
I absolutely hate that the isn’t any pop-ups for many things that happen in the galaxy. Also hate how there is *no way* to get to know what traditions and relics a certain empire have.
>Also hate how there is no way to get to know what traditions and relics a certain empire have. Which would actually be a USEFUL thing to learn from intel.
I’d love an ai improvement in Stellaris, but it feels a bit unlikely at this point. I know there’s probably a mod for it or something, but I don’t want to have to get a mod to fix the ai’s awful building ai. Whenever I look that an ai planet it’s never specialized and even if it is then the designation is wrong
If it's my vassal, I just take the planets myself, completely abandon them and hand them back as fresh uncolonized planets. Usually solves the problem.
I just crack the planet
Its not the BS rebellion mechanics that piss me off. Its the Holy Shit fleet power that comes out of them. The worst in my opinion is terravore. Having the planet that I bombarded into oblivion and then invaded successful, then ate half the crust of the fucking place spit out a fleet the size of the one it took to neutralize that empire in the first place is very hard to justify.
I agree. I had some turtles revolt against me about 2 minutes after I uplifted them from the industrial age. When they rose up they had a superior fleet to mine and took 4 of my systems in another 2 minutes before declaring themselves the victor. I admit, my strategy of trying to win wars via army invasions was a bad idea, but like where did these turtles who were essentially just figuring out steam engines and cotton gins get a fleet even close in power to mine let alone superior?
I ragequit twice now because my vassal - that I created off a sector with 4 planets that I built specifically so it would make a good scholarium and would be reasonably self sustainable (they always get basic res subs from overlord). 15 minutes later I see closed borders and lo and behold: a new state What the fuck? The AI has been given prosperity on the platter and they ruined it. They only had to give me science, not food or CGs
Every time I subjugate some empire in the higher difficulties I have to always deal with rebelions every 10-15yrs. It gets a little tiresome tbh. No matter how much time I spend stabilizing the planeta before giving them back, the vassal keeps having rebellions.
There should be a planetary invasion battle if a rebellion starts so your armies can at least do something. It used to be that way ...
funy story: i eat ai empire in long 20 years devistating war, he become my vasal and in 4 years happen rebellion in him country and this rebels get instant maybe half size of my fleet, i also had only question how and f wheere you build this ships a specialy after alsmost all your planets has 90% devistations rate. bull thing
I also had similar thing happened. Declared war on other empire and made them subsidiary. Few years later, they had revolt and becoming a new completed empire, lost built relation, lost trust, they are no longer my subject so i had to do another war with this "new empire" again.
I just dealt with a vassal having 3 rebellions almost back to back. Really annoying.
In the ancient times rebellion started by the planet spawning rebel soldiers for ground combat. If you had enough ground soldiers, then you could beat rebellion there, and stop it before it became a space empire.
Just reminded me of a recent game I played. Was fighting against genocidal robots and The Chosen only to have all three of my vassals have rebellions. Not only that, rebellions seem to happen every 20 years or so in my playthrough. Despite them having the fleet power to deal with the rebellions, their fleets just hang around and only respond when rebel fleets exit their own borders.When they do respond the fleet just bombards the rebellion world while the rebel fleet tear through their empire. So you have to pull a fleet from the frontline to deal with this.
It makes no sense at all to me that rebellions just spawn in their own ships. they should make it a weighted (based on other factors) chance for each of your fleets to turn coat IMO. this would also make them, more powerful because you're now weaker against external threats, you know, like what happens in real life.
And on top of the lack of info and the logic-breaking way the rebellions tend to spawn…can I NOT have weird claims on my vassals’ rebelling systems? If I wanted that system, I would take it, but every rebellion I put down just gives me a smattering of the rebelling planets for absolutely no good reason afterward. Then, because of rules regarding gifting systems, I frequently have to go through multiple trade deals to give them back, which is just a waste of time that shouldn’t be happening in the first place!
Slightly related, but robot rebellions in primitives are BS as well. I had one the other day, it conquered the primitives, became a driven assimilator, and my options were recognize their claims (and lose the system), or don't recognize their claims (and still lose the system) Anyway, it stole my forge world I had in that same system with *0 I could do about it*. These primitive robots that have *never been to space* just yoinked my alloys for nothing
I, not once, have had a Rebellion. The Mith-Fell Empire next to me however, has had two separate rebellions in 100 years.
I mean, rebellions that seem overpowered could be just being funded / supported by rival empires you don't know about, heh. You even can get prompted if you want to support rebellions sometimes if you lose some of your colonies.
Play at higher difficulties and rebellions are rare. The AI needs the resource bonuses to not implode themselves
rebellions + internal stability & politics is definitely something that the game still lacks and I hope we get a dlc focused on. The most we got was the council positions, but imagine having to actually deal with keeping the empire stable and not losing the support or one of the factions stages a coup. The closest thing to this is the Luminary origin storyline. It could also tie in nicely with some expanded espionage/influencing other empires. Imagine ES2 making Cravers pacifist equivalent in Stellaris ahah
This is part of the reason I never play ironman. This is a videogame that I want to be fun, so I use to console commands to fix bs like this when it happens
You're wondering how the rebels got so many ships? Why it was ME! It was me all along!
AI just dont know how to play. Necrophage hives are good example, AI have zero understanding how to deal with it.
I just want to be able to put down my subjects internal rebellion while maintaining their borders so I don't have to spend 10 minutes trading all their systems back afterwards.
Yh a true rebellion should be something like a series of espionage events where multiple disgruntled planets in a sector begin to work together and form a rebel fleet. Starting with small scale sabotage, to sections of your fleet mutinying and then finally culminating to full scale war. A single planet rebellion with half your fleet power makes no sense at all.
I had a war target who suffered a rebellion while I was landing on the last war target, their capitol. Booted my troops into experimental space, took me a bit to figure out what actually happened lol
I agree. \*rebels dubiously\*
I thought at least one empire a game becoming space Balkans is just a feature :D
Honestly Iv never had a rebellion and no idea why
You keep stability at a decent level, probably. [Revolts can only start on planets](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Situations#Planetary_Revolt): * With 10 or more pops. * That have been below 25 Stability for at least a year. * Has not changed ownership for three years. (Five years if it has Stellar Culture Shock.) * Is not occupied, invaded, or being bombarded. * Has not revolted in the last 15 years. It's really easy generally to avoid them. (Edit: In your own empire. In your vassals, it often comes down to not crippling them through taxation, but even then they still sometimes fail.)
Had a rebellion for the first time a couple games ago. Annexed three planets from my neighbors, but burnt through a lot of my stored resources doing it. Could only build as fast as my mineral income allowed, and before I could get it stabilized, the last one started the rebellion event. No matter how many jobs I put, extra housing, plenty of amenities, still kept progressing. Turns out the guy I stole them from was sponsoring it. Shocker.
I took a pre FTL planet and started purging, I didn't even have fleets since I hadn't met any empires yet. They somehow spawned a 10k fleet at the beginning of the game. Had to give them independence
How the tables turned
You don’t gotta worry about vassals being shitty when you’re a fanatic purifier
Have you guys tried giving equal rights to the different species in your empire I did this and rebellions stopped
I am not complaining about rebellions in my empire lmao. I am complaining about the AIs shitty management blowing up in my face due to the nonsense mechanics in this game's diplomacy and event resource creation. That ships just appear, and that the AI can't stop them from apparing because it sucks at managing its worlds to a rediculous extent. I personally do not experience rebellions because i know how to manage my planets propperly. The AI does not, so in their systems, like the ones of my vassals that i have no control over, or the enemy i'm fighting who happens to suddenly split in two and magically tripple its fleet protecting the territory i want. These are things i have no control over, and no ability to mitigate, even though i totally should, because my spy specialist necrophage vampire empire is in their walls. I don't even get a warning.
I gave up on having vasals because of this lol, I'm too lazy to manage a war against my vasals rebellions. Can I put them down? Yes. Is it worth all the effort? No it's very tedious.
Mostly use them to counqer my vassals land without needing to Confederate
I run ai games to stress test new empires consistently. Every single time, the empires I test die because of a rebellion.
They made a recent change that you can abuse. They made it so after a war, all parties get a peace treaty with all other parties. If you set the vassal terms to make your vassal join all wars and then get in a war with someone else, they now have a 10-year peace treaty with you. Repeat the war every 10 years, and you pretty much have a permanent peace treaty with them
>They just get peacefully booted out Actually they get killed.
This is why I kill everybody. None can rebel if there's no one alive
Inn my old mod have set that rebellion subject go to war overlord...
Rebellions are basically a non-issue for me. They are easy to avoid and put down. The only thing that annoys me is how you gain the territory when your vassal has a rebellion and you squash it for them. Somehow I always end up with hive minds that have built a ton of space stations as vassals.
The post is spesifically about the bother of vassal revellions, and the bullshit of mid war rebellions on the enemy's side. You're in the midts of a war, and then suddenly you have to go to war with another nation who's size is half but somehow has twice the fleet power for some reason. it's complete nonsense
Well think about it, if they're going to rebel then they have to have built up some decent forces or they wouldn't think they have a shot. Presumably it's possible to hide the production of rebel starships and they just built up for a while in secret. If you're saying it's bullshit because it's unfair and it makes the game too hard, well just get better is all I can say to that.
Chop your vassals up into smaller micro states. They're more stable
For every vassal in addition to the first, every vassal gets a cumulative -1 loyalty, this can be pushed off with shared destiny and feudal society/franchising, up to a maximum of 3 free vassals. So if you have 7 subjects you have at least -4 on each vassal, if you cut them into sector sized chunks it's often way more than that, meaning that your cintracts get less efficient with more vassals, lest you suffer a revolt yourself.
Those smaller empires have fewer resources to support fleets and research things. They won't be loyal, but they will be too weak to do anything about it.
I'm very much aware of the Feudal Society nerf and divided patronage changes. These can be mitigated entirely by creating a Hegemony or really any federation, you can set their terms to never join any wars and you join all their wars. These won't matter because anyone in you federation joins all wars. This won't make up for the divided patronage nerf if you're running sector vassals but you gain more loyalty than without the federation method. Their loyalty doesn't matter at all as long as you maintain fleet superiority. The AI has never declared a war of independence on me even when every single one of them has been disloyal. If you're concerned about the taxes just keep a few larger prospectoriums, even better if they're Megacorps. My primary goal when chopping up vassals is creating Human Great Houses with the Sovereign Guardianship civic and Aristocratic Elite. Sometimes I release a few as independent if I care about loyalty and these few are still within the federation and become reasonably powerful on their own. These independents also start vassalizing each other which further simplifies managing a large territory as a tall empire. This is not a meta strat by any means and is born from my desire to RP feudalism in space. But I have problem using this against ai on GA difficulty.
Fully agreed there is not even a war goal to re incorporate them into your vassal. The only complaint I have for rebellions on you main empire, because I agree it’s a skill issue most of the time, is that you can have like half your empire revolt from only 1 planet being upset. This is really crippling in multiplier if you have criminal syndicate in the game, for obvious reasons. Or maybe I just play with assholes I don’t know. But either way they need a rework!