Interesting playthrough settings?

[igjPopeye]

Hi all, DWU veteran here. I don't consider myself particularly good, but enjoy the game immensely nevertheless.

With DW2, after first few games, I'm struggling to find proper settings for interesting playthrough. Basically, whatever settings I come up with - pirates don't matter, weapon types don't matter, resources don't matter, money doesn't matter, ship designs don't matter - it feels like I'm doing something wrong, especially compared to DWU.

At the moment, I keep tech.trading off and espionage off (found a mod) because I consider them broken.

I'm playing at normal or one-level above (not big friend of min-maxing), but would still expect to have e.g. the shortage of a resource, or occasional hard choice to make. Except for early game, I don't really pay attention to neither resources nor colonies - just build half-decent ones everywhere close enough.

Am I doing something wrong, or the balancing between systems is still way off the mark (hopefully to improve over the years to come) or something else entirely?

Note that I'm not expecting (yet) to be challenged by AI, but more with my own supply chain and choices, which was the beauty of DWU.

[Scott2933]

Put your home system at “trying”. And the hardest difficulty. That will help too. But I agree it is too easy normally. I now put spies on manual and force them all to counter espionage. I was getting far too much from them on auto. Took away any research challenge.

[deMangler]

I haven't found a challenging setting I like so far.
I always have tech trading off though - even in DWU.
My favourite is max galaxy, 2000 stars, no events, no victory conditions, and play it like an ant farm. I love that.
Then most of my fun comes from just trying things out and watching what happens.

I think when we have more control over the starting settings there will be some really good setups. An ability to customise starting resource availability and distribution would be amazing.

[KingHalford]

Here's a short video I did on setting the game up to be a bit more alive at the start.

I'd suggest this is going to be on the more challenging side: lost a couple of games with this setting, so you might want to tone down the power of some of the bigger empires, particularly if you're hoping to play a more aggressive game.

https://youtu.be/WbL1h9Agv0U

[Miravlix]

Select starting in deep core, manual add enemies and say they start far away from you and you get this edge of empires surrounding you in the center.

The standard galaxy with high nebulas does create some interesting maps.


Higher number of stars is just horrible, because the number of colonies and creatures just explodes, I had one game where I had 20+ colonies before I met another empire. (This is with colonies/independent set to minimum.) You just get so many independent colonies... I had a cluster of six (or was it eight) git planets all together, maybe if it had gone nova and formed an empire it could have been something, the other races come with more spread out clusters, but it's still like 90% to many colonies.

The new more rigid ship design makes bigger galaxies an issue, everything just runs out of fuel all the time on higher settings, even if you as player try to favor fuel in the designs.

Turn down creatures and pirates, all the pirates is a little skinning on top 100% identical game mechanics and I've spend 100+ years just waiting for my automated fleets to automatically kill creatures, it's just not very interesting. Making them rare pirate/creatures, makes them a bit of a novelty and much easier to enjoy.

[OrnluWolfjarl]

I've set myself to start on Pre-Warp with only the homeworld, and everyone else on Tech level 2 and already with colonies, on a couple games (and Extreme Difficulty with Rare colonies and Rare Independents). The early and mid-game are much more challenging, and I had at least 1 or 2 large empires to contend with at the late game.

Also, spies are still insane at stealing early techs, and with espionage over 20% - 30%, which you can get very easily by sending them constantly on Steal Territory missions, they are pretty good at stealing later techs too. (The big problem is that the game spawns Spies too often, so you never really care about losing one or two every few years). So as the other person suggested, disable all automation missions except Counter-Intelligence, because you can very easily get ahead on tech in the early mid-game.

It seems like tech and rapid expansion is key in DW2. The AI is competent enough in most areas, but has trouble researching its way out of the early game and expanding, especially with Slow Research. By the time I have 20 colonies, I'll be lucky to find AIs with 2-4 colonies on an even start.

[igjPopeye]

Thanks everyone!

Just started new playthrough with mix of suggested setting, difficulty is one level below extreme. Will post how it goes!

[igjPopeye]

Finally an interesting game!

I've been the top dog once I managed to have 5 colonies (and it was only mid-game!), but it was far from straight-forward. And I couldn't simply roll over everyone until late game.

Pre-warp start
Slightly bigger irregular galaxy but with same number of stars, nebulas on default
Independents and colonizable worlds set to very rare
Difficulty one level below max
Espionage off via mod

I focused on terraforming, to be even able to get those 5 colonies mid-game. Later on it was quite a challenge to find a direction to expand, with all the nebulas, and even marginaly colonizable worlds being very rare between star clusters.

From then on I was keeping superiority in weapons and terraforming, but not in other areas at same time. Twice I went to conquer someone's world (once to take over a warlike neighbor, the other time to unlock direction to expand into), and both time it needed lot of catching up with troops/transports techs.

Me happy Will try the next one on max difficulty.

One issue with "low colonizability" setting is that 80% of galaxy are sand planets, though. Hope this will get fixed soon :/

EDIT: Transitioning to end-game I have dozen planets and already waiting for victory-meter, but I can live with that for now. Better balance will probably come in the years to come, and I still haven't tried with max difficulty.