Matrix Games Forums

Hi,

My first post here, so I wanted to thank creators for this game. Has huge potencial.

I've never played DW:U and bought DW2 with both DLC a week ago or so. Checked tutorials on youtube and after few games I'm able to do most things with automation disabled -just colony tax management, spy missions stealing tech and maps, positions of ambasadors/generals/admirals, fleet missions (excluding main attack fleet that I steer personally) - those things still on auto. My longest session was as humans - Irregular galaxy 6x6, 1000 systems, 11 uniqe pre-warp factions including myself, tech trade disabled, random and hidden research patchs, sparse colonies, distant and sparse pirates. Everything else is default. Won the game - sandbox, conquered whole galaxy, most of the tech was unlocked. Was on v1.2.1.4 beta branch.

I did read some forum topics with suggestions and future plans so I will try not to repeat them and maybe add something new - though I'm quite sure I'll be not unique with my suggestions. But I'll try to make it brief.

Early to mid game is where I enjoy the most, the tempo is just right and everything is managable - but most importantly I'm still motivated and appreciate the things that are going on, looking at the details like positioning and sector composition and quality.
Mid to end game starts to be more taxing and the beautiful details are overshadowed by the sheer amount of things that happen - I just look at things from zoomed out view, as my focus is on racing other empires and their expansion. Also because of money excess and multiple race avaliability there is no incentive to be picky with colonies, infrastrucure or mining station locations - just taking on most of them works fine. Also looking at the biggest empires I saw them having 100+ colonies (while I was at about 20) - and it just becomes a race on colonizing - I play on normal difficulty so it's not hard to win, it's just that I'm not motivated to continue after the "magic" fades away as my empire stops having a distinct personal touch and starts being just a rushed blob clicking everything from the top menu.

So to address the problems and throw some suggestions.

1.Colony expansion is too fast and uncontroled without any negative impact during mid/late game forcing fast paced tempo and shallowing the decision making on expanding with good colonies.
- I suggest adding governance capacity abstract to empires - and if exceeding it, corruption would grow drastically making excess colonies unprofitable and unhappy. Could be expanded by placing ambassadors/governors, buildings, tech, etc.
- Further adding to above, could be that different goverment types could also impact gov capacity - like centralized/decentralized goverments having different impact on distance of the colonies to capitol, etc.
- Gov capacity could have a multiplier to adjust at game start - so if someone does not like it, could set it to unlimited, or if wants a very slow game make it 0.5 or something.

2. I know that this was also talked about - but having multi-race colony has no downsides and takes out the character of the empire. At start it's unique, but after midgame everything is the same but have different UI/model skin on top of it.
- Clinging to above idea, making multi-race colonies / empire, could add governance capacity overhead.
- Adding infrastructure requirements for races, elected goverment representatives of that race. (Depending on goverment).
- Individual race happines on each colony in addition to global one. Impacting assimilation, growth, rebelions.
- Making natural race enemies / allies. So a bad race mix would deacrease happines and vice-versa. (maybe some events?)
- Goverment types that have positives/negatives for being multi-race or homogenic.
- Making some 'evil' races happy for having slaves while 'good' ones unhappy.

3. Politics are too volatile. Bribe -> take what needed -> cancel when needed -> repeat. There are some tresholds but overall that is how I look at it.
- Would be nice to have validity period for treaties. So if I sign 10 year treaty and want to cancel it prematurely I would pay huge fine (or not, and have huge and long lasting negative reputation impact with that empire and others).
- Adding treaty starting date / implementation time so it's not working right after signing.


The gov capacity idea is from Europa Universalis - and it handles the expansion tempo very nicely from my experience. I play 100+ hour sessions and I'm not overwhelmed at any point as I slowly learn about my empire as I built it.

I hope this is constructive critique and I look forward for the future of Distant Worlds 2.

Thank you.

I think that money have been recognised as an issue in the mid to late game as you gain so much money you are never really short of it and can do pretty much everything. Being able to just colonize everything just make sure money is even less of a problem.

The developers have said that they are looking into this and tuning the income versus colonization issue and excess money in the later stages of the game. So I'm hopeful that something will come at the same time with the new expansion that will balance the mid to late game and the economy a bit better.

I also would like more mechanics that involve multi-race empires and introduce some drawbacks and/or benefits based on your main race, governments and perhaps diplomatic or other factors. Currently as you say there is really no drawbacks of having other species in your empire only benefits. I think it would be good to flesh this out in a specific expansion that focus on new more internal empire mechanics. Perhaps also while fleshing out the diplomacy part of the game as internal politics and external relations should go hand in hand in many cases, especially for multi-race empires.

Yes, the late game needs work. Less notifications, bigger armies to recrute to deal with less ground units and victory conditions, which do not require to conquer most of the galaxy are some ideas.