The game and galaxy setup in Distant Worlds 2 presents a huge number of options that will shape the game experience in many ways. From basic sprawling galaxies to small challenge scenarios, it's all possible.

The point of this guide is only to take a look at those features of the galaxy and game setup that may not be obvious on first sight, so as to let you tailor your game the way you like it and not run into unforeseen consequences hours later.

In fact most of the options already have very useful mouse-over tooltips that are definitely part of the process.

For this purpose we'll walk through the creation of a basic 700 or 1000 stars galaxy that provides a balanced setup for the player and the AI empires.

This guide is current for the Shakturi DLC and I will try to keep it up to date with future patches and balance adjustments.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Let's dive right in!

Random seed: the kernel of procedural creation. Picked at random by the game but you can enter your own if there is a particularly interesting one, or you want to try out something like your birth date.

Galaxy shape: Mostly down to taste I think. The Spiral and Even Clusters shapes seem to have the most even distributions of matter.

The other options here have very useful tooltips related to the required computing power of your system. In my experience, a good Haswell-class PC (i7-4790k etc) from about ten years ago is still powerful enough to run a galaxy of 700 stars and one of each race well enough.

The largest galaxy size of 10x10 sectors requires a minimum of 1000 stars, but running this number of stars on a galaxy of 8x8 sectors will effectively cut down spaceship travel times and make for a quicker game.

In general, large galaxies with many stars and empires require modern PCs, game automation and will take a long time to play out. The opposite view of this would be challenge setups with smaller galaxies and fewer, but more powerful empires.

Nebulas are hard to travel through until your ships reach a middling level of technology. Having more of them will effectively create more of the only kind of terrain feature known in the galaxy.

Galaxy expansion and Tech Level: these options refer to randomly created enemy empires. However as I'll show later, it is better to define these more exactly in a later step.

Galaxy aggression: in my experience, when setting this to the middle option Restless it is still possible but challenging to stay at peace with everybody through very careful diplomacy and only go to war on your own terms and schedule. Set to peaceful for your first game or higher for a real challenge.

Difficulty: careful strategy players who want to play mostly manually with little automation will want to set this to very hard or extreme.

Hostile races near player: again this refers mostly to auto-generated empires. This can be set with more details in a later step.

Research speed: the main factor for the game length is right here. If you have the Shakturi expansion, this setting and the timing of their storyline need to be somewhat synchronized.

Research visibility: leave on all projects visible while you are getting acquainted with the game.

Research pathing: leave on fixed research paths unless you know what you are doing. The other option will randomize the research tree in ways that may even make some technologies inaccessible unless you go out and steal them.

Tech trading: In my opinion it's best to leave it off. Will make technologies into barter items and contribute to very rapid tech progression throughout the galaxy.

Pirates: setting this to None will still leave a few storyline pirate factions in the game unless story events are also turned off in a later step.

Pirate strength: In any case pirates will have only one starport station and are not too hard to take out from the middle game onwards. Unless you plan to go to war with them from the start, why not make them strong. They may even receive a special cruiser hull and survive a bit longer against the AI empires.

By way of RNG it is rare but possible to have the first contact with a pirate faction go so badly wrong that you need to pay them big bribes for a while before they will even sign that protection treaty. For this reason, as a complete beginner you might want to set them as weak in case diplomacy fails and hostilities escalate.

Pirates also have a relation with the Hive. When the Hive is enabled and by mid-game they start going on a rampage, killing Hive carriers will cause the thankful pirate factions that you have a military refuelling treaty with to join your side.

Pirates respawn: having dead pirate factions respawn may be worth it if there are very few to begin with?

Space creatures: Ah yes, the lovely Gravillex and other space nuisances. Hunting them gives early fleets something to do, training up their admirals. You can also harvest the luxury resources from the monster bodies. Most importantly, killing them provides diplomatic renown that actually helps a lot when dealing with other factions at higher difficulties.

Colony prevalence: This option determines the average quality of planets, not the number of them in the galaxy. Setting it low will also seriously hamper the AI empires. Suggest to leave it at Normal unless you know what you are doing.

Independent colonies: Colonizing independent, one-planet nations is the main way to gain other races into your empire and open up their respective planet types for colonization. Suggested to leave at Normal until you know what you are doing.

Colony influence range: Star systems within a colony's influence range are protected from being settled or mined by other empires, unless you are at war with them.
In general, I find it fun to set this low, below 100% in fact, and get up close and personal with other empires especially in smaller galaxies.

Colonization range limit: in a 10x10 galaxy with normal colony prevalence, 300M is a good middling value that provides enough settling area without the excessive border gore of longer distances.

Your call really. Humans are a good middle of the road option for starters. Ikkuro have an exceptional range of habitable planets for colonization, while other races are clearly more geared towards war.

Allow any government; the important choice here is whether you want the standard selection of appropriate governments for your race, or want to choose from all of them.

My suggestion is to stay with an appropriate form of government until you know what you are doing. Later in the game you can have a revolution and choose a different form of government. There are advanced discoverable forms of government among the stars as well!

Home system: make it excellent unless you have a few games under your belt. There are few things worse than resource shortages when you don't know how to handle them.

Expansion: At starting with a single planet will let you learn the basics from the beginning.

Tech level: At pre-warp your ships will at best be able to reach your home planet's moon. The first order of research then is into hyperdrives and better research facilities.

Starting location: Now here is the only setting that is not saved between games. If your previous run started at the center of the galaxy, you have to set it manually again.

Here I like to turn auto-generated empires entirely off. In the list below, the starting empires can be defined much more precisely.

A good standard setup for a 6x6 galaxy of 700 stars is to pick one of each race. Notice that most of them are starting at tech level 1, that's one ahead of the player empire.

Most of them also have one extra stage of expansion at young, that's also one level ahead of the player empire.

Pretty much the only exception to this are the Gizureans, who are so aggressive that they actually play the game pretty well. Teekans and Ikkuro are good at peaceful expansion, as their planet types are very common.

There also weaker races like the Ackdarians and Zenox. Their planet types are relatively rare, and it can be quite appropriate to have them starting two levels ahead of the player.

Everybody also receives an excellent home system.

Don't be afraid, these boosts for the AI are necessary as soon as you increase the efficiency of your empire above baseline by things like designing your own ships and planning your own wars and colonial expansion.

In this example I'm starting on a galaxy of 1000 stars so there are three additional random races topping up the galaxy at the end of the list. These are also receiving improved starting conditions like the others.

Whew, we have arrived at the final setup screen!

Notice that there are a few options here that are not really victory conditions but are going to shape the galaxy through events and storyline in very important ways.

As to the actual victory conditions, the defaults work actually fine and are well balanced. Actually I had considered most of my games as won before any conditions really kicked in.

General story events: I leave them all turned on, but you may or may not like some of them.

Shakturi storyline: The major difficulty setting is right here. You'll need to be very high tech and have a big military to stand a chance against the end-game crisis of the Shakturi. Keep an eye on the relation between this endgame schedule and the rate of technology progession from previous settings.

And now... you can actually hit the final button and Start the Game.