Improved AI both for AI opponents and player AI assistance and advisors
One hopes.
Improved Diplomacy, including many possible first contact outcomes and more options for trade and treaties as well as tracking of diplomatic reputation by empire.
Diplomacy in the first was pretty good for its time, looking forward to checking out this improved version.
Expanded Resource system with resources varying in rarity and luxury resources offering other bonuses beyond just colony development. Resources are also somewhat less abundant and require more effort to extract
Ayy, somewhat less abundant and more effort to extract resources hopefully means having a deeper more meaningful economy to engage with, along the lines of the simulated economy thread i made about DW1 recently.
This means traveling to distant locations often involves “star-hopping” through multiple star systems rather than just following a straight-line route. This creates additional challenges and choke-points in the galaxy.
Great change, this also should make the "world" a little more meaningful and less whack-a-mole when anyone can virtually appear anywhere in any system of yours at any time.
Research by default is both blind (only see the next projects that link to the ones you have already researched) and has probability-based pre-requisite and fall-back paths (alternate paths to unlock projects) which means that each time you play, the Research tree can vary and the paths many not be the same. This can also be changed in the setup options to allow for full visibility and fixed paths for more predictability.
Wayyy out of left field. I don't even.
THIS! OMG im loving it. They are borrowing some stuff from Stellaris, but I like it.
Well i'm glad there's some sort of method to this seemingly madness - i stopped playing Stellaris when i saw the combat was nothing more than a pretty simulation, so i'm not familiar with this style of research but you seem pretty positive about it so i hope it's good. Props to them adding the option for traditional research in case it's not.
Compared to Distant Worlds 1, ships are generally more durable and require more effort to destroy.
Sweet, hopefully this makes combat more meaningful too.