Hey,

I was wondering on what galaxy/game settings the Developers (or anybody else) usually like to play.

I figured the game is balanced around having all settings on normal, but I always look for ways to spice scenarios up and make them more interesting by tuning some of those.

I recently enjoy playing with clustered empire spawn-points, resulting in lots of action in the early turns of the game, with a slightly bigger galaxy than recommended because I feel like the late game often lacks the thrill of untamed regions at the fringes of the galaxy. It also makes trade routes go through wild space and a low resource abundance often makes outposts on some of these isolated systems hard to defend territory, adding more meaningful colonization to the games later stages.

Playing as the Umbral Choir in a galaxy with only 3 United Empires makes you feel like being part of an underground rebellion against a much stronger galactic empire consisting of different houses.

Or playing as Lumeris against 3 other Lumeris (maybe even custom) factions with only economic & wonder victory enabled, essentially simulating the 4 families can also result in some amazing role-play moments putting great emphasis on the marketplace. Having pirates on the highest difficulty makes that experience even better.

I wondered what other unique scenarios/settings you people came up with?

As fun as it is to play god with the galaxy I often find that messing with the settings too much can WILDLY swing the game in favor of one faction or another.  There are several factions which live or die by the random generation and tuning the settings even a little can completely screw some over.  No minor factions within a dozen jumps of you?  Horatio is screwed.  Sparse strategics and crappy systems with three or less planets?  Vaulters are not happy.  People start too close together?  Unfallen get run over.

Sometimes I wonder if the game would be better with a little LESS control over galaxy gen, or at least a gentler curve of parameters.

Daynen wrote:

As fun as it is to play god with the galaxy I often find that messing with the settings too much can WILDLY swing the game in favor of one faction or another.  There are several factions which live or die by the random generation and tuning the settings even a little can completely screw some over.  No minor factions within a dozen jumps of you?  Horatio is screwed.  Sparse strategics and crappy systems with three or less planets?  Vaulters are not happy.  People start too close together?  Unfallen get run over.

Sometimes I wonder if the game would be better with a little LESS control over galaxy gen, or at least a gentler curve of parameters.

Fair point I also feel like one should leave everything as it is if one is looking for a balanced experience.
I just feel like purposefully creating very hard scenarios can result in unique/memorable and honestly quite fun experiences. And those add a lot to replayability imo. For example playing vaulter survival with only cravers in a resource scarce galaxy is a wild ride and tons of fun although definitely not balanced in your favor :)