I understand a common issue of floundering with the gameplay - it reminds me a lot of when I was first banging my head against the wall with DWU.

Besides the technical issues - which are thankfully much better now - I think the biggest problem in DW2 is that the UI and design philosophy is largely unchanged from the first game. The UI is much easier on the eyes, but fundamentally resists the type of UI conventions your standard 4X/Grand Strategy player is used to - to manage nearly everything manually. It strongly encourages automatic play, from the default settings onward, when this is the least engaging way for a player to learn and also breaks from what genre fans are used to.

In a wider game dev philosophy sense, I think the problem is on default settings the game collapses the number of actions per minute to zero in most minutes of the game, instead opting for a very intense setup of automation settings and then infrequent (e.g. once per session) review of target queues. A strategy game should have players reviewing information and making decisions every minute, even if not every decision is equally important.

All of that said - it is possible to play the game in nearly full manual and have a great time with it. This is my most played game in 2022, and I suspect will be in 2023 as well. I can’t get enough of if, and the improvements are really notable and I suspect will continue.

But, I find I am much more attached to my empire and diplomatic relations, empire development, military, research etc - the whole thing - because manual play forces me to consider/follow the narrative more closely and actively.

Most automation here is extremely boring to me, as it was in DWU. A few specific areas I keep automated because the UI makes manual mundane (characters - could be much better) or even with better UI that issue would remain mundane (per planet tax rate tweaks - awful setting this in DWU. Per planet resource reserves - even worse!).

Ok, onto the actual advice.

Empire - Government - Advisors and Automation - Set nearly everything to manual in the policy settings, and then turn on the following to automated there and in the menus below

• Population policy
  
• Colony Tax Rates
  
• Colony Stock Levels
  
• Ship & Base Design
  
• Character Locations
  
• Intelligence Missions
  
• Troop Recruitment
  
• Fleet Ship Management
  
• Colonies and Tax - suggest Planetary Facility Building
  
• Construction - automate New Military Ships and Other State Ships
  
• Diplomacy - suggest for Offering Gifts and Negotiating Treaties

Under these settings, you as the player need to (cycling through the top left menus in game, pictured below):

• Empire - Funding levels - tweak funding levels for Reserves and Growth vs Research. I prefer to prioritize Growth, especially early, but others differ.
  
• Diplomacy - set diplomatic strategy with pirates, independents, and other empires - which your automated ambassadors and spies will then execute on. Note - you must tick this from automatic to manual per counterparty in the diplomacy screen, or your decisions will revert to whatever automatic wants (based on race/gov diff) when the AI updates through this setting later. I set my strategy to neutral for any counterparty I don’t have a strong sense of yet. Choose at least one neighbor to be a friend, another an enemy, the rest will come with time.
  
• Characters - AI will execute diplomatic and espionage missions based on your diplomatic strategy (set above). Espionage is tedious to manage manually, due to the way the menus are setup; a global espionage missions queue would help.
  
• Colonies - target new colony locations from the list of candidates. Rule of thumb is nothing less than 20 suitability, unless you have tech to improve that after colonized. Target any suitable colony early; colonies that stretch your borders later. I tend to avoid having more that 1-3 colonies in budget deficit during the early game; later, there isn't much budget constraint, so its more about pushing your borders/supply chains to front lines.
  
• Exploration - designate Abandoned Ships and Bases for idle constructors to repair and claim. All your explorers will be automated on their own, I find micromanaging this mundane under the current UI - a global exploration queue would help.
  
• Resources - designate new mining locations. Under Resources sublist, switch from “Production Shortage” to “Priority”, which I believe sorts based on the same principles as the table at top and New Mining Locations list - years of stockpile remaining given current production/consumption rates. Under New Mining Locations, I only queue mines in the first page that have a resource with a red box (priority/shortage).
  
• Ship Construction - build new shipyards, order new ships. You do NOT need shipyards at every colony. The AI avoids shipyards within a few systems of each other; my preference is one shipyard every 75m (distance), which means I am using only one shipyard for quite awhile. By default the game will only upgrade shipyards from small to medium to large based on colony size, which I like and custom define from game to game in the Policy Settings, but you can override this manually by selecting the shipyard if you want (and I do sometimes, too). The size of shipyards (S/M/L) will determine the flow of your trade lanes that are drawn on map - smaller branch off of larger.
  
• Research - set research focus, target new research base locations - you want pretty much every one available, but its useful to follow to understand where they are and what you are missing, which can really impact mid and upper tech options available.
  
• Military - set Fleet Templates and build fleets, which you will then assign to home bases yourself (if AI is on, it will assign based on diplomatic strategy towards neighbors); set Troop templates, which your planets will build as budget permits; queue ships/fleets to inspect threats via the lists under Enemy Targets and Dangerous Locations.
  
• Civilian - target new Resort Base locations

You should, but don’t have to:

• Policy settings - Intelligence - tweak intelligence mission parameters based on your risk tolerance - do your spies pursue only safe missions, etc
  
• Construction - Ship Design - set some/all state ship/base designs to manual under “Role Upgrade” in the list of designs, especially early on, and then use the “Upgrade” button at the bottom to upgrade them as new components are researched - this will help with familiarity with techs and progression, which otherwise is easy to numbly gloss over.
  
• Characters - Spies - early on, set some individual spies to “manual” control and train them up on easy missions, which they will then get good at, and then when set on automate will pursue more of those. Otherwise they may be stuck in counterintelligence only until mid game techs boost their success probabilities. This also helps build attachment to spies when they are lost/successful!
  
• Characters - Set all ambassadors to manual and assign to a) help spy success, b) help improve ally relations.

When idle, I tend to cycle through menus on:

• Exploration - just to observe how wide my net is cast, and maybe assess if I need more explorers in that mix
  
• Resources - Mining Locations/New Mining locations - see the flow of resources and what is available to build
  
• Military - Fleets - reassigning fleets to new bases and missions (automatically in peace time, or manually esp during war)
  
• Civilian - watch the ant farm
  
• Construction - Ship Design - I prefer to design my own State Ships and Bases, I have a general rule of thumb to do so a) before a new war starts, b) after a major tech like warp or engine has upgraded a new component. Otherwise it becomes too cumbersome to upgrade manually at every new component.

Other preferences:

• Slow or Very Slow Research speed at game setup - like nearly all 4X, I find research completes way too fast in DW2, making the flood of new components hard to process and thus nearly meaningless to the player. Better to slow research and really appreciate that new tech edge for awhile, and notice the difference between tech levels.