When comparing Stellaris vs Distant Worlds: Universe, the Slant community recommends Distant Worlds: Universe for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Distant Worlds: Universe is ranked 106th while Stellaris is ranked 119th. The most important reason people chose Distant Worlds: Universe is:
With the possibility to simulate thousands of stars and tens of thousands of planets in realtime, the universe in Distant Worlds is truely vast.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Emergent stories
Oftentimes, if you play the game without min-maxing everything, you will find yourself with interesting stories to tell. While the coded events themselves may lose their touch after a while, the interactions with the various races nearby will often be different. You might find yourself in situations where the whole galaxy is against you. You also might find a race of primitives who you uplift, who will become fast friends with you. It's possible that you might grow attached to them, only for them to suddenly and violently be taken over by that Xenophobic Militarist on your borders.
The reason some stick with this game for so long is because they love these interactions, despite how shallow they may be sometimes. The fact that you can even be a Fanatic Militarist in the game and still have friends afterward is something that some may find particularly fun.
Pro Highly moddable
The fact that Stellaris is so modifiable makes a huge difference to the game. There are so many ways to customize the game to your liking.
If there's a design decision you dislike, you are always capable of changing it yourself (within certain limits), and you can make the game completely different. You can play as a race from your favorite books, anime, whatever, because so many talented people are making mods for the game.
Pro Great early game exploration
The exploration, and the early game in general, is very interesting, with a plethora of events, not limited to Anomalies surveying player and AI science ships can encounter.
Pro Constant updates
Stellaris is steadily receiving updates, tweaking game balance and fixing bugs alongside with quality of life improvements and new content. Though some of the bigger updates content is often sold as DLC.
Pro The universe is huge
With the possibility to simulate thousands of stars and tens of thousands of planets in realtime, the universe in Distant Worlds is truely vast.
Pro In-depth problem solving
Unlike games like Civ where solving a problem is a few clicks away, Distant Worlds has many layers of abstraction that will make problem solving a lot more difficult and more like a real living world. There may be many elements needed in order to solve a problem that the player will have to figure out on their own, making for a very immersive way to solve issues.
Cons
Con The AI is inconsistent
While the AI in Stellaris works fine most of the time, it has its fair share of problems and oddities.
One of the main problems is automation with the help of the AI. When your empire grows too large, you have to relegate some star systems to “sectors” that are controlled by the AI, automatically performing upkeep and advancement tasks with settings and rules assigned by you. In theory, this would reduce the amount of micromanagement you have to perform, but the AI has a tendency to ignore your inputs, and just randomly reassign resources. This creates a situation where 10 solar systems manually controlled by you have a higher output than 80 systems controlled by the AI.
Another significant problem is the AI controlling the enemy empires. While these function well enough to give you a decent challenge, they sometimes get stuck into logic loops. For example, the AI can decide to endlessly rebuild a single structure, needlessly wasting resources, which causes that empire to stagnate and eventually collapse. Or it can “forget” to allocate food resources after a war while spending everything on just rebuilding, causing a collapse from starvation. It can feel really aggravating when enemy empires just start imploding for no apparent reason, leaving you with a massive fleet with nowhere to point it at.
These two AI problems, among various others, can worsen the overall experience and sometimes take the enjoyment out of a playthrough.
Con Lack of uniqueness ever since the 2.0 update
Ever since Paradox released the 2.0 update, the game has become trash. They simplified the game to the point of absurdity, so now it's pretty much just EU4 in space, except unlike EU4, it's just bad now.
Con Basic economic system is unrealistic, illogical, unworkable and very badly explained
When the game had a simple 'tile' system it worked fine. Now the need for specialist workers creates a level of frustration which simply ruins the playability of the game.
Con Lack of vanilla content, currently
Unfortunately, the game is lacking a bit in certain types of content. There is a great number of events in the game, but not enough as it is. With how many events there are, it is likely that you will see many of these events occur over multiple games. For instance, finding Sol or Sanctuary once may be interesting, but finding it every couple games makes it seem less special.
Con High learning curve
There is a lot to learn in this game that isn't explained very well and is sometimes hard to find. Edicts, policies, and civil rights for example.
Con Needs more traits/ethics/flavor
There are very few options to really make your species unique. There are mods that address this but they can break when patches are released. More added to vanilla would be great.
Con Requires a time commitment
This is not a game that one can jump into with no prior knowledge, there is a high learning curve that will take many trial sessions in order to get the hang of the full aspects of the game.