On the Enemy tab, there are the following settings (I am not asking about the first two.):Within the freeplay game, enabling peaceful mode or setting enemy bases to anything lower than default disables the following achievements: There is no spoon, No time for chit-chat, Raining bullets and Steam all the way. Any other changes to map generation or using the debug modes does not disable achievements.
Enemy bases - it's clear this must be left alone (the default setting).
Peaceful mode - it's clear this must be left alone (off).
Starting area size - no question here
Enemy expansion - Can I disable enemy expansion altogether or modify these settings?
Evolution - Can I disable or change evolution settings?
A plain reading of the wiki entry seems to suggest that expansion and evolution can be modified, and I've seen at least one Steam guide suggest these two can be de-selected, so why do I ask? Nefrums, a record-setting Factorio player, says in his guide that only the starting area should be changed on the enemy tab. Usually I would trust the official wiki, but Nefrum's advice seems to make the most sense because turning off expansion and evolution has about the same effect as peaceful mode, except the biters will give me dirty looks while I remove their home to get at some resources.
I did an experiment where I disabled expansion and evolution, set starting area to 600%, set diffusion (on advanced tab) to 0%, and when the game started, the spoon achievement was not covered in red, I could start tracking it, so apparently I could play on those settings win the achievement, and I'm 99.99% certain that Nefrum's guide is inaccurate on this, but I don't want to play 8 hours to be 100% certain.
Follow-up question, because I'm sure most of the answers will be "duh, you answered your own question"
What is the effective difference between peaceful mode and turning off expansion and evolution? (As it relates to the gameplay leading up to launching the first rocket.)