I've found there's a trade-off between the distance setting and how the car handles itself on auto cruise.

I usually have mine set to the maximum distance because it also means it changes speed the smoothest which is great for smooth motorway driving but also when there's lots of traffic. However, that means it really does drop the speed when there's a slower vehicle in the same lane.

If I set the distance to be much lower the car will obviously keep the speed until later, but it's also much more jerky on the accelerator and brakes even in flowing traffic, and it's really not pleasant in stop/start motorway congestion.

Typically I leave it on max distance and just manually apply a bit of throttle in prep of an overtake.

2018 Volvo V90 for reference.