How to play mid-late game?

[Gvaedyn]

I'm playing as Karl Franz, and this is the first time I've bothered to get "far" into a campaign. I'm on turn 150, and I've mostly got hold of Empire territory.

The problem is, I'm finding mid-late game to be a bit dull.

Most of my turns consist of building new structures or upgrading existing ones. I'm earning 10k+ a turn and have about six armies, only two of which are actually decent. Any battles are auto-resolved because they're a complete stomp either way, and I don't think I've played one out for roughly 60 turns.

I'm slowly branching out into new territory to secure settlements, but don't feel as if I'm playing tactically. The only thing I've struggled with is corruption and control, so now I've created a handful of armies / heroes to counteract this. It's also slow to build new armies, but I attribute that to not making enough of the relevant structures in new provinces.

I have a similar experience with Civ games - mid to late game for me just seems to be mashing the "End Turn" button.

Any feedback appreciated.

[Testikles]

Originally posted by Gvaedyn:

How to play mid-late game?

That's the neat thing: You don't. For exactly the reasons you outlined.

[Father Ribs]

Nothing wrong with not liking the endgame and is a problem for all 4X games. If you want to keep with this campaign and not just give this one up, try something off the cuff; send an expeditionary force off to the southern desert or Lustria, or attack the DE.

Or make yourself unwritten rules; don't capture territory not "Imperial"...give mountains back to dwarves, tundra to a Kislev, LA to High Elves, declare war on all wood elves and burn their trees. Whatever floats your boat.

[Beje]

I'll preface this by saying that what you are experiencing is common in 90% of these games (that's a percentage straight from my backside yes; the vast majority). I get the same thing. You might not like this answer, but I usually just go for a different campaign.

If not, then some of the things I recommend:
- look into the short and long victory conditions if you didn't already and try to achieve that.
- Try a mod that adds more/better victory conditions:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2858059010

- optimize your provinces, try to get max income from the big potential ones; try to make army focused regions and so on;
- optimize armies; make sure Karl for example actually has greatswords and reiksguards in his army, since he buffs them especially
- doom stacks. Try an army of 19 greatswords, 19 rocket batteries and so on;
- ordertide vs chaos: try to make a great alliance of all the order factions and cleanse the entire map of anything chaos/evil

These are just some random ideas....you're only prolonging that feeling, probably. Some of these tasks might help you be engaged again for like 10 turns but then you'll be back to square 0. So it depends how big your love for the empire is. It'll probably be more fun to start something new, but try to set an objective from the get-go and stick to it, like the order vs chaos thing. Cheers, have fun!

[Philipp1500]

You dont. At that point you are you either already reached or are close to reach long victory conditions, and thats where i personally always stop and play another campaign for the reasons you mentioned.

[Father Ribs]

Other thought; maybe not for this particular campaign, but do you turn on endgame events?

[Ares]

Start over and bump the difficulty up. That should make the struggling phase last longer.

[Hex]

There is no reason to play after a certain point. Chasing cowardly AI and auto-resolving all fights isn't gameplay.

[Sixtus]

Did you have the endgame event? I had a nice campaign with Karl Franz, easy going on n/n- but the endgame event (vampires) was a bad surprise and took me some turns to get back on trail; afterwards it was only waiting for the last electoral count to finally confederate, which was a little boring... (I don't know if the endgame event with dwarves happens to Empire, too, but that would be a real problem - vampires and skaven are o. k., but the final grudge is really heavy...).

[Ryan]

I just found out today after playing total war game for 8 years there an auto construction button that you can use to build either toward military or economy. There high priority option too. I have 30 settlement and just turn it on. I earn 15k gold and have 35k right now but haven't seen it work. It stopped the annoying building button but haven't seen it use my gold. Maybe because I turn them all on but I will have to see. I went to my treasury and max out how much it will use but that was 10 turn ago.

[Sarumoon]

Originally posted by Ares:

Start over and bump the difficulty up. That should make the struggling phase last longer.

this, because later in the game, you will wish you were playing on the hardest difficulty. Only the beginning is a challenge. Unless you max the endgame crisis stuff.

[killtastic201]

Go into your settings and push the difficulty up. did you enable the end game crisis events? if not the next time go ahead and do that since it spices things up pretty well late game (The final grudge can be really tough for factions like the empire that don't necessarily have a ton of answers to late game dwarves with nearly indestructible, anti magic frontlines, and great auto resolve). makes the AI just go super hard for awhile. unfortunately most games like this don't have allot of good content out of the mid game. it's a bit frustrating since you dont really get to use your tier 5 units much, which can be pretty fun. it used to be better in WH2 because certain factions would confederate into really big threats with tons of armies, that could easily keep you engaged till turn 200, lol.. (there are mods that restore this functionality I think). In WH2 I would have said "go fight malekith", but now if you pop over to nagaroth you're going to find its big a pile of nonsense and the dark elves are just treading water. the wood elves tend to be a really tough nut to crack, so maybe try an take athel loren down. I hated fighting them in WH2.

[stun]

Originally posted by Father Ribs:

Nothing wrong with not liking the endgame and is a problem for all 4X games.

It's not. For actual 4X games it's the opposite of a problem because lategame is compressed. You expand at least exponentially (2^turn number*n), usually much faster because of additional compounding factors (e.g. tech, disparity between power of earlygame and lategame tech - look at what lategame MoO looks like; script some landing shuttle each turn for like 4 turns and it's ogre).
It's because your power projection has nothing to do with how many provinces you hold and that turn 30 and turn 150 are exactly the same that it's a problem here.

[Reeva!]

Depends which factions you're going up against. Auto resolve is, screwed, in this game. It heavily favours certain comps for reasons that only matter to auto resolve. You go into the map and you stomp them with 100 losses where it would've been a Decisive Defeat.

Other factions or army comps, you kinda just win while not even at 20/20 with an army you would consider to be weak.

Most frustrating part of endgame for me was how annoying the AI decided to be. They weren't tactical, they didn't plan, all they did was use teleporting stances and take places I just took, forcing me to either go back or keep pushing forward knowing I'd have to go back eventually. They don't plan your demise, they want to make sure you take as long as possible to eventually destroy them. That's... kinda meh, tbh.

I always have issues with N'kari, I played as Balthasar Gelt and auto resolve favours him to the point of absurdity, gotta manually battle until I, someday, get my 19 elite steamtank doomstack, after ~225 turns AFTER I take Nuln in Wissenland, owned by pricks who start with 2 fealty and have minimal events to increase it.

A recommendation would be to find a doomstack you really like, and battle with it, even if auto resolve doesn't favour it. It's really fun to roll enemies with doomstacks, that 'is' the endgame for me, see how it fares against different factions and comps. Endgame is not difficult, neither is getting there really.

[strike478]

Happened to me in Nurgle Campaign. Fighting Vampires, Ogres and not getting sneak attack with Chaos Dwarves were fun but once I reached Cathay and beaten both dragons, captured few of their settlements and saw that angry Elves from wild hunt practicallly destroy each other to let me kill wounded survivors (usually elves). I just had to move on.

You have no duty to finish your campaigns. Play untill it stops being fun and you stop feeling that you will have more fun in future.

[Reeva!]

Also, what Battle difficulty are you playing on?

Battle difficulty will apply multiple stat maluses or bonuses to enemy armies, decreasing/increasing their melee attack, defence, leadership etc.

Campaign difficulty will apply campaign maluses or bonuses to enemy economy, increasing/reducing upkeep, recruitment costs, building construction time, research speed etc.

Playing with high Battle Difficulty will be a constant threat.
Playing with high Campaign Difficulty will be an early game terror, since they expand, build, and field more higher level armies against you quicker, in greater quantity and quality. But once you get past that stage it's just smooth sailing (mostly).