What can be done to improve late game?

[Mazisky]

We know that after 50 turns the game becomes quite boring and that is a common issue for this genre as a whole.

What would be in your opinion a good way to address this issue?

[Thorgrim Grudgebearer]

add some mods for different factions. or more unit mods so you can experiment more. also play thorgrim grudgebearer.

[KoboldUtopian]

Better end-game scenarios. Particularly something that builds up as a result of your action or inaction. Something that feels organic rather than randomly dropping a bunch of doomstacks.

That said, I've found in my last few playthroughs that things get boring around turn 40-50 once I've secured my main area, but then get interesting again around turn 70-80 as a bunch of bigger factions start attacking me and I have to scramble to defend a large empire.

[Mazisky]

Originally posted by Thorgrim Grudgebearer:

add some mods for different factions. or more unit mods so you can experiment more. also play thorgrim grudgebearer.

Is the late game more appealing if I play your campaign my highness and tall King?

[Falaris]

In order to solve the question of how to make it less boring, we need to identify WHY it gets boring.

#1: Snowballing. As you get larger, you get more resources to deal with opponents.
#2: Snowballing. As you gain research, you get more capable.
#3: Snowballing. As you get levels, you get more capable and likely to win.
#4: Variety. Factions disappear at an alarming rate, and you will be likely to run into confederation blobs controlling half the map, and from then on, there'll be fight after fight against the exact same armies.

This is a problem with most 4x games. There's been a trend in more recent games to have more dynamic emergent gameplay, where it becomes a bit more storytelling as part of the game; events or chains of events that lead to interesting outcomes or challenges; like if you research Robot AI in Civilization, you have a random chance of an AI revolution, or similar. Expanding the potential consequences of chaos cults would be a prime example of something similar for the setting, or having more dramatic results from increased chaos corruption of your generals (your army can suddenly join the WoC). Better minds than mine can figure out more like that; Your orcish warboss (or chaos lord) suddenly challege your LL for leadership, e.g. Another easy, but very annoying one, is triggering civil wars.

Even #4 above, variety, can be tracked to snowballing, since it is caused by AI factions snowballing.

#2 and #3 would be less of an issue - to the extent it even is a big issue - if the AI made better choices. The mechanics for doing that exists in the DB, with skills optionally marked as useful or useless; it's just that it's not used a lot. Of course, if all AI lords chose the exact same skills, that would also create a problem.

There's many mechanics that cause snowballing, but the problem with them is that they are reasonable. It is reasonable that a faction with 12 towns would be more inventive than one with just 1. A larger state should be able to field larger, more varied armies. That makes many anti-snowballing measures annoying or feel forced, like bureaucracy eating an ever-larger share of your income.

What anti-snowballing measures are in this game?
Fairly few, really. The biggest one is the supply limit, and it's probably the single most hated and objected to mechanic in the game. Confederation penalty is another, although weaker. Wood elves' outpost mechanic (and factions with similar 'most cities are useless' mechanics. Norscan ports, e.g.) - but their trees become major boons. Rogue armies that pop up in your 'safe' territory if you have too few defenses in an area.

Personally I would like to see less eradication of factions; I would like to see the AI better at making cities and armies to enable them to keep army variety stronger, and I would like to see more dynamic or emergent gameplay.

One easy way would be to let the AI recruit any unit regardless of recruiting buildings, but that's an extremely flawed solution; like many easy solutions, it creates more of a problem than it solves.

There's other things - players create doomstack armies of just one unit type and realize that's boring, but that's really that player's fault; I don't see any enforcing of unit variety that wouldn't cause more problems than the non-problem it solves.

[Valthejean]

A few ideas come to mind.

Firstly, victory objectives need to be more interesting and have more fun rewards. Take Tyrion for example, it would be fun if his campaign victories were tied to which skill tree he went. If he goes unifier, he wants to confed all of Ulthuan and then receives some factionwide bonuses for doing so, whereas Bloodline of Aenarion would demand he wipe out the Dark Elves, and then get army bonuses upon doing so. In addition, the AI should also get these sorts of campaign victories, creating their own kind of "mini-crisis." The AI should feel more like a nation, trying to accomplish its specific goal, rather than just being a mechanism to dogpile the player with anti-player bias. Getting a popup seeing "Oh no! This character just got their victory and will now get X" feels a lot more dynamic than just a million enemy AI factions.

Then, there's the crisis. The crisis needs to be a LOT more than just army doomstacks. There needs to be specific mechanics related to the faction that's picked. Take the Greenskins for example. Rather than having a bunch of doomstack, have maybe one or two Waagh armies. Then, every time that army fights a battle, it spawns another Waagh army, representing how the Orcs flock to the Waagh as it keeps going. Then, the mechanic is about trying to stop them from constantly popping up, eliminating their army completely in one battle (and maybe make it so sniping all of the lords and heroes of the army makes it so it does not spawn another.) If the crisis actually has some flaire and mechanics to it in relation to the theme of the army that spawns, it would feel SO MUCH better.

[Ashardalon]

biggest problem is that the ai isnt playing to win
they arnt building empires
making you the only one that does
this is also the reason why the earlygame is so hectic, because every nearby ai is suiciding itself trying to kill you
but that leaves you forced to kill off what should be possible allies, only to end up as the only empire fighting nations
wich doesnt just have the lategame steamroll problem, it also means that there is very little lategame variation, since with no enemy empire in the lategame, there is also no different lategame empire to beat in every campaign

[Falaris]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

biggest problem is that the ai isnt playing to win
they arnt building empires
making you the only one that does
this is also the reason why the earlygame is so hectic, because every nearby ai is suiciding itself trying to kill you
but that leaves you forced to kill off what should be possible allies, only to end up as the only empire fighting nations
wich doesnt just have the lategame steamroll problem, it also means that there is very little lategame variation, since with no enemy empire in the lategame, there is also no different lategame empire to beat in every campaign

Every game I've played for a while lately I get a message that some faction has become a regional major power. There's often factions with 25+ settlements. Are you sure you're talking about WH3?

[RamboRusina]

- Make AI army compositions more elite.
- Make AI stack armies.
- Make win conditions trigger extra objectives like hold town for 10 turns while certain factions have to try take or destroy the town.
- Make AI capture towns in general more than just sack and raze(which in turn slows down their army quality).
- Give AI better templates for building their lords and heroes instead of random junk talents and passively fill and upgrade their empty equipment over time.
- Upgrade AI towns passively over time and make AI in general aim for bigger empires. Have AI do more confeds and create strategic alliances to strike common foe or to prevent wars on multiple fronts. AI should not react to hostile enemies on other side of the world before their own surroundings are secure.
- As absolute pipedream make the battle AI into something mediocre at least instead of the absolute buffoon it currently is.
- Get rid of lightning strike.

[Butcher]

Open more options and challenges the bigger your empire is. Starting with 5 settlements dudes now require tavern or they rebel, rotating mercenary roster can be hired in taverns. Starting with 7 settlements you can upgrade units of rank 7 and above in workshop buildings, armies now require resupplying. Starting with 10 settlements you now have loyality mechanics and political parties, political parties have influence on settlements potentially rebelling. Starting with 13 settlements your cities now can randomly get plague or skaven/pirate/chaos lair, text adventures King Arthur style now available for agents.

And so on and so on.

[ashbery76]

Roleplay the theme and set goals.This is same for all strategy games.Min maxing gaming is boring.

[Basarab Laiota]

make it so that all 8 Warriors of Chaos factions aren't just filling their armies up with their annoyingly overpowered Regiments of Renown

[Whatever100500]

Just same way as we have crisis options, add ease of AI confederation and AI alliances as separate options.

Make AI behavior more purposeful. Each neighbor is either potential conquest target, confed target, long term ally, or temp non-interference while you are busy elsewhere (with NAP or not). Pick a bucket and treat accordingly.

What should generally not happen, is any LL AI just sitting on it's arse and having no ongoing war for many turns (a few to get into better position to declare war can be acceptable). Northern chaos wastes often degrade into WoC and vassal Norscans just being good neighbors and doing nothing.

Allow player and AI confederations for few races that can't, like TK.

Fix races that have low strength cap in campaign:

AI WE can't do tree rituals and almost never confed/ally - they have no path to grow stronger over time. Gaining normal territory does almost nothing for their economy, and AI WE almost never raze for profit (which is what they should mostly do with rich settlements).

I've never seen AI beastmen grow into anything more than early game annoyance. More or less same for Skarbrand or Nakai.

[dingbat]

I’ve yet to find a game that solved this problem

[DeciNinja]

That's a tough one. There's a reason the whole genre can't figure it out. Once the player gets big, I know of a few approaches to maintain the challenge, all of which are not very good.
1) Passive penalties for large empires: Very commonly used in mild forms, where it never reaches a point sufficient to stop snowballing. In severe forms, it defeats the point of expanding and exploiting while being clearly arbitrary. There is no ideal middle ground.
2) Random problems in large empires: The reason I've only finished Terra Invicta once. Nobody likes having to turn away from their goals every 5 turns to put out fires. AI being more aggressive towards large player empires is part of this category.
3) Spawn a bunch of doomstacks from the void: Famously used in Stellaris and TWWH3. It always feels artificial because it didn't spring from the game's economy system at all. Designing it to be challenging, protracted, and not overwhelming is a difficult problem, especially considering how much the player empire can vary in economy and army strength by the time the crisis starts.

[DeciNinja]

Here's an alternative idea: Merge AI aggression towards a large player empire with the endgame crisis. AI evaluates the strength of the largest alliance that could be formed out of factions that could possibly put aside their differences based on lore and have even a slight reason to distrust the player. When the player empire reaches that value, the factions put aside their differences and actually form that alliance in order to destroy the player. Some story events occur beforehand to warn the player that this will happen.

I'm sure there are some pitfalls here too, though.