StrategyFront Gaming

So there you are, sitting there slightly bored after you just quit your latest Grand Strategy campaign halfway through. Why do you ask? Why do you seem to never finish these campaigns, whether it be Total War, Europa Universalis, or Crusader Kings?

You’d like to finish, the end game should be your crowning achievement, the last bump in difficulty as you summit the mountain, but in so many strategy games the endgame falls completely flat. 

Alternatively, you may be playing relatively early on in a campaign, perhaps only a few dozen turns or a few years into the campaign, and you realize, you’ve won. You didn’t really win, not by the game’s conditions. You’ll still have to achieve 3 objectives or conquer 100 cities. But you know it’s over, the AI will never be able to catch up. 

According to steam achievements, only 9.2% of Europa Universalis IV players have finished a full campaign, of course, this only counts people playing in ironman, which is a percentage of the player base but still, even 50% would be low. Only 2.0% of Crusader Kings II players have done the same. 

Why do we get this feeling with strategy games? Well, the answer lies in Problem Solving and Possibility.

‘Possibility’ is when at the beginning of a game there are nearly endless outcomes for how the game could progress. You don’t know whether you will get crushed out of the gate, have a great start, or have to struggle for your footing. This is what makes strategy games so fun, you don’t know what’s going to happen but can influence events to try and mold them to your benefit. 

That’s why the start of a new campaign is so fun, you don’t have time to build up or prepare and have to scramble against the immediate dangers you face while also setting you up for long-term success. You’re solving problems without specifically knowing what the outcomes will be, this is what distinguishes a strategy game from a puzzle game. 

Many of these games, like Total War: Warhammer, with its Chaos Invasion, or Europa Universalis with its revolutions mechanic, have endgame mechanics specifically meant to guard against the lack of challenge but even these can fall flat. 

Uncertainty

Possibility is important for the continued interest in a game’s outcome. A competitive match with two teams neck-and-neck is far more exciting than one team crushing another.

When you begin a game in Europa Universalis or Civilization much of the map is unexplored. This is compounded in Space 4X games like Stellaris where you only can see your own solar system and will need to explore the entire galaxy. 

This creates an air of uncertainty, what empires will be out there in the unknown. As the map opens up and you discover more lands that uncertainty will shrink, as you adapt to solve the problems presented. Eventually, you’ll grow large enough that nothing on the map poses an existential problem to your empire. 

The fact that these possibilities exist forces us to solve problems, and when the situation changes we are forced to adapt our solutions. Once you are no longer solving problems and simply going through the motions. 

Problems

Part of the challenge in most strategy games comes from competing against AI opponents. While the challenge here can’t match that of playing against a skilled human opponent, single-player campaigns are often the main focus of strategy games. 

Rapid Expansion

A huge portion of the problem is that players are able to quickly conquer their neighbors and move out of the initial phase of uncertainty into a more stable position. While this is the natural progression of most strategy games, as you build up resources, and begin to claim more territory, having it happen too fast can lead to the game feeling arcadey, or unfulfilling. 

If all existential threats have been eliminated too quickly and begin to outpace the AI the rest of the game is a foregone conclusion. There are two main factors that contribute to this: Poor AI and a lack of internal challenges. 

Poor AI

If I know I can overcome the AI then my success depends more on RNG than on strategic thinking. Take Civilization, if you’re reasonably familiar with the Civilization AI then you likely know enough tips and tricks to beat it.

The challenge here comes not from solving problems against the AI, you already know the solutions you are going to use but in managing the randomness that occurs during a game. This isn’t bad in its own right, it can force you to change direction, adapt, and overcome. 

But if this is the only challenge being presented the game can feel cheap or unfair. If you’re not given the tools to deal with this randomness it can feel just as meaningless as having no possibilities. 

Only having external challenges

The other factor, which is likely much easier for game designers to solve is to add internal stressors which slow down expansion. Most games have this in some form of Population Happiness, which if it dips too low can lead to rebellions.

This is definitely not a great solution. But it’s almost ubiquitous in strategy games, and often does little to slow players down besides providing annoyance. Other games have infamy modifiers which are basically just the game telling you to put your conquests on hold for a bit, again not ideal.

Instead, let’s look at Crusader Kings 2. In CK2, every province you own can either be controlled by you or another noble(assuming you’re the king). 

These nobles have their own agendas and will often oppose your plans to expand the kingdom. You’ll have to befriend, bribe, or assassinate these internal rivals to get your way.

It takes time out of your outward-looking conquests and forces you to stabilize internally. Now for Crusader Kings 2 other factors allow you to blob quickly, but the vassal system is a good idea of how to try and prevent this sort of thing.

Europa Universalis IV has the Aggressive Expansion modifier, which if it reaches 50 with any nearby country will have them form a coalition to oppose you. These coalition wars can be monstrously difficult since you can’t break up the coalition, they all fight to the bitter end.

But experienced players know how to avoid them entirely, and even when you lose a coalition war, it will likely only be a setback as the coalition will disperse and you’ll be able to continue expanding once your back on your feet. 

Endgame Crisis

Some games get around this by drastically ramping up the difficulty at the end. Frostpunk features an endgame crisis that presses players to adapt, make compromises, and tests their preparedness by essentially ramping everything up to 11.

This is a trick that only works once thorough, once the card is on the table you’re able to prepare for it with ease in your next game. 

Other games like Stellaris and Battle Brothers feature multiple types of crisis which can randomly occur in the endgame. For Stellaris, this can be anything from an extragalactic invasion to an AI Uprising.

Battle Brothers see you confronting Undead Hordes or an Orc Invasion. These force you to switch up your tactics, you can’t prepare to only fight undead because you could have to face the dreaded orcs. They keep the ending interesting to a degree.

Another example would be Europa Universalis which doesn’t have an official endgame crisis per se but both the revolution mechanic and the likely trajectory of the Ottomans and France will mean you’ll be facing steep challenges at the end of the game.

These happen more organically than the set-up crises of other games but the problem with these is no different, it’s a card that only works once. Experienced players who’ve seen what damage the Ottomans can do, will try and take them out as early as possible before they can snowball into a superpower. 

Being able to prepare for endgame crises often ruins the effect they meant to have, they’re a trick that works once, and then they’re a known factor. They also can feel cheap on the first attempt if you don’t know what’s coming.

Perhaps you were having a fun pacifist campaign in Stellaris learning the ropes, and suddenly you’re being overrun by a Robot empire intent on wiping out all organic life. You couldn’t have known that was going to happen and once you do you’ll know it in the next game. 

Another type of endgame crisis could be seen in Rome Total War, where when playing as Rome, the factions you’ll be fighting against in the endgame, are your allies for the entire game, the other Roman factions.

You’ve been fighting the whole game against inferior foreign troops and now you’ll be forced to fight armies with the same crack legionaries you’ve been fielding.

The factions are there the whole game so you can see their progress as they conquer their way across the ancient world.

Instead of them coming from off the map or changing the rules of the game, they’re actually your allies.

While the Rome Total War AI hasn’t aged well the concept that your allies will eventually be your greatest enemies is an interesting one. 

Solutions

For most strategy games, you won’t want to stop players from expanding all together, just make their expansion a more balanced, so that they can’t outpace the AI. One of the best ways to do this is by forcing players to change their tactics.

This means presenting them with new problems that they won’t be able to solve in the same way. Endless Legend does this with the diversity of its factions.

Due to the different unit types and abilities of the many factions, you can’t approach fighting any of them the same way. 

Other games condense their campaigns into manageable chunks. While Civilization and Total War campaigns can last for hundreds of turns, Hearts of Iron IV has a campaign that lasts only for a few in-game years.

This makes it much more manageable for players and for developers to throw different challenges at the player.

In Hearts of Iron 4, the early game is about building factories, managing production lines, and securing political cabinet appointees. Once World War 2 starts it becomes a wargame, with most of the factory building behind you.

This ensures the parts of the game feel distinct and yet the player isn’t stuck in either phase long enough for it to drag overly long. 

Another option would be for there to be clear threats differences between local, regional, and global challenges as the game progress, with nearby nations being relatively easy to take out while once you’ve progressed to being a global empire, you’ll need to work much harder to win against your opponents.  

Survival strategy games deal with this problem explicitly, making the whole game that initial period of most games where you’re one mistake away from losing everything. Jon Shafer’s At the Gates puts you in the role of a tribe struggling to survive on the borders of the Roman Empire. Rimworld and Frostpunk do something similar.

Forcing you to struggle for resources every step of the way, often putting environmental challenges in your way. Winter, being a favorite, as you can’t grow any food and will need to carefully prepare for it. Games like They are Billions take this to the next level, pitting you against increasing waves of zombies with the challenge being how long you survive.

Conclusion

Most of these games I’ve mentioned are great in their own right, and this isn’t meant to detract from them in any way, just to acknowledge areas that need improvement.

Additionally, some of the potential solutions I’ve mentioned are in games that suffer from many of these problems. The goal then is to create a game with intention and balance that you can have multiple of these systems competing to stop the player from becoming too strong. 

In many games, especially strategy games the goals are whatever you want them to be. I’m not arguing we need to be all be finishing every campaign. But there are mechanics, like let’s say in Europa Universalis IV that only appear in the end game, and most players miss because there’s no challenge by that point, and that’s a shame.

This also isn’t to say that blobbing or expanding rapidly is in any way bad, it only becomes a problem when not met with any consequences. Your actions in expanding should gain you enough rewards to push you outward but also contain enough constraints so you can’t do it perpetually. 

Let me know what you think about finishing campaigns, the problems and solutions I mentioned here! 

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