How to improve the mid/late game

[Servius]

Well, one thing to remember is that, if you just make it harder to control far-flung provinces, or those that are culturally different, people will just stop playing once they hit that point.

A few people might be encouraged to press on just to overcome the increased difficulty, it think you might be missing the whole point of playing, which is to have fun. I think you need a solution that make it FUN to press on. To some extent, it's fun to overcome obsticles, but if those obsticles are dumb friction (higher unrest), it won't be fun. The solution to the increased difficulty needs to be creativity or skill, not just greater and greater investments of time and/or garrison troops. IMO at least, it has to be a puzzle to solve, not a grind to get through.

One suggestion I have is, rather than increasing the difficulty of holding what you've taken (the unrest problem), perhaps the difficulty should come from you being attacked by coalitions of smaller nations. And not the headless stacks like in RTW, but I'm talking battles where you have been attacked by 2-3 actual armies at the same time, in the same battle. Using MTW as an example, if I am the English and I hold Flanders, the Germans, French, and Danes should ally against me, and then attack me all in the same year, so that my stack in Flanders faces three armies in battle. THAT would be a tough fight.

Another way to make it more fun and interesting would be to have different nations actually field armies of different kinds of units, and use them in different ways. If the same army and tactics I used to crush the Germans won't work against the Polish or the Italians, that will encourage me to overcome that obsticle and beat them.

But again, I suggest these because overcoming challenges with my mind is what makes these kinds of games fun for me, while overcoming them through patience or just more of the same is not fun for me. Other people may have different motivations.

[Batory]

Very good ideas guys....

They should also increase the number of rebellions within your empire(the bigger empire the more often a rebellion), that would certainly keep players busy...

[cegman]

No that would be bad. The reason I quit is because the rebellions are stupid and I am sick of dealing with them.

[econ21]

No that would be bad. The reason I quit is because the rebellions are stupid and I am sick of dealing with them.

Depends what you mean by a rebellion. If you mean, the vanilla RTW bandits, I agree - they are a right royal pain in the you know what. I have played so many Roman vanilla/RTR/EB campaigns where about 100+ battles were trivial affairs with a handful of rebels. The 1.5 patch allowing you to cut their spawn rate was a life-saver for me.

But the MTW rebellions - entire provinces errupting in disloyalty, often respawning dead factions - were great and really helped kept the mid/late game alive. I remember one Almo PBM, where I instantly lost 10 provinces on becoming king because I did not have the influence of my deceased father - it was an exhilarating opening to a mid-game reign.

BI went some way to getting these back with Romans having loyalty stats and the rebel factions. However, I don't think they went far enough - as WRE, I never see the WRE rebels, nor lose a single general to disloyalty. It's too easy to manage loyalty and unrest once you know how it works.

[Hochmeister]

I agree that the mid/late game can get repetitive.

Rebellions are part of the answer but as mentioned the main reason people dont finish a campaign once the "critical mass" is reached is that it is no longer fun.

I think it just needs some variety in there, some random thoughts:

Interesting late game units that take a lot of teching up to reach.
Rebellions/Faction reemergence (decent sized ones not the RTW type)
An expansion on the jihad/crusade/pope situation which may change late game??
Unlock units/attributes/factions after a campaign is completed.
Have an epic high quality end game clip when total domination is reached!

[screwtype]

No that would be bad. The reason I quit is because the rebellions are stupid and I am sick of dealing with them.

The rebellions are certainly stupid in RTW because of the way they are handled. A handful of units randomly appearing in a province somewhere just becomes a nuisance.

It would be different though, if the rebellions started from within your cities, so that you actually lost provinces and had to retake them. I also think that in a rebellion, some or all of your existing troops in that province should defect to the rebels.

Mind you, I think it would be difficult to get the balance right for such rebellions. It all depends on how well the mechanic is implemented. Too weak rebellions and you've just got a nuisance value again. Too strong and it's a disincentive to play. You've got to get the balance right.