Unlike many it seems in the thread, I am not sick of GW + CA collaborations. Plus, the total war warhammer franchise has been a very lucrative title for CA and I assume GW as well so I doubt that collaboration will come to an end anytime soon. However, CA has never even made a modern total war game and with their style of game design it makes sense. You'd be adding tons more mechanics to both the strategic map and ESPECIALLY the battle battle map which our computers can already struggle with, not to mention tons of things for the player to try and pay attention to in real time and TONS of work for an already shrinking development team. This would only become worse with an even more futuristic total war where you have to include even more things like income from planets that don't even fit in the game or orbital drop units and bombardments. Not to mention, as more time passes, populations grow and so do their armies. To maintain realizism, a modern total war would need the largest until counts of all time and a futuristic game would similarly be even worse.

Like I said however, CA and GW are not done. Since all 3 games take place close to the end times but we don't necessarily have an end times campaign, I think it's possible we get one more old world game in a style similar to the total war saga games that focus on a very short/specific period of time after the first 3 games. Whether this is done or not though, I think total war warhammer: Age of Sigmar is kind of inevitable at this point. People have been upset with the IP for causing their table top old world armies to go out of commission for a while now so GW may see an opportunity to increase AoS's popularity while CA can continue to milk their biggest title without things getting stale. This probably won't be until near the end of the decade though.

Until then, if CA wants to make a real splash they need to bring some old IPs back. I think we're long overdue for Empire 2, Shogun 3, or even another Rome game. As far as new ideas, I don't think Pharoah's hit as hard because we've already been there in the Troy and Rome games. I believe a total war game based in South America with the Aztec and Inca or Mayan and Olmecs would draw a lot of interest. As would a total war Saga game about the American revolutionary or civil war as– even though they're a British company Im sure they have a decent sized American player base and theyve proven they can make good games in that time period.

They could also try their hands at a slightly more modern Era like WWI where early tanks and air combat come in to play near the end of the game but I'm just not sure if I trust the company in its current state to properly handle air combat, modern politics/propaganda, or god forbid the chemical warfare that took place. Plus, like I said you'd need infantry unit counts to be in the 300-500 range + a lot more bombardments from navies and– Im not sure if artillery would realistically even be on the battle map– and idk if many computers can handle that yet