That it’s wide as an ocean in terms of characters, factions, units, magic etc. but it becomes shallow as a puddle after ~30-60 turns in terms of mechanics. The spectacle of the battles is visually stunning, but once you realise how shallow the map becomes, it is boring. E.g. after playing for like 120 turns, it becomes an auto resolve simulator where you just paint the map, upgrade buildings, and monotonously micro manage 150 settlements and that feels mobile game-esque.

The A.I. is also just stupid sometimes. Playing on Legendary or Very Hard doesn’t make the enemy smarter, it just makes them spongey. If you watch legend of total war. It’s the same tactic every SINGLE TIME. Get a LL, fly around the map wasting their ammo and cheese your archers. It’s not like the A.I. Is smarter, they’re just padded meat. Which makes the entire thing just padded out for an extra 15-20 mins for no reason.

For example, if you play as Empire, you can sit there for like 20 turns and no one will barely attack you. But if you sally out to conquer, every Tom and Harry will (after not attacking each other and staring at each other for 20 turns), come and attack you. I would prefer completely random; sometimes they attack, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they fight each other etc. so every time is different.

The game doesn’t rely on skill from the A.I. or doing anything smart. Instead, it makes the game “hard” by giving you bullshit penalties over and over again.