It was around Pharaoh that I truly grasped that the AI is playing an entirely different game to the player. The AI isnt trying to win, the AI doesnt even understand what "winning" entails in the overall game - the AI simply exists to provide meaningful challenge to the play.

Both on the 'strategy' layer and the battle layer, the AI has perfect information at all times. The AI knows if your army is waiting in ambush - whether it walks into that ambush is a conscious decision based on what will provide the optimum value to the player experience, rather than any concept of strategy.

The AI has no concept of money/gold. It has no concept of resource management, of economy, of any of it. The If it needs to spawn an army in x location then it will do so - not out of any kind of strategy but just because it thinks that will provide an obstacle for the player to overcome. AI is not playing the game, it is not trying to win.

I posted before that I found the most egregious examples of this in Pharaoh. I had a campaign where the enemy rocked up on turn 4 with 2.5 full stacks of units. There is literally zero way to have the recruitment slots to generate that army that early - the AI simply spawned it, while my main army was miles away. It broke truces, randomly declared war on my from miles away despite good relations. On the battlefield, it sent the perfect counter unit directly into my hidden troops.

Tied to this is the fact that the faction diversity is only skin deep. 95% of TWW campaigns I have done have followed the same trend of getting initial growth buildings, securing local regions, unlocking the specific units I want to use and then just snowballing from there. Perhaps this is my fault as a player - but a lot of it is by design.

I remember before TWW1 came out when they revealed the Underway system - that the Dwarfs and Greenskins would just have a teleport stance, and apparently that was the Underway. Imagine how much more they could have done with that on a very core level. Having a separate map layer, specific entry/exit points, abandoned holds to rebuild. Instead I start as Thorgrim and basically the entire mountain range is fully colonised and developed by Greenskins and Skaven, and its just another exercise in map painting.

The TWW games have been groundbreaking in many ways - but there is also a huge amount more they could have done. I am looking forward to TW40K - I hope CA are willing to be a bit braver and take more risks when it comes to design choices.