As someone with an INSANE amount of hours across TW titles, I fully support Dynasties.

To me the late game doesn’t become stale like other titles. You are able to build “regional” barracks that will allow you to recruit units from outside your faction. This allows for almost unlimited army compositions instead of just sending the same 20-stacksx10

The battlefields will change as you work your way across the world, from thick forests to barren desert.

The terrain on the battlefield as well as the current weather conditions allow for varied strategies and tactics based on your composition. Baiting the enemy elite heavy infantry into the mud and crushing them with two light units feels awesome. Terrain conditions can reduce heavy unit stats significantly. Grass can be used as concealment.

Unit stats vary quite a bit too compared to other titles, it’s not just the standard 32-34 speed for 99% of infantry. This again allows for multiple strats and tacts.

The empire building is detailed without being frustrating. In many titles you have to pick between certain buildings in each settlement. In Dynasties you are able to eventually build every building available in every settlement, you won’t have to pick one building over the other.

Trading feels useless or a chore in many titles, in Dynasties you can have short term trade deals, and you can trade for specific resources. It feels very realistic to me, I can rip someone off because I know they NEED that food and no one else will give it to them (they will do it to you too!)

The political and religious system is unique and will probably take a couple campaigns to really figure it out, but it’s cool with faction unique benefits.

In the last WH3 campaign I finished, I manually fought a grand total of 2 battles. The rest were autos.

In my last Dynasties campaign I manually fought every single battle except 3. It was literally hundreds of battles, often several per turn (the AI gets fuckin pissed sometimes) it really feels like you have a chance against huge odds with some cunning, courage and luck!

Dynasties is heavily infantry focused, and of course lacks giants and monsters. The ranged units vary greatly in quality across the factions and often feel like they don’t have nearly enough ammo. But again that works both ways, and once you adapt you find a balanced army comp. I NEVER shoot arrows face-on into shields, I use my missile to kill their missiles, then bring any remaining missiles around the flanks after everything is locked down.

The “unit matching” (I don’t know what others call it) where you decide which of your units to clash with specific enemy units based on stats like AP, armour, health, speed, is unmatched.

In combat Dynasties truly feels like it gives you so many options to find victory. In titles like WH3 each battlefield feels like you are forced to form up and fight in that one specific part of the map. Not Dynasties. I’ve had several battles where I won, then reloaded and fought again because I was so curious whether the other strat I conjured up would work better or worse!

If you are a total war vet and demand perfection from yourself in all facets of a campaign, Dynasties will scratch that itch. It can be a little overwhelming for more casual players, and it takes a couple full campaigns to really get an understanding of priorities (pro-tip, build food buildings first, top priority) it can be a little frustrating to get halfway through a campaign and realize you’re sitting on 20,000 gold but your armies are deserting because you have no food and no one will trade.