[jutetrea]

possibly micro reducers, but even then i doubt it. By the late/end game you have so many leaders, researchers, forgers, blood hunters... it just becomes too much of a pain.

Then there's the other side where its pretty much a sure victory and its not worth slogging through the grind.

Possible suggestions, some obviously not feasible

1. Add an upgrade option for units - so instead of purchasing a new mage I can buy +x research points as an upgrade at a slight discount. Penalty of having less mages means less forgers and more vulnerable (lose 1 highly upgraded mage and instant suckage) vs reduced cost of upgrade and upkeep (plus less clutter, micro). This could be translated many ways (more leadership, experience levels, etc) but I doubt it would work to ever upgrade paths beyond empowerment. Overall goal - less commanders, less orders

2. Allow the AI to "go AI", if faced with severe insurmountable odds have them swear quit or swear fealty to the one with the most kills vs. Have it be a toggle-able option at game creation. Possibly to the highest dominion score in game, might not be you and if you continue you've declared war.

3. Allow the player to "go AI", manually host, and then reset to a player. Slogfest? Just AI and see if you win, periodically checking or changing. Good for testing builds as well. Ever play the old computer version of risk, put everyone to computer and see who wins? Sadly enough, yes I did. A whole multiplayer game could be done in an afternoon, everyone set up a build, set to ai for 20 turns, play a turn, AI for 20, play, etc till done.

4. Previously suggested micro reducers - monthly forging, allowing sacrificers to auto draw from a lab, hunters auto dump to a lab, improved site searching equation, etc.

5. Add a scoring system/ranking system/statistics. After micro has been reduced, give a reason for winning (or at least a quantitative one).

6. Add short mini-movies for a victory, or even one of those dynamic text based things - "name of god" defeats x,y,z and goes off to do 1,2,3 possibly determined by the random god name, paths, or type of victory. As it stands now victory is pretty much anti-climatic. Possibly make it so there are "rare" combos depending on pretender chassis, paths, victory type (possibly the aforementioned stats as well).

Edit:
7. Reduce forts, sieging can really lenghthen a game. Add "barracks" or something where you can recruit units but not have a castle. Put a max # on castles, or drastically increase the cost. Have it all be selectable at game creation.

8. Have a max # of orders given per turn (much too complicated unless dropped down to like 20 orders/turn), everyone else is passive. Again at game creation. Most games would be infinite, but you could have games where it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy more mages - works well with an "upgrade" option.

9. More and varied victory conditions

10. Allow the pretender creation process to be modded or allow restrictions to be placed on god creation. Single path games, all negative scale games, etc... some options would shorten games/micro others may lengthen it.

It really comes down to the fact that there is no reason to win in SP, and MP kind of takes care of itself....although winning MP is still a "whoo"...thats it?