Damn I really like this game. Finished a campaign as the Broken Lords this weekend and just started up one as the Cultists. I adore how wildly different the factions in this game are. Super cool concept, everything looks beautiful, clean interface. Damn. Just a really well-made game.
That said, I did my first campaign on Easy and I definitely regret that. Easy had the same kind of problem Civ often has for me which is I became so totally dominant that I reached a point where Victory was within reach in any one of four ways but I had so many active armies and cities that turns took forever. The last three or four hours of the campaign were me moving into position to steamroll the remaining factions and then SURPRISE THE TURN LIMIT IS UP CONGRATS YOU WIN. So anticlimactic.
I really enjoyed the main quest line threaded through the campaign. That's an effective way to encourage the kind of behaviors that your faction demands, but since my game just kind of ended I was frustrated that there was nothing even resembling resolution to that line. Has anyone seen the end of a faction quest? Is there an end? I cranked the difficulty for my second campaign, hoping to discover for myself.
I'm split at least seven ways over the summer/winter mechanic as well. Winters were so frustrating because the only impact they ever really had on me was making my armies take twice as long to advance. I'm hoping they cut both ways on the harder difficulty (ie hamper my opponents / save my own ass instead of just dragging shit out) but on Easy they were basically just instances of "now spend ten, twenty, thirty minutes being kind of bored". Winters were definitely longer duration in later turns, too. There's a beautiful concept there of the whole world going to shit over time but unfortunately it never really amounted to much more than an annoyance to me. Maybe if through quests or behaviors I could influence the length / frequency of winters? I dunno, but definitely exciting to play this game through a few more times. There's a lot here to dig in to.
I had the exact same thought but since neither of us is capable of making this dream a reality I officially declare this the OT!