​The Great Game is probably in top 3 forgotten mechanics in Warhammer 3. Why do I care? Well, I think it should make sense and 2025 is probably the year when CA will want to ''finish'' Monogods in general, so upcoming Slaanesh DLC may be just the right time.

I have a suspicion that this mechanic is completely random. Some people even say you can win domination victory and kill other factions, but it won't influence GG at all.

IMO Great Game should be based on simple, transparent mathematical formula, like:

Khorne vs Slaanesh vs Nurgle vs Tzeentch obviously

so: ''global number of Khorne aligned factions'' x ''number of their armies'' x ''number of cults'' x ''number of settlements'' x ''global corruption'' = final numerical result

or something like that (for sure it could be better!)

If Nurgle would be currently number 1 (winning great game) and I, playing as Tzeentch, would kill Tamurkhan and take his settlement, the mechanic should reflect that. Killing the strongest champions should have global consequences, so Nurgle should lose ascendancy... (how to reflect that in formula? probably killing the strongest Lord should result in minus points, a BIG penalty)

CA you can always add a ''random'' element to it too, so it won't feel stale. Winning god should receive diplomatic penalties with other chaos gods; imo you or AI shouldn't be able to stay on top forever, so ''winning'' should be over after 10 turns. <- this is also easy to implement, winner can start losing points if too long on top... 

Game is calculating relative faction strenghts anyway... 

I agree with sagez on this one. I have never played a campaign where i even tried to use this mechanic, because it feels out of your hands anyway. The best thing you can do to increase the corruption of your god is to play the game normaly. I would like to see a system where it is in your interrest to go out of your way to "win" the great game (for a time).

Maybe some kind of system where you teleport to a challenge like quest battle comes to mind (without having put too much thought into it). That would not interrupt normal gameplay too much but if you have a turn where your army just travels you could do them. 

Or second idea is a sacrifice mechanic where you compete against the other gods. You do not need to, but you can sacrifice say money/units to gain points in that system rewarding you later with the cost of making it harder in the campaign first. Leaving it up to you how much you are able/willing to sacrifice for gains later on. 

You can do many things that are better thought through but in essence it is not interresting at all at the moment and as we have seen with the dwarfes age of reckoning could have much potential. 

To solve the snowball problem and to protect the player's efforts, I thought of introducing portals The player has to try to protect his own portals from being closed, and also try to close other people's portals A certain number of demonic portals are opened every 20 turns, and when they are about to be closed, the accumulated value of The Great Game is counted. This way, not only the player and the AI factions, but also the players, there are also a lot of mechanisms that are difficult to master and that can challenge the player.

Honestly I think the system for ascendancy is already a little over-complicated? It only affects the Unholy Manifestations, and it's nice (more than nice, even) to have the empowered forms, but not absolutely essential.

If Ascendancy and being the Champion of the Great Game are meant to be important, they should be hooked up to more stuff, maybe with missions to increase the odds for your god like how Lizardmen get Blessed Spawnings, or the opportunity for quest battles. 

Otherwise, I'm half a mind to think that the system should be changed to be 1 in 4, literally random, and just take care to make the Unholy Manifestations satisfying and useful in their base forms with the empowerments being a nice bonus. After all, with four sides competing and a desire to not cut anyone out forever, there's a limit to how much the odds can be allowed to be increased from a design perspective anyway. I don't think true randomness is the best solution, to be clear, but it's not clear how much work CA is willing to put into the Great Game anyway.

Assuming it isn't made completely random, I'd really like to see more transparency in-game about what the current odds are for each ascension, and how they're influenced. If my god ascends, is that because I was diligent in raising armies and spreading corruption? Or did I just get lucky? If someone else ascends, what can I do to take them down a peg so my patron is ascendant 10 turns from now?

To be clear, I'm not opposed to more drastic changes to the Great Game, and I think the above suggestions are clever, I just don't want the hoop to jump through be more trouble than the empowered Manifestations are worth.