The most recent Total War game, Total War: Pharaoh introduced a vast array of options, settings and customization choices, into the hands of the player.  The immediate recovery attempt, Total War: Pharaoh Dynasties increased this further adding more control over new mechanics such as Lethality.  Creative Assembly even considered this expansion of player choices a feature in it's own right as showcased by their official marketing period producing this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89-3AbWtxSc

Warhammer III, now passed into the hands of CA Sofia is now following suit.  As of the recent patch 6.2 there is now, and I quote:

​Added two new customisation options:

• AI Strength & Threat Assessment - Default ON - When checked, campaign difficulty settings are overridden so that AI factions are always better at assessing threats based on strength and proximity of rivals, in addition to having generally increased hostility towards unknown factions. Enabling this setting is equivalent to the setup from CAI BETA 1. 

• Minor Faction Potential - Default OFF - When checked, minor factions make better campaign decisions, increasing their tendency to survive longer and have a bigger impact on campaigns. Enabling this setting is equivalent to the setup from CAI BETA 2. 

These concepts are based upon an older testing period CA implemented in Warhammer 2, The Proving Grounds BETA.  For those not aware, CA changed the fundamentals of the game in response to a vocal section of the player base being unhappy with the overall performance and challenge of the AI and the campaign.  As the changes were broad, it was released as a BETA branch on Steam, and the changes were broadly well received, even if CA didn't follow up on the results of the test with an overhauls (probably due to working more on WH3).

Indeed the recent CAI BETA tests followed similar reasonings and conclusions.  A large percentage of the player base consider the Campaign challenge and AI performance substandard, and therefore changes to this in the BETA branches were well received.

Interestingly however the feedback this time was reacted to and changes were implemented, in the form of gameplay options.

Now this is a good thing right?  More player choice, is always better, no nuance, no discussion - correct?  Well no actually.

To delve deeper into this point we need to clarify what is meant here.  Of course player customization options are crucial to the game, if we're talking about Key Rebinding, Colour Blindness options, Blood effects, Sticky Tooltips, Default Guard mode ect ect.  These I would rather identify as Player Comfort options and they are absolutely core to creating a good gameplay experience, removing a lot of the hard edges that can becoming irritating to come up against in a game where play times for campaigns are far above other games.

However as of 6.2, we now have the Vanilla experience and also checkboxes for a CAI BETA 1 and another for a CAI BETA 2.  Essentially 3 versions of the game.  But why?  The BETA tests themselves were highly played, popular and had good levels of feedback to the point where the developers implemented this into the game.  So why not make this popular version of the campaign AI, the actual game.  Or was it not popular enough for full implementation, to which I then ask why is it here?

And here we reach the crux of the issue and the point of my post:  The developers are, consciously or not, illuminating the fact they are not confident in identifying what a compelling Total War game should be.  They are therefore shifting the burden of game design and decision making onto the player and promoting it it as a feature.  It is not and should not be the burden of the player to ensure they have a compelling game.  This requires the player to be well versed in many mechanics, some obtuse and opaque.  It requires the player to be a veteran with multiple completed campaigns under their belt to really grasp what difference these settings are having, and whether a particular setting will improve anything for them or in fact make the experience worse.

Now I can already hear the clamouring "it's just two options - why do you care?".  Firstly, and this is why I posted this in the General Forum rather than the Warhammer specific forum, it is a meta analysis of the recent games and commentary on the weakening of confidence of the development teams at Creative Assembly.  It is not a specific criticism of Warhammer, more a note of the direction of travel.  Pharaoh, for example, a fundamentally troubled project, seems to have profoundly stumped the developers in what players actually wanted and as a response threw up their hands and said; "Here, you do it."  The levers of the developers were hastily pushed into the hands of the player in an attempt for CA to avoid committing to a vision.  The result is 100+ options to work through, so if the game isn't compelling, well that's on the player now.  It is a total abdication of responsibility.  But my concern isn't Pharaoh, or even the aging Warhammer III, which is now receiving it's own option creep.  It's what is coming next.  We as players need to collectively encourage CA to retake responsibility and craft a compelling future game.  A new Total War cannot launch as a bland, directionless entry with 200+ options for the player to "handcraft their dream experience" or whatever the marketing department comes up with that month.  It needs the exact opposite, a tight, compelling narrative with real challenge and interesting gameplay decisions.  Be confident in yourselves.  And if you genuinely don't know, - ask.  You have so many tools available; Surveys, BETAs, social media feedback, the player base will always get involved.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading.  I actually had these thoughts long ago with Pharaoh, but since it was clear Dynasties was more of an attempt to recoup development expenditure before moving swiftly onto better things, it felt rather pointless to get into at the time.  What actually encouraged me to post this was Civilization 7.  Another great strategy series that sadly has hit very rough seas, similar to recent Total Wars.  Briefly, their current modus operandi is to not address the overwhelming feedback that the game needs fundamental reworks and instead, you guessed it, add a ton of options so the player can customise existing settings to their liking, thus handing responsibility to the player.  This of course will absolutely fail to appease the players who stuck around hoping for change, and the decline will continue.

Sid Meier's thoughts on this exact subject, with timestamp: https://youtu.be/MtzCLd93SyU?si=jU5WwIn7UFD2ofux&t=2663