In strategy games (of all kinds, 4X, RTS, MOBA, etc.) I've noticed that most games eventually reach a point where it's pretty clear who and the rest of the game will win. Just play the moves and if the victorious Player / the victorious team does not make a big mistake, she wins.
This is just a kind of strategy game. They naturally have a "snowball" effect. Gameplay is about preparing for success against your opponents in the future. Those who do better in the earlier stages of the game should win in the later stages. This happens to some extent in every strategy game, even the most classic ones. In chess it becomes increasingly difficult to win as your opponent takes more and more of your pieces and forces your remaining pieces into difficult situations.
As I said, this is just a basic part of the genre, so I would hesitate to call it a problem. In such games, however, there are occasionally games in which no player / team early on gained a significant advantage and the game to the last round fails. In my opinion, these are the most exciting and interesting games you can have. If this is not the case, the late stages of the game can be very boring for all concerned, as the winning player waits for his inevitable victory and the losing player for his inevitable decline (this may be particularly inappropriate for the losing player). Players, as they probably have very few options and it is very unlikely that they have a good time).
So it would be cool if we could design a strategy game that avoids getting into that state all the time, right? Well, I've seen a handful of such games in which a losing player always has all the ways to victory, no matter how far back. The problem with this is that a victory for the winning player can feel very unsatisfactory if a disruption occurs (if a player has dominated the entire game and a losing player finishes a good game at the end of the game to win). As you may think, they do not deserve it. Similarly, the player who has won most of the game can be very unhappy because he feels the victory has been taken from them and he does not deserve to lose. After all, nobody is satisfied with the result. This approach can also make early play less fun because players feel it just does not matter.
So is it possible to design a strategy game that avoids both problems? A game in which we do not consistently end up in a boring strategy game with a failed deal and at the same time make sure that wins are satisfied and earned? Or are these problems far too basic to overcome the strategy game?
If this question is too vague on its own, we can focus on 4X strategy games as these are the games I have experience with and I like to design.
