Goals

Goals are profoundly important in games. These tie the turns together into a cohesive whole, and also provide tension.

The alternative is aimlessness, where the player can do whatever they like, but there's no strong incentive to do any particular thing, or any need to hurry to do it.

Goals and aimlessness

In my farming game, I created all kinds of things to do. However, the game was strangely aimless, despite its parts being interesting. There was no particular reason to do anything. I tried the simplest answer possible: goal cards, like in Wingspan. They just tell you to do achieve something by game end. If you do, you get points. Suddenly, the game had a direction.

It's also important to create goals of different sizes. Gathering the resources for something, and then paying for it, is a little goal. This is why having "money" or a spendable resource is great for games.

Make multi-step actions.

Agricola has various all-or-nothing systems. If you want to get lots of food, you'll need to plow some fields, get some grain, sow the grain, get some resources, spend them to buy an oven, then bake the grain into bread. These are big goals.

Small goals also tell the player what to do. Players don't want to just be given a million options. This is especially true for new players.

My farm game had end-of-game goals, but the small picture was still confusing. What did the player do in the meantime? I changed the goals, so they could be completed early, for far more points. Then, players knew exactly what to do, and wasted no time trying to complete a goal by the end of the first or second round.

Lords of Waterdeep has "quests". These are medium-sized goals. You gather the required adventurers, and cash in the quest for points.

Create goals by making things with high costs, multiple steps, or even just difficult conditional requirements.

An easier way is just to literally give each player a hand of "goal" cards.

Thresholds

It's fine to award progressive points for achievement, like two points per house you've built. However, these lack tension, and are repetitive. The player just keeps doing the things.

At the end of Wingspan, you might as well spend a few turns getting eggs. They're worth one point each.

Instead, try to have goals with specific objectives, like "have three houses". Alternatively have things that have specific, high, costs.

In my farm game, you can just collect valuable tokens, if you like. However, it's probably better to save up the high cost, and build the Manor or Harbor, which are worth lots of points. These are effectively goals, and the player must come up with a plan, in order to amass enough resources to pay for the building. This is much more interesting.