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Total War: Three Kingdoms - the next major historical Total War title set in ancient China

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Aug 21, 2010
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The only issue right now I've found is that an AI with a NAP can declare on your vassal and if you answer your vassal's call to arms it counts as you breaking the NAP. So until this gets fixed don't take vassals in the early game when you are NAPing everyone around you.

There's a mod to fix this. It makes it so that defending your vassal counts as the attacking player breaking the NAP instead.

Don't leave home without it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1790884130
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014

Raghar

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Good diplomacy in strategy games shows the players the modifiers and thresholds of actions, so you understand how doing something change attitude and what you need to do/give to make a deal. You leave the player to manipulate the world how he wants. Civ IV and Paradox games have that and that's why are the best we have so far.

What makes TW diplo even more ridiculous is that playing on harder difficulties just makes them declare war on the player because he's the player.

Not because they have a specific wargoal. Because the player is the player.
That happens since Empire TW, hard difficulty has a timer, if player isn't in war, one country declares war on player. Also, they didn't implemented internal use of resources when not trading with global powers, which basically made late in game certain trade resources irrelevant.
 
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Finished first game on Legendary as Zheng Jiang in 110 turns. End game is at least not too taxing since you can annex large swathes of territory through confederation and the acknowledge as emperor option. If anything the AI is too quick to come to peace terms once you've smacked some armies around, Sun Ce let me annex everything he had even though I had technically taken only 1 settlement off him (though I had his capital besieged and weakened). Confederating the Han w/ about 25 regions also sped things up a lot, and got me close to my target (All the majors in the north fell to shit so the other opposing emperor was Shi Xie, who I didn't know of until about 10 turns before taking their capital).

The end game was hectic with me fighting on all fronts, but that was mostly because Yuan Shu and Liu Biao started vassalizing people across China and declared on me together. Which in itself isn't a problem, the problem is that if you beat up vassal armies and take vassal lands it doesn't "count" towards them being willing to end the war, and I can't really get to their masters easily (who both took territory far in the west). With e.g. Yuan Shao he blindsided me with a war but I quickly pulled together 3 armies to take 5 or 6 regions before his multi-doomstack armies showed up, at which point I only had to pay him 1.5k cash to fuck off. With vassal spam you just can't do that. Your best hope seems to just be big and attack the vassals, sometimes their master doesn't want to be drawn in and lets you kill them for free.

Diplomacy-wise Dong Zhou somehow survived and I of course made a coalition with him, unfortunately he got his shit pushed in by everyone around him, leaving me with only Han Sui. Han Sui did eventually turn on me, but I chalk that up to the massive diplomatic penalties of Emperor + Infamy.

Lu Bu turned up for recruitment out of nowhere about 3/4ths through my game. He's kind of OP. Him and Zheng could basically solo cities once they got inside. He got 1.2k kills once.

I think this is literally the first total war game I've ever finished, but nonetheless I can already see a huge lack of replay value. My unique units were irrelevant (who uses purple leaders for combat?), most of the tech-unlocked units you won't get (why would you tech anything but purple and yellow?), and the end game is all the same super units anyway. Most of my armies at the end of the game were using essentially the same units as my first army was using (green leader full spears, blue leader 4 ranged/2 artillery, yellow/red leader 2-4 cavalry). Maybe I'll replay a year from now as Cao Cao and have fun screwing around with his diplomacy stuff, but other than that all of the faction-specific stuff looks to be fairly uninspiring "you get more money from doing x or building x". Also China is unfortunately the most boring TW ever in terms of geography. Start location is completely irrelevant outside of starting in a corner since its all basically just large open ground, but I suppose that can't be helped.
 
Last edited:

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
They're revising post-launch plans after the poorly received Eight Princes DLC: https://www.totalwar.com/blog/development-update-blog-02/

THREE KINGDOMS
We released our most successful Total War ever this year, with Three Kingdoms selling more copies at launch than any previous title. We were excited to welcome so many new players from China, and incredibly proud and honoured that they thought we’d made such an entertaining game inspired by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

It was also a proud moment when we realised we had stellar sales in the west as well. A real moment of vindication for the team who worked so hard to embrace a new era and culture, shake up some really fundamental TW systems, and deliver a new gameplay landmark in the series.

We were also excited to touch on a later and fascinating period for our first DLC, Eight Princes, but we’re really aware that players were looking for something else, and so we’re currently working hard on our mid-term, post-launch plans for the game with a view to doing more of what the community is feeding back to us on.

We still like the idea of Chapter Packs that explore other chapters of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, though the next one will be more recognisable to the majority of players. We’re also working on DLC that adds significantly to the main campaign and are continuing to look at how that might develop and grow into some much bigger DLCs over time.

Yes absolutely, the Nanman are coming. Before then over the next year though, we’ll be visiting the era of the Yellow Turban Rebellion and Liang Province rebellion, and then the clash of Cao Cao vs Lü Bu in the central plains. And before that, there’s a free update coming in October.

Certain characters will be getting new, unique artwork for the main campaign, alongside a number of fixes and balances. We’re also aware that changes to how data is organised for 3K are causing some additional problems with mods when we update the game, and we’re looking at ways to solve or reduce this problem.

Details aside, this is really just the beginning for Three Kingdoms. In the long term, we have some very grand plans which will encompass a whole timeline of events, conflicts and characters throughout the period. Nothing‘s set in stone yet; as mentioned, we’re still in the process of taking on board feedback from players around the world. But you can be sure, a few years down the line, that Three Kingdoms will evolve from the great game it is now to something vastly more epic.
 

BlackAdderBG

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I'm amazed by their consistency to release utter boring games, no matter if in different time periods, places and even fantasy. Who is buying these trash games?
 

BlackAdderBG

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More like shithammer larpers seeing it's 2 times more popular on steam. Three Kingdoms is hitting 3k players when China and EU are sleeping. They have lost what, 95% of the players. :lol:
 

Lone Wolf

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More like shithammer larpers seeing it's 2 times more popular on steam. Three Kingdoms is hitting 3k players when China and EU are sleeping. They have lost what, 95% of the players.

I enjoyed TK, but it doesn't have the staying power of TW:WH2. The differences between playing as Cao Cao and Liu Bei are relatively minute, despite a few different gameplay mechanics. They share - more or less - the same roster, and once you've played 50-70 hours and figured the game out, there is little incentive to continued replays. Eight Princes introduced more (and simultaneously less) of the same, which was disappointing. Finally, the mod scene is more or less DOA, beyond a few character portraits and some light unit rebalancing.

Back to playing WH2, which is objectively the superior product (with, sadly, inferior turn processing times). To be fair, though, I doubt CA care a great deal about how many concurrent TK players there are, as long as the number jumps massively with each DLC release, before dwindling again. It's not a live service game. Pretty sure that both the base game and Eight Princes sold very well.
 

Tigranes

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If it is, then I'd be glad to eat my words. I gave up on trying TWs after so many scams, so of course I'm not completely up to date.
 
Self-Ejected

RNGsus

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I'd love the diplomacy of a Paradox game in a Total War game. While Paradox games also have wonky shit going on, usually the diplomacy actually works and leads to interesting scenarios. I also like the concept of wargoals and subsequent peace deals. It would bring some variety into Total War's typical "once you declare war, the enemy will fight to the end, and won't accept a peace deal where he loses something even if he's on the brink of destruction".

3K is getting pretty close to a Paradox diplomacy system for TW. You can see the numbers and every trade option is open. You can pay for a non-aggression pact, or if you are the strongest then others will pay you. Your reputation modifies all deals so if you start breaking pacts you'll suffer it in future negotiations.

As for not having every war become a total war, it's also much better. If you win a battle or two small enemies will absolutely roll over and become a vassal without needing to assault any cities, often paying you an additionally huge amount of gold per turn. Large enemies start being amenable to peace once you've started making gains.

One thing I like is that territory exchanges work and seem fairly balanced (even in Paradox games they are disabled interactions for AI since otherwise players would be able to abuse them too hard). e.g. after a few battles I once traded one of the resource settlements to Sun Jian in exchange for ending the war and 3x what it made for me in gold per turn for 10 turns. So it was a net gain for me so long as I got the settlement back within 30 turns. That was enough time to completely kill Yuan Shao and unite most of North China.

The only issue right now I've found is that an AI with a NAP can declare on your vassal and if you answer your vassal's call to arms it counts as you breaking the NAP. So until this gets fixed don't take vassals in the early game when you are NAPing everyone around you.

Good diplomacy in strategy games shows the players the modifiers and thresholds of actions, so you understand how doing something change attitude and what you need to do/give to make a deal. You leave the player to manipulate the world how he wants. Civ IV and Paradox games have that and that's why are the best we have so far.

What makes TW diplo even more ridiculous is that playing on harder difficulties just makes them declare war on the player because he's the player.

Not because they have a specific wargoal. Because the player is the player.

I'm pretty sure its more of the opposite, it's agnostic to the player's faction. Rather harder difficulties look at how many units a faction has vs. how much territory it has. If they see a faction with only a few armies and massive swathes of territory they think its easy pickings to swoop in and get some land. It just happens that the player has a lot less armies per land area than AI on harder difficulties.
And it just so happens the AI can spawn a couple full stacks at your front door and they don't suffer occupation penalties.
 

Space Satan

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I can't feel involved with TW games because:
Empire - CA abandoned any attemptsto fix completely broken game. To the point where mods done all the work EVEN with AI. Plus their excuses about how AI was so bad because AI developer left the team and they had ONE AI developer they could not replace so they released unfinished shit.
Shogun 2 - CA milked this shit to death, leaving graring balance issues, and killing MP with paid DLC superunits.
Rome 2 - abandonedware with abysmal AI, optimizations and cut content, shoved to DLC later. And it turned out their AI problems were not related to some one guy developing AI and noone was to blame now.
Warhamer - at that point I lost all hope for CA plus dead setting. But people praise it for fixing unit pathing which was almost absent in Rome 2.
Warhammer 2 - was pretty much the same.
Brittannia - that was horrible and died a horrible death well deserved.
China - I just don't tick with China.
 

Rahdulan

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I can't feel involved with TW games because:
Empire - CA abandoned any attemptsto fix completely broken game. To the point where mods done all the work EVEN with AI. Plus their excuses about how AI was so bad because AI developer left the team and they had ONE AI developer they could not replace so they released unfinished shit.

From what I remember they honestly did make an attempt to fix Empire. We're talking like 6+ months of patching, but like you said it was a broken game regardless because of the switch to a new engine that CA never ever really got over. Warscape engine still torments Total War games, it's just that people kinda accepted the quirks and problems it brings as normal.
 
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RNGsus

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There are three mechanics I want in the future: chain of command, fog of war, and logistics. The chain of command and fog of war would counterbalance the aegis of the player. As in real war, the CoC mechanic can be disrupted, even broken, once melee's joined. Warscape would process all the unit stat logs, such as unit strength, proximity to generals, whether the captain is alive, who's on their flanks, discipline and training, a unit's chevrons, etc. then judge whether that unit can respond to the player's commands. Logistics has always belonged center stage with settlement planning, technology trees, and tactical battles. The first step is introducing provisions, and this would determine action points. Once this is done, logistics should be made a General's attribute. Then the new attribute could be assigned it's three character abilities: foraging, raiding, and supply train.

Foraging is simply the exploitation of a foreign power's produce, which has been the behavior of armies since the very beginning. Raiding needs no introduction, but I would like to see raids become an integral part of the campaign, as they have always been the way of armies. Two effects I have in mind are mitigating upkeep and cutting military administration, as well as stocking some provisions. Finally, supply trains. Think trade lanes, and you've got it. Supply trains would link the general's army to the last settlement they garrisoned. The settlement would accrue war weariness, on top of a hit to produce, while the army has provisions for any extended campaign.

The number of trains any settlement can supply would be reasonably low, so the AI couldn't exploit itself to death. If the settlement was ever lost, or the distance became too great, the stranded army would suffer irremediable loss to desertion, attrition, disease and mutiny. Another scenario may be an enemy raid on the train itself. Unlike piracy, the aggressor here would need to win a tactical battle. In the event the battle was lost, the supply train is gone, not to mention the casualties taken. Whatever the reason if a supply train is lost, armies of any real substance would need to disband, fall back to a friendly, very productive region, or blitz a nearby settlement and hope to garrison there, because raiding and foraging alone wouldn't support them.

I've got a siege war system on paper somewhere. Wrote it back when I was an active modder for S2/R2, when my main concern was battle AI, but there's no point even thinking about that shit. I'd rather keep it to meself and possibly go the Ultimate General route.
plus dead setting.

How is that even relevant.
You mean how is shifting focus from historical to high fantasy relevant?
 

Fedora Master

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Okay, granted. I assumed Satan was mad that the setting wasn't "alive" in the sense that Age of Sigmar is.
 

Commissar Draco

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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Lost TW game I bought and played was MTW2 and frankly speaking I still like RTW much more despite its aging badly graphics (mitigated by mods partially) the game play is less tedious in this one and battles more dynamic while still being very tactical of course, the shit they kept adding like Merchants (useless and out of scope of game) Princesses (Like anybody would allow the maiden of high birth to travel around the continent and act as diplomat in medieval any period before age of Liberalism) was pointless and they started to cut features I did liked like watching your town outside battle mode) instead of adding options like perhaps designing town and cities layout and town walls/Castles by yourself or more dynamic sieges. Empire scrapped old engine and did all on Battlescape which broken battles and this was down hill from this point. Did not even bothered to demo RTW2 and Attila and I am not interested in Far East States warfare, and Warhammer being blatant cash grab (they sold the same game twice plus shit tones of DLCs) convinced me to seek more green pastures.
 

Lone Wolf

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You mean how is shifting focus from historical to high fantasy relevant?

Pretty sure that's not what he meant. 'Dead setting' most likely equates to the fact that Warhammer Fantasy was End Times'd by GW.
 

BlackAdderBG

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There are three mechanics I want in the future: chain of command, fog of war, and logistics. The chain of command and fog of war would counterbalance the aegis of the player. As in real war, the CoC mechanic can be disrupted, even broken, once melee's joined. Warscape would process all the unit stat logs, such as unit strength, proximity to generals, whether the captain is alive, who's on their flanks, discipline and training, a unit's chevrons, etc. then judge whether that unit can respond to the player's commands. Logistics has always belonged center stage with settlement planning, technology trees, and tactical battles. The first step is introducing provisions, and this would determine action points. Once this is done, logistics should be made a General's attribute. Then the new attribute could be assigned it's three character abilities: foraging, raiding, and supply train.

Foraging is simply the exploitation of a foreign power's produce, which has been the behavior of armies since the very beginning. Raiding needs no introduction, but I would like to see raids become an integral part of the campaign, as they have always been the way of armies. Two effects I have in mind are mitigating upkeep and cutting military administration, as well as stocking some provisions. Finally, supply trains. Think trade lanes, and you've got it. Supply trains would link the general's army to the last settlement they garrisoned. The settlement would accrue war weariness, on top of a hit to produce, while the army has provisions for any extended campaign.

The number of trains any settlement can supply would be reasonably low, so the AI couldn't exploit itself to death. If the settlement was ever lost, or the distance became too great, the stranded army would suffer irremediable loss to desertion, attrition, disease and mutiny. Another scenario may be an enemy raid on the train itself. Unlike piracy, the aggressor here would need to win a tactical battle. In the event the battle was lost, the supply train is gone, not to mention the casualties taken. Whatever the reason if a supply train is lost, armies of any real substance would need to disband, fall back to a friendly, very productive region, or blitz a nearby settlement and hope to garrison there, because raiding and foraging alone wouldn't support them.

I've got a siege war system on paper somewhere. Wrote it back when I was an active modder for S2/R2, when my main concern was battle AI, but there's no point even thinking about that shit. I'd rather keep it to meself and possibly go the Ultimate General route.

You mean how is shifting focus from historical to high fantasy relevant?

You ok buddy? FoW is in the game since Rome 2 and logistics are in Three kingdoms. They both suck.
 

Fedora Master

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It's clear that CA are pushing their own ability and the engine to its limits. Every single mechanic introduced in 3K was simply a slightly reworked version of what was already possible. Same with the new mechanics in WaWa. There won't be any extensive new features because Warscape can't handle them.
 

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