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

[Infinitron]

 

[tabacila]

And as expected from CA, day 1 DLC announced for a game 6 months from release and for which we have not seen actual unscripted gameplay.

 

[Rahdulan]

Clearly this pre-order nonsense is working seeing as they keep doing it. Sorry, EARLY ADOPTION PROGRAM.

 

[mbv123]

CA? More like EA, amirite?

 

[A horse of course]

Lol at the Like/Dislike ratio. Looks like it got bombed by ArchAutisthammer fans and some other e-celebs.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Ahhh there's the gnashing of teeth I was waiting for. Yes, tear into the greedy cunts for having such a shitty DLC policy.

 

[tabacila]

I don't think CA cares very much. This game is not for us shitlords, but for the grorious people's republic. Apparently the slanted eyed fucks are preordering like crazy:
https://old.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/9jgbka/meanwhile_in_china/

 

[mbv123]

You can't say that they don't know their main market. Only huge western chinkaboos care about this shit and are a minority. Who cares about them when you have billions of chinksects to exploit?

 

[Edija]

You can't say that they don't know their main market. Only huge western chinkaboos care about this shit and are a minority. Who cares about them when you have billions of chinksects to exploit?

Are you sure that the game will even be legal in China? I heard some hearsay that it won't. If that is the case Chinkhammer will be a massive fail. TWWH content is where the money is at when it comes to Western Audiences. Maybe a new title like Medieval 3 but there is still the promise of TWWH 3. CA would be insane to announce another major title, they are all over the place already creating content left and right that isn't really having the best reactions.

 

[Micormic]

Can't believe people still buying their games. Rome 2 was the final straw for me after still sort of amusing but disappointing empire/napoleon.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...les-and-bromance-in-total-war-three-kingdoms/

Betrayal, battles and bromance in Total War: Three Kingdoms

Let me tell you about Ed and Peter. Those aren’t their real names, because they don’t have any. When I spoke to Creative Assembly’s development and communications manager Al Bickham, he didn’t give any to the hypothetical heroes he used to explain how relationships work in the upcoming Total War: Three Kingdoms. He did explain that one of them might be trying to kill you.

We’ll get to that, and why a dash of Crusader Kings style intrigue might make this the spiciest Total War yet. But you’ll need some context if Pete’s betrayal is going to sting.

Three Kingdoms takes place in one of two versions of third century China. If you choose to play in Classic Mode, then you’ll be dropped into the middle of three warring factions, warring more or less as they actually warred: “with generals who are regular human beings, and as squishy as any other human wearing 30 kilos of armour,” Bickham told me. “But if you play in Romance Mode you can use them as powerful units in their own right – you can tear across the battlefield and have a real laugh with them.”

These are the heroes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a 14th Century novel that recounts the events of the period – but with a dollop of near deific feats from the major players, plus a sprinkling of mythological creatures.

Pick Classic Mode, and “you’re likely to have those kind of skirmish phases where you’re testing the strength of the enemy, trying to kite part of his army away with light cavalry, or trying to disrupt his formation through faints and tactics like that.” Pick Romance Mode, and you’ll see “excitement, drama, amazing characterisation and firework events”.

If you want both, then you’re out of luck. I’d imagined it might be possible to tick features on and off, but Bickham told me they’d kept the experiences “deliberately segregated”. If you’d rather peer at the past through fantastical rose tinted glasses but don’t want hero units dominating every battle, then tough. Although, as Bickham was keen to stress: “They’re not gods! They’re not invulnerable. If you point all your archers at an enemy hero, he’s going to hurt. If a hero goes and fights an elite warrior unit … he might kill them, or he might rout them, but he’s definitely going to take some chopping up on the way in.”

Which brings us to some hero chopping. Almost. First you’ve gotta learn about guanxi (and be thankful you’re not trying to pronounce it for the first time in front of a developer).

“This is our catch all title for the system of character relationships that we’re building in the game. Guanxi is a Chinese concept of interpersonal relationships, it’s almost like viewing the world around you as a network. Like the Linked In of the ancient world. It embodies concepts of friendship, respect, reciprocity – there’s a whole lot of stuff bound up in it that’s kind of crucial.”

Here’s where Ed and Peter step in. Bickham asks me to imagine a commander and a strategist, with complementary skills that make me decide to repeatedly throw them into the fray together. They could wind up forming a rivalry, where they each strive to outperform the other – or they might just be mates.

“Let’s take friendship: in battle, those guys will fight all the harder, they might get some kind of defensive bonus as well, because they’re fighting arm to arm with their blood brother. But if one of them falls, the other might go berserk. You might lose control of him and he might charge off into the nearest enemy unit – regardless of how much health he’s got left – with a cry for vengeance for his fallen brother. So, swings and roundabouts.”

Even if they don’t fall on the battlefield, there are other reasons your favourite heroes might leave you – because they’re people. Or at least, like people, they have values. “Every character has a list of predestined traits which you don’t know about at the start”, Bickham explains, “you have to work with them if you want to keep them on side.” If you’re constantly at war and Ed happens to prefer peace, then he might just up and leave.

Worse, Peter might decide to join him. “Blood may be thicker than water, and he might be like ‘aw, I’m gonna miss my strategist bud. You know what, I’m going to join him’. So he might be fairly satisfied with the faction because he’s a commander and he likes going to war, but actually that bond might outweigh his satisfaction level with the way you’re playing the game. And they’ll go off and appear in other factions recruitment pools, and then ten turns down the line you might be facing your best general in battle.”

In the most exciting scenario of all, though, that might be part of your plan. Pete might be a spy.

Not every character is up for it – no matter how strong his devotion to his leader, Ed might refuse such a dishonourable task. Most characters, though, can be convinced to go rogue. Once they’ve been assigned to skulduggery, the rest of the world will see that hero part ways with your faction – and then they’ll try to recruit him for themselves. That’s when things get interesting.

“The longer a spy remains undercover and doesn’t do anything particularly outrageous, the stronger their cover rating gets as they build a network of informants and a coterie of loyal people around to provide them with alibis. So you’re less likely to break cover when you do an action, and when your cover level gets high enough you start unlocking new spy abilities.
As far as the rival faction leader is concerned he’s a loyal guy, he’s sending him around the world to fight – and you’re just keeping an eye on him. He’s got to keep his cover, so he’s going to fight you with all his might because he’s employed by the enemy.”

I’m used to spies being able to poison water supplies or sabotage buildings. Here, they can also end empires.

“You can assign an heir, and you want your faction leader to be the best character that he can be. So if this guy has weak sons and decides to name your spy as his heir, you can kick off a civil war. You can divide that faction in two, because they’ll have built up loyalties – and friendships, crucially. Suddenly, your spy and half the enemy’s territory become yours to fight the other faction. That’s not easy, it takes a really long time and it’s an endgame thing, but that’s the extreme you can take spying to.”

But what if Peter’s plot didn’t go to plan? What if an unlucky dice roll unravelled the conspiracy, unveiling him for the traitorous scumbag he is? In that case, the faction leader would have a choice. “He can execute him out of hand, or he can attempt to play them back as a double agent.” If the leader picks the second option, “your spy will come back to you and be like ‘sorry, I did my best!’”.

You’re just as susceptible to chicanery as the AI, and might want to think twice before deciding to pass on the reigns to anyone who’s dallied outside your forces. Especially if you’re playing multiplayer, and there’s something strange about your friend’s tone. Edwin Evans-Thirlwell was warned about that when he got his hands on at Gamescom, as well as being told about spying nuances I haven’t dug into here.

I’ve never really gotten into a Total War game. I don’t have the patience to keep my men in formation, nor the desire to learn what formations they should form in the first place. I am interested in stories though, and it’s possible that duplicitous, personable characters can power a storytelling machine the likes of Total War has never seen. With the accessibility of Romance Mode combined with the intrigue of espionage, this could be the first War to hold my attention.

 

[thesheeep]

Why do they let someone who isn't even into the genre... ugh, it's not even worth thinking about.

 

[RNGsus]

That first paragraph was garbage. Fire these cunts already.

Rome 2 still costs >$100 for the full game, so all 'culture' packs and expansions. 5 years later. If these cocksuckers actually waited to release their games when they're complete, we would drown under the pr necessary to remind us they exist.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/diplomacy-in-total-war-three-kingdoms-part-1

Diplomacy in Total War: THREE KINGDOMS – Part 1

Brew up a bucket of tea and buckle in: this is the long read!

Total War: THREE KINGDOMS isn’t just a new period for Total War. It represents a phase of evolution for a host of traditional features and systems that you’ll be familiar with from titles past. These include army composition and management, characters – who can now build relationships and form attitudes towards one another – buildings, technologies and much more.

Diplomacy is a biggie, and marks the single most significant redesign of the system in Total War’s history. It’s the subject of our first THREE KINGDOMS campaign walkthrough video (which you can watch here), but we thought a wider-ranging explanation was in order as there’s loads going on under the hood – hence this blog.

In brief, our aim is to enable the player to achieve a wider range of outcomes through diplomacy, via a system that offers more potential actions, a far more granular approach to deal-making, and a dash of intrigue thrown in for good measure. The result is something that enables you to execute more elaborate plans and become more of a puppet master than ever before.

To support these new aims and features, we’ve essentially rewritten the diplomacy model and AI from scratch, in order to fully support – and exploit! – all the new tools available.

Let’s start with the basics of diplomacy’s functionality and how they’ve changed.

Diplomatic Attitude and Deal Evaluation
Your diplomatic standing with another faction is still the key factor in determining whether they’ll deal with you, and defines which deals they’re willing to discuss. However, another faction’s attitude towards you is coloured by more than just your previous military and diplomatic form. AI Warlords also take into account any spy actions you’ve taken against them, your Warlord’s friendship or rivalry status with them, and how much of a strategic threat you pose. While AI factions in past games took note of your military strength, they now take into account how aggressive you are with your armies as well.

So, your diplomatic standing defines which deals you’re able to offer an AI Warlord. You’ll unlock new types of deal as your faction rank rises, too. You begin the game as a mere noble, and will have to work through the ranks before you can make a claim to become Emperor, with each rank bringing new benefits such as advanced diplomacy options.

When you propose a deal to an AI Warlord, he’ll consider what it’s going to cost you, and that cost can vary enormously depending on a host of factors. Diplomatic standing plays a big role of course, as well as your relative military strength. But a bunch of concepts new to Three Kingdoms play into the AI’s evaluation of a proposal’s cost.

How much they actually respect and trust you plays an important role. Each AI Warlord can also identify a main threat to its existence. If you’re that main threat, certain deals will become easier, while others become harder. Likewise, if you and they share a common threat in the world, deals will be achieved on more affordable terms. Distance plays a part too; the further away a faction is geographically, the less relevant and valuable it becomes to an AI negotiator. He’ll also assess the diplomatic consequences of the deal you place before him. How will the rest of the world react to the deal? If a deal with you impacts his diplomatic standing with other factions, you can expect the cost to rise in line with the severity.

Your Warlord now has a trustworthiness rating which can rise and fall in line with your behaviour, and this affects how much a Warlord respects you. Certain actions are viewed as treacherous – cancelling a ten-turn loan repayment for example, or breaking another major commitment. Some AI personalities openly oppose treacherous behaviour, and will feel duty-bound to declare war on you. And because interpersonal respect plays a part in diplomacy, a faction changing hands between one Warlord and another can be a major catalyst for change. Here’s an example…

Scenario 1
The Han Governor Liu Biao forges strong diplomatic bonds with the Warlord Liu Bei. Their two factions trade, they lend each other funds from time to time, and trust builds between them.

However, a great general under the tyrant Dong Zhuo, one that Liu Biao has met many times in battle and who is now one of his major rivals, becomes dissatisfied with his lot in life. He leaves Dong Zhuo’s service, and is subsequently hired by Liu Bei for his battlefield expertise.

As time passes, the general fights side by side with Liu Bei, and the two form a powerful friendship. Liu Bei ultimately adopts the general as his son and heir. When Liu Bei passes away, the new heir steps up and assumes the mantle of Warlord, taking control of the faction. One of your major rivals is now in command of a faction with which you used to be close. Under his leadership, deals become more costly to achieve, and the diplomatic relationship begins to sour…

The Negotiation Stage
A key change for diplomacy is the introduction of more granular negotiation. Diplomatic dealings now take the form of haggling, and with more tradeable items, resources and pacts in your diplomatic armoury than ever before, you’re less reliant on pure cash deals.

When you approach a Warlord and propose a deal, you’ll get a positive or negative evaluation figure, indicating how much cost he attaches to it. The idea is to balance the scales with different offers until you reach a positive figure of at least +1, which ensures he’ll sign. Here’s an example of how it can work in practice…

Scenario 2
Liu Biao approaches Cao Cao and proposes a trade deal. It turns out Cao Cao is very keen to sign the deal, indicated by a +8 figure in the diplomacy UI. As it only requires a minimum positive figure of +1 to seal a deal, this gives Liu Biao some positive-sentiment wiggle-room to play with. Maybe there’s more he can get in return…

He browses Cao Cao’s list of owned Ancillaries, and spies a fine, fast horse. He proposes that Cao Cao throw in the horse as well, which subtracts 7 from the overall evaluation total, leaving it at +1. In short, Cao Cao places a high value on his stallion, but a trade deal with Liu Biao just outweighs it.

Liu Biao makes the offer, and it’s accepted. Their factions are now trading to mutual benefit, and as a bonus, Liu Biao now has a fine new charger to ride into battle. Or maybe he’ll gift it to one of his generals in order to increase their satisfaction level…

So, when you’re requesting a deal with an AI Warlord and their first response is a negative figure, this doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to do the deal – if it’s beyond their consideration, you’ll get a flat “No!”. A negative figure indicates that the Warlord perceives the offer to be valuable to you and wants you to make it worth their while, and they of course arrive at this figure according to the factors mentioned above.

With such an offer on the table, a new button will appear marked Make This Work. This is a down-to-brass-tacks shortcut which tells you what the deal is worth to the other Warlord – thus giving you a baseline to work from in the negotiation.

You might ask a Warlord for Military Access to his Commanderies, for example, which he places a very high value on. You make the request and it appears with a -12 value attached in the negotiation panel. You then click Make This Work – the value balances up to +1, and a demand for 4500 gold appears. This is the sum you’d need to pay him in order to sign a Military Access agreement. If that’s a bit rich for you, here’s where you begin the haggling process. By adding further offers, such as food, territory, payment by instalments or something else entirely, maybe you can drive down that lump sum to something manageable, or even do away with it altogether in lieu of an arrangement that’s less costly to you, but equally valuable to him.

Vassal States
Vassal mechanics have expanded significantly. The relationship between a Vassal State and its Lord is now multidimensional, offering many new benefits for both owning vassals and becoming one. There’s also a burden of responsibility, and a healthy dose of relationship management for a vassal lord to attend to.

The core benefit for a vassal lord is that his vassals pay him a healthy percentage of their gross income each turn. In turn, he’s expected to protect them militarily. Therefore, if a faction declares war on a vassal, it also declares war on the vassal’s lord. And that protection is reciprocal: if you declare war on a vassal lord, its vassals will join the war against the aggressor. This makes military actions against a lord with multiple vassals a potentially very dangerous prospect.

It also means becoming a vassal needn’t be a bad thing, and while it can be forced, it can also be a choice – you can actually offer to become a vassal for another faction. If you’re small, militarily weak and threatened by your neighbours, becoming a vassal for a larger power grants you those protections. You still function as a faction of course – vassalage is not a form of slavery – but with certain limitations in place. You’ll pay the tithe to your lord each turn, and if you wish to initiate a war against another faction, you’ll have to negotiate permission with your lord. If they agree, they will join you in that war. As a vassal, you can still engage in trade and general diplomacy with other factions, enhancing your empire in spite of your status.

Moreover, being a vassal lord does not mean your vassals are subservient to you in all matters. Diplomatic standing is still important – if your standing with your vassal/s drops below a certain threshold, they’ll declare their independence, which puts you in a state of war with them. But a vassal can also approach its lord and negotiate for liberation; cutting a deal for their independence instead, a far more diplomatic solution to regaining solo status.

A lord can choose to grant independence to their vassal which, as you might expect, brings a huge benefit to their diplomatic standing. Even better, granting your vassal independence, then inviting them to an alliance you’re part of – essentially liberating them, elevating them, and treating them as an equal – will please them beyond compare.

At the other end of the spectrum, a lord can choose to annexe a vassal, at which point the vassal’s territory, armies and characters become wholly owned by the lord and part of his faction. This carries a penalty however – it’s a dishonourable thing to do, and will be seen by all other factions as a major act of treachery. Even more so if the lord has already pledged never to annexe that vassal as part of a prior negotiation!

In a situation where a lord has multiple vassals and annexes one of them, the lord will suffer massive diplomatic standing penalties with all their other vassals. It’s wholly possible that some – or all – will declare immediate independence from, and enter a war against, their former lord. And who would blame them, fearing they might be next in line to face a hostile takeover from an honourless lord?

The benefits to owning a stable and carefully managed network of vassals can be great. With the income they collectively generate for you, there’s less reliance on funds generated by your own infrastructure, perhaps freeing you to pursue your other civic goals.

Diplomatic Actions
Three Kingdoms offers a significant range of new diplomatic actions. Rather than overwhelm the player with a screenful, we’ve bound them into distinct categories: War and Peace, Trade and Marriage, Alliances, and Diplomatic Treaties.

War and Peace
War and Peace does what it says on the tin: all formal declarations of war and peace reside here, including support actions, such as requests and offers of military support. And there are plenty of new options in the mix, not least those regarding vassals. These are broadly covered in the Vassals section above.

You can now sabre-rattle a Warlord, by issuing a war ultimatum. It’s a useful tool for getting what you want, but should only be employed with due forethought. Threatening a faction that is twice as powerful as yours militarily, for example, is going to get you into hot water tout-suite. And unlike more civil negotiations, the other Warlord will keep his cards close to his chest. Threaten a faction with war, and the AI Warlord’s evaluation numbers will be hidden. Unlike other forms of negotiation, you have to make your best guess as to the outcome, blind to the true numbers. If they reject your demands, war it is.

Trade and Marriage
Alongside the usual cash requests and offers, you can now request regular payments, or offer regular payments in return for something. These are fixed-term deals that expire after 10 turns, and broaden your options considerably. How many times have you desperately needed a truce with another faction, but can’t persuade them without a wad of cash you just don’t have? Now you can pay them in instalments… assuming they trust you to stick to the agreement, of course. It also means you can lend money, with payments returned in instalments.

Food, which is critical to public order and military supplies, is also now tradeable. And provided you have the storage infrastructure to cope, you can actually stockpile it. It’s a vital resource for all factions, and some factions have little or no farmland of their own – which of course implies new forms of leverage. Here’s another example…

Scenario 3
Ever the artful governor, Liu Biao has been negotiating food-trade deals with other Warlords, and developing grain storage building chains in each of his Commanderies in order to stockpile. He currently has 60 surplus food; public order is at an all-time high, and his patrolling armies are few but well-provisioned. But how to expand his army count? He needs a new revenue stream.

He approaches the Warlord Yuan Shao, whose holdings have remained modest and profitable, but with no farms of his own, he struggles with food provision. Yuan Shao has approached Liu Biao several times before in order to secure food trades, and his northern Commandery is threatened by Dong Zhuo, who has been using his armies aggressively. Liu Biao spies his opportunity.

He offers Yuan Shao 50 food in order to become his vassal. It’s a big ask of course, but with vassalage comes a pledge of military support – support which Yuan Shao sorely needs. He agrees to the deal, and becomes Liu Biao’s vassal.

Trade agreements can also be arranged via the Trade and Marriage menu (of course!). Individual regions can also now be traded, which is one of the most effective ways of gaining long-term access to specific mined resources, agricultural lands, or towns. And you can now use Ancillaries as bargaining chips to swing deals, or as trade items in their own right. Many of these are practical – such as weapons, armour and mounts; some are merely ornamental but valuable, and some grant unique abilities or skills when given to a character. Some are legendary in nature – such as the unique weapons and armour of the legendary Warlords of the Three Kingdoms period.

And yes, you can arrange marriages. When a marriage proposal is made, you can decide where the couple will reside – with your faction or with the spouse’s. This can be a useful way of acquiring a specific character for your faction, which can benefit you in a number of ways.

And that’s all for now! We’ll be back soon with the second of our diplomacy videos, in which we’ll be focusing on alliances, coalitions and diplomatic treaties, along with another blog to elaborate on those features in detail.

 

[tabacila]

Can't wait to spend tens of minutes negotiating a complex deal with another faction, just to have them attack me the next turn.

 

[RNGsus]

Bottom line is, you can marry off your king's daughters and kill your ally's enemies, but if you happen to occupy a province flagged in their AI, you will be double-crossed anyway.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/diplomacy-in-total-war-three-kingdoms-part-2

This is the second part of our close-up look at Diplomacy in Total War: Three Kingdoms, and like the first part, is accompanied by a video which you can watch here. In this one, we’re looking at how faction alliances work in the game, and how their functionality has expanded from previous titles.

(If you didn’t catch the first video and blog, which deal with core Diplomacy functionality, you can enjoy them here and here.)

So! Pop-history time. In the wake of the Han Dynasty’s steady collapse, the Three Kingdoms period was characterised by a series of shifting coalitions and alliances that formed, drifted, collapsed and reformed anew, as China’s warlords pursued their various agendas, and the country tacked the winds of change towards ultimate unification. This is something we deemed vital to reflect in Total War: Three Kingdoms’ gameplay, so we’ve made some pretty fundamental changes to the way alliances work, and moulded them into two distinct forms: Coalitions and Military Alliances. While they share many common features, they offer different levels of choice, control and commitment.

So what do they have in common? Well, the main elements are increased diplomatic standing with other members, and decision by consensus. Any major action which affects the alliance – such as taking it as a whole to war with another alliance, or inviting another faction to join for example – requires a vote. You’ll see this represented onscreen as a yes/no prediction for how each member Warlord is likely to vote, and naturally a majority is always required for success.

An important consequence of alliance voting is how it can affect the attitudes of voting members. If a Warlord proposes an action to his alliance, the result of the subsequent vote affects the attitudes of the voters in line with how they voted. If the outcome matches the way they voted, their attitude will improve towards the Warlord who proposed the action. If the vote doesn’t go their way, their attitude will fall. So, sometimes it’s worth lending your support to an initiative you’re not entirely comfortable with in order to keep your relations with other alliance-members strong.

We’ve also approached alliances with the intention of making power-groups more easily identifiable and more elegant to achieve on a technical front. In previous games, joining an alliance required individual treaties between individual factions – so an alliance of 3 factions would require 3 individual treaties. Now when a faction joins a coalition or military alliance, either through application or invitation, they become part of the group and automatically become allied with each other. You can then group the diplomatic faction list by alliances, so you can easily see who’s in a coalition or military alliance with who. Plus, when alliances are formed, they are assigned a suitably lofty title, such as the ‘Sacrificial Tree Alliance’, or ‘Thundering Sky Coalition’.

Alliances also affect how you use your armies. Armies are now dependent on military supplies to ensure factors such as morale and replenishment remain tip-top, and while being in friendly territory improves supplies, campaigning in enemy territory reduces them. Extrapolated to extremes, this means that striking deep into enemy territory for long periods will erode an army to uselessness over time. In short, the system places more realistic limits on an army’s effective range. Both coalitions and alliances enable you to increase this range, as a fellow-member’s territory is treated as friendly for the purposes of gathering military supplies. Coupled with the fact that you’ll gain campaign line-of-sight over alliance-member territory, alliances therefore create staging opportunities against enemies that lie further afield.

A coalition is the looser form of the two arrangements, and less binding in nature. Coalitions are easy to sign up to early in the campaign – you only need a moderate diplomatic standing with another faction to form one – and they’re fairly ephemeral. While you’re in a coalition, your diplomatic standing with all members improves, and any factions you’re at war with will lose diplomatic standing with your coalition buddies. Over time, this can help to create more like-minded factions, in terms of their attitudes towards the world around them. However, coalition members have no major contractual duty towards one another. There are no specific terms of mutual defence for example – if a faction declares war on a faction that is a member of a coalition, they declare war only on the faction. But, by the mere fact that your standing improves over time with other coalition members, it becomes much easier to curry military support with individual member-factions in the event you’re attacked.

This is where military alliances differ. If a faction declares war on a member of a military alliance, he can treat it as a private war and duke it out as normal, or he can call on all alliance members to join the war. And crucially, they are duty-bound to join. It’s not an option for them; it’s basically part of the EULA for joining a military alliance, and the thing that makes a military alliance a far more binding form of commitment than a coalition. A military alliance essentially grants you a cast-iron guarantee of group defence in times of war. As you might expect, this makes the cost-to-entry that much higher as well. You need to be of Marquis rank or better to sign a military alliance with another faction, and you need a considerably higher diplomatic standing than you would to sign a coalition. After an alliance is formed however, factions of any rank may request to join, or be invited to join by a member-faction, which then goes to a vote.

The exceptions to this rule are Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu. They’re both able to sign coalitions and military alliances right from the start of the game.

It’s by no means impossible to solo your way through in Total War: Three Kingdoms, and indeed you’ll ultimately need to stand alone when you ascend to the lofty status of Emperor. But to ignore the benefits of coalitions and alliances would be a failure to exploit the leg-up they can give you in terms of inter-factional relations, group defence, and crucially, in combating other powerful, multi-factional alliances which inevitably rise as the campaign progresses. The AI isn’t shy about signing coalitions and military alliances of its own, and you’ll see major power-blocks forming as other faction’s goals and interests align.

 

[Aqualung]

I won't buy this crap

 

[tabacila]

And still no real info about how the non fantasy mode will look.

 

[tabacila]

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-three-kingdoms-warlord-legends-zheng-jiang

So... some unknown bandit woman. Guess she's the diversity hire?

 

[karoliner]

While you wait for this trainwreck to release you can play proper Total War:

 

[Bocian]

Holy shit, this update is huge, they even replaced the voices. Too bad it's not save compatible so I won't finish my playthrough...

 

[fantadomat]

They really are going for the obscure characters.

 

[Agame]

No one gives a fuck about China, just give us TW:WH 3.

 

[fantadomat]

No one gives a fuck about China, just give us TW:WH 3.

Nobody gives any shit about popamole hammer,just give us medieval 3. Or better yet a bankruptcy and the surrounding drama.