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Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014


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- Triumph over the land, take charge of the fate of China! Conquer territories and fly your colors!
The game’s map showcases the territory captured and the thrill of expansion using a simplified color system. Everything from war to diplomatic affairs will be geared toward managing and gathering land as players attempt to spread their strategies at will across the vast China map.

- More uniquely personified officers to lead to reunite the empire!
Greater individuality among characters will also be on display, with officers from the Three Kingdoms like Liu Bei and Guan Yu asserting themselves at various situations in order to fully immerse players into the game’s rich history.

- Rulers with different convictions and tactics bring about myriad gameplay!
With organisations now determined through each ruler’s ideals, different game experiences are now possible via different rulers. Even within the same faction, different policies now bring with them different strategies for expansion, making the wise use of various officers a cornerstone of advanced gameplay.
 

eric__s

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I don't want to get too ahead of myself, but these screens are looking quite a bit like 11, which was far and away the best in the series. I'm keeping my expectations low, I got burned with 13, but I can be cautiously optimistic...
 

Tigranes

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There hasn't been a ROTK worth playing since XI, which was also the first actual strategy ROTK worth playing since like V/VI

This one better fucking deliver and none of that fucking real time shit

OK, some info from MANIACAL KOREANS who have been obsessed with the series for the last 20 years & Japanese press info, may or may not just overlap with English info available:

  • Strategy phase (city management, order deployment) & Execution phase (army orders are carried out) are 'repeated' - not 100% sure but I'd assume means we alternate between those phases each turn
  • One map for battles and strategy layers, the entirety of China is divided into hexes, so when your armies march there are supply lines - e.g. you can separate connected enemy cities to ~~~cut off supply lines~~~
  • No predefined borders, possibly? Regional territories don't flip 100% with castle conquest, but depends on moving armies in - I"m not sure if this means armies have to roam the countryside to map-paint or there's some other mechanic. Apparently there's some talk of how devs looked at the phrase 'map painting' and decided to work with that on making a more robust border/territory system, so that you're not just taking single points (cities) but often deciding how far to risk pushing into areas
  • Character personalities: some kind of mechanic where proactive dudes might suggest actions to you that they'd like to take, or even on occasions disobey your orders, as often happened historically
  • Something about organising your territories which seems to be a standard 'set up a governor with instructions to delegate' thing, not sure if there's more to it

1564644681_123.jpg


Holy shit actual supply lines integrated into strategy layer?!?!?!?!

For the first time ever enabling critically important component of actual historical Three Kingdoms era wars, e.g. when Zhuge Liang's six northward campaigns entirely owed their successes and failures to securing and cutting supply lines, giving rise to apocryphal stories like inventing single-wheelbarrows to navigate the shitty terrain around Hanzhong to facilitate grain delivery then having Sima Yi capture & reverse-engineer said wheelbarrows only for them to turn out to be a trap

Must contain erection oh god
 

eric__s

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  • No predefined borders, possibly? Regional territories don't flip 100% with castle conquest, but depends on moving armies in - I"m not sure if this means armies have to roam the countryside to map-paint or there's some other mechanic. Apparently there's some talk of how devs looked at the phrase 'map painting' and decided to work with that on making a more robust border/territory system, so that you're not just taking single points (cities) but often deciding how far to risk pushing into areas
Yeah, look at the colored hexes that trail behind every unit. Area control might also give supply lines, and one strategy (hopefully employed by the AI!!!) might be to just cut off all those little trails. It might even be necessary to have armies stay back to prevent that from happening. If the AI actually takes advantage of these kinds of strategies, that would encourage more units with a smaller amount of soldiers in them. That is unbelievably cool, getting excited.

Edit: Another implication of a system like this could be completely surrounding a city and actually besieging it by cutting off its supply routes.
 
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Tigranes

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YES. Let me splurge out here and talk about some ROTK scenarios that are finally possibly replicable if they do this right:

Of Zhuge Liang's 6 northward campaigns to break the three-kingdom deadlock, we know a major pet theory is that Kongming was ultimately too conservative and careful to take the risks necessary to beat Wei multiple times Shu's strength. In each case Sima Yi basically successfully defended by sitting tight and waiting it out. The Wei Yan records note that in the first invasion, Wei Yan suggested that he take a shortcut through a difficult mountain route to threaten the Wei rear and thus take Chang'an.

Below shows an approximation of Wei Yan's suggested route (red on the right) through rough mountains. Zhuge Liang ultimately opted to use the flatter terrain west (yellow line) to capture Qishan (little mountain icon along the yellow line), and then basically tick all the boxes grabbing castles and key roads on the road East into Wei territory.

R720x0.q80


Notably, the Wei Yan records show that he requested 5,000 elite soldiers to mount the attack - supported by 5,000 men to "carry provisions". A 1:1 ratio of dudes to carry food even for an elite force, precisely because they could not count on a traditional supply line.

Additionally, Wei Yan insisted that once he captured Chang'an (blue dot at the end of the red line above) with a surprise attack, he would be able to use provisions left by the Wei to hold out until the main army arrived. And it is widely thought that this was one of the risks that made Zhuge Liang turn down the offer - the danger of Wei Yan's vanguard taking the castle but then being stuck in it without provisions was too great, a fate that befell many generals; Zhuge Liang himself often enjoyed the tactic of letting enemies take a small castle then holing them up inside it, forcing them to surrender or risk coming out to get provisions.

(In at least one Romance tradition, Wei Yan gets so butthurt that he never got to try, and that all 6 of Zhuge Liang's campaigns failed anyway, that this was the catalyst for his ultimate rebellion on Shu when Kongming copped it.)

Finally, while many scholars & nerds have lamented that Wei Yan's attack might have succeeded where Zhuge Liang ended up failing, Kongming's own strategy was centred around the need for a reliable supply route. The above map shows how Shu and Wei are separated. When Shu originally took Hanzhong (south plains area in map) by Huang Zhong kicking the shit out of Wei & killing Xiahou Yun, it was a major coup for Liu Bei because Hanzhong is such a fantastically defensible position. But conversely, that means marching out of Hanzhong was now a major problem for Zhuge Liang. We know that he marched on Qishan six times because he thought he needed that yellow path to secure a reliable long term supply route for the conquest of Wei.

Ultimately, Zhuge Liang's strategic options were always compromised by the problem of supply routes - forcing him to seek a quick resolution, or to retreat and come back next year at great expense. Even though Wei's armies were always larger, the bottleneck was that the numerically inferior Shu army still had to win several major victories in a row to prevent starvation.

So even a basic set of mechanics where you have to defend the supply routes behind you, plan your next attack based on how to extend the supply, and have large armies retreat from lack of grain, would be FABULOUSLY OPTIMISTIC indeed
 

Matador

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Codex+ Now Streaming!
This thread motivated me to play ROTKXI, but the PC version have no sound after the intro scenes.

Anyone knows how to fix the problem? I would prefer to play the PC version to the PS2 one.
 

Tigranes

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No clue, it's always been fine with me.

My memory of ROTK11 is that it's one of the best versions around, but the massive gridded world map meant a lot of makework - e.g. defending that same port from piddly invasions every fucking month, moving people back and forth. That said, certain historically important chokepoints like Hanzhong and Xinye were done well, allowing you to somewhat replicate, say, Xu Shu's defeat of massive Wei armies coming down Liu Bei's throat.
 

anus_pounder

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From an aesthetic perspective, I'm seeing a lot of repeated portraits from 13 in the trailer. Which is fine, I suppose, since I thought 13 mostly had fantastic stuff, but I hope they at least give the big names new looks.
 

kalganoat

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Wei Yan's plan would have never worked.

The route he proposed was hard to traverse. We are talking about long narrow mountain path. It may be possible for 5000 men to make it through in 10 days but there's no way 5000 supply soldiers can. It would probably take at least a month. In fact later in history other warlords/generals have tried to go through but they all failed.

This path was also not some secret path. It's a route used by thousands of civilians during the Battle of Han River to escape Cao Cao. So there's no guarantee it will be a surprise. If Wei caught wind of this, they just need to block the exit and Wei Yan is fucked.

Let's assume he made it through undetected all the way to Chang'an. He's basically counting on the enemy general to piss his pants and abandon the city. Chang'an's wall was 3.2km long. They got enough provisions to last for months and reinforcements were close by. Why would any general run away? Wei Yan thought he could take the city like that with 5000 men? Not to mention Chang'an was only 6 days away from Luo Yang on horseback. Zhang He and his troops were there. I doubt Wei Yan could do it in 6 days.

Assume he took the city. What then? He's surrounded on all sides and the enemy could reach Chang'an a lot faster than Zhuge's main force.

This is why Zhuge shot down his plan. It's a pipe dream.
 
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Tigranes

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kalganoat Yes, as I wrote above, I think there were good reasons to deny Wei Yan his plan. It's a good illustration of the quandary that Zhuge Liang / Shu faced, though. There seemed to be only one way to beat Wei, and only one path to take that was very obvious. Sima Yi may have been a great strategist in his own right, but he had a much easier job than Zhuge Liang: take a far larger and powerful country's resources, and camp the single bottleneck where the enemy must come every time until they run out of their scant resources.

In contrast, in any ROTK game, taking Chang'an as Shu is identical to any other fight anywhere else, perhaps 20% more difficult due to some of the siege mechanics. So any effort to integrate these major, major, major aspects of ROTK warfare into the game would be brilliant.

You could even argue that Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang's quest was effectively doomed the moment Guan Yu died. It's like having a finite pool of insufficient resources to fight Wei, and then 2/3 of those end up going to your fantastic "ally" whose job is to sit there and not do jack shit with it.
 

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I'm into it. Will pick it up when it releases.
 

RK47

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A lot of problems in RTK13 that wasn't addressed at all even with PUK. Diplomatic system needs work. Army balance too. They took way too many shortcuts. Why are you even hyped after RTK13?

Their latest AI felt like I'm playing with robots. They don't understand the concept of betrayal.

I know a lot of people complain that CIV AI are irrational and declare war at random, but that is a marked improvement than KOEI's 'honorable retard' AI accepting any deal and never breaking any truce making it very easy for players to just game the diplomacy system.
 

Tigranes

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This is why Zhuge shot down his plan. It's a pipe dream.
This is all plausible, but the real reason Zhuge Liang shot him down was that his stats weren't high enough.

Actually, this brings up the question of just how talented Wei Yan was, which is pretty critical to understanding latter day Shu.

The rest of the five generals had all proven themselves repeatedly not only in martial prowess, but tactical thinking and personal valour and leadership (something actually hyper-critical in an age where everything is glued together by 'honour' and loyalty). There's credible arguments that the stereotype of dumbass Zhang Fei is nonsense, because any competent general in this period had to be capable of understanding the strategic layer of battle. For folks like Zhao Yun and Guan Yu, their high marks on all categories is undeniable.

Wei Yan is a bit different. He comes around a bit too late to face off in epic duels with Lu Bu or whatnot, so his personal martial prowess, while obviously considerable, is already coming in as "best of the pale-shadow second generation after the true generation of heroes has passed". Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang clearly did rate him, immediately favouring him despite his history of betrayal and giving him Hanzhong. But he lacks those clear stories where his leadership won the day against the odds, establishing beyond doubt that he is a top general. (Arguably, if the Wei Yan plan above had been approved and succeeded, it would have put him at that very top table.)

I'm not saying Wei Yan was a fraud, but it emphasises Shu's acute problem. They lost most of their legendary generals - perhaps their only saving grace against other more powerful countries - in the space of a few years, and then also lost promising talents like Zhang Fei's son in unfortunate accidents. Wei Yan was clearly talented enough, and probably more talented than anyone Wei had at that stage (themselves suffering from a massive dearth of military leadership). But we might never know if it was him that lacked that little bit extra to truly change the course of wars, or if it was simply that the times had changed, and his China was no longer an opportunistic tumult but of massive well organised armies campaigning along textbook paths in clearly defined seasons.

Trivia: the orthodox records - by Chen Shou witten soon after the fall of Shu - comment that Wei Yan "trained the soldiers well, was braver than the rest, and arrogant by nature, that all who knew him gave way and avoided him" - and that, ultimately, "looking back at all his behaviour, all the wrath he incurred on himself, all of it came from naught but himself." One thing seems clear, he was one angry asshole.
 

Deflowerer

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I wish Sanguozhi was translated into English. Last time I checked, there's nothing.
 

eric__s

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This is why Zhuge shot down his plan. It's a pipe dream.
This is all plausible, but the real reason Zhuge Liang shot him down was that his stats weren't high enough.
The rest of the five generals had all proven themselves repeatedly not only in martial prowess, but tactical thinking and personal valour and leadership (something actually hyper-critical in an age where everything is glued together by 'honour' and loyalty). There's credible arguments that the stereotype of dumbass Zhang Fei is nonsense, because any competent general in this period had to be capable of understanding the strategic layer of battle. For folks like Zhao Yun and Guan Yu, their high marks on all categories is undeniable.
When did Ma Chao do anything significant under Shu? I haven't read the book in 15 years, I really don't remember, but I don't recall him doing anything important after joining Liu Bei. In fact, I mostly remember him joining Liu Bei and then just fading away. I know he took part in capturing Chang An 20 years before joining Shu, but I don't understand or remember what he did to earn his reputation as one of Shu's best generals.
 

laclongquan

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Tactical achievement is one thing, but final success is another. Wei Yan's plan is a good tactical move but doomed in the medium run, let alone long run.

A similar plan to his is the Operation Market Garden, culminating at Arnhem. Using paratrooper to jump deep into enemy line to capture a foothold, with following force to punch through resistance to meet. They couldnt punch through, "a bridge too far", so the para fail at Arnhem.

High risk, high gain moves are unpopular in war not without reason.

Anyway, before 1944 you could argue about Wei Yan plan's merits all you want. After Arnhem, there's just no need. The risk is all there~
This is why Zhuge shot down his plan. It's a pipe dream.
This is all plausible, but the real reason Zhuge Liang shot him down was that his stats weren't high enough.
The rest of the five generals had all proven themselves repeatedly not only in martial prowess, but tactical thinking and personal valour and leadership (something actually hyper-critical in an age where everything is glued together by 'honour' and loyalty). There's credible arguments that the stereotype of dumbass Zhang Fei is nonsense, because any competent general in this period had to be capable of understanding the strategic layer of battle. For folks like Zhao Yun and Guan Yu, their high marks on all categories is undeniable.
When did Ma Chao do anything significant under Shu? I haven't read the book in 15 years, I really don't remember, but I don't recall him doing anything important after joining Liu Bei. In fact, I mostly remember him joining Liu Bei and then just fading away. I know he took part in capturing Chang An 20 years before joining Shu, but I don't understand or remember what he did to earn his reputation as one of Shu's best generals.

Ma Chao play mostly a stationary general who keep down the Qiang people northwestern. There a few major scheme to incite the Qiang into raiding Shu, but the usual counter is sending him northwest and he kept them down no problem. His fame as one of Five Tiger Generals, is mostly hype from Liu Bei's part to gloss over the fact of him being not in use.

Ex-warlord, ex-famous general, latecomer... no one in their right mind would keep him in important positions or holding great army.

Only Cao Cao had the stones to do so, toward Liu Bei, and Zhang Xiu. Liu Bei caused him many and repeated headache culminating in himself become equal to Cao Cao. Zhang Xiu rebel and kill Cao Cao's son, causing him to flee unceremeniously in the night.

With Cao Cao's cautionary history, no one dare repeat that kind of treatment toward ex-warlord.
 
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Tigranes

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This is why Zhuge shot down his plan. It's a pipe dream.
This is all plausible, but the real reason Zhuge Liang shot him down was that his stats weren't high enough.
The rest of the five generals had all proven themselves repeatedly not only in martial prowess, but tactical thinking and personal valour and leadership (something actually hyper-critical in an age where everything is glued together by 'honour' and loyalty). There's credible arguments that the stereotype of dumbass Zhang Fei is nonsense, because any competent general in this period had to be capable of understanding the strategic layer of battle. For folks like Zhao Yun and Guan Yu, their high marks on all categories is undeniable.
When did Ma Chao do anything significant under Shu? I haven't read the book in 15 years, I really don't remember, but I don't recall him doing anything important after joining Liu Bei. In fact, I mostly remember him joining Liu Bei and then just fading away. I know he took part in capturing Chang An 20 years before joining Shu, but I don't understand or remember what he did to earn his reputation as one of Shu's best generals.

I would argue that Ma Chao proved himself in AD211, when Cao Cao brought the bulk of his finest first-generation strategists and generals (including himself!) and Ma Chao gave him an exceptionally tough time. Typical Romance exaggerations notwithstanding, we see that Ma Chao showed not only martial prowess to rival Wei's finest, but consistently matched Cao Cao's strategic moves for a while.

That said, I can see your point. I suspect that Ma Chao was treated so well by Liu Bei for strategic reasons - Ma Chao happened to join exactly at the moment when Shu was being set up and Liu Bei needed to make sure his newest allies were treated very well. Another way to put it is that Ma Chao was perhaps unlucky: due to circumstances, he never got to participate in the major wars of his era, mostly flitting around the edges, and then even after he joined Shu, the country buckled down into stasis for a while, and he had to basically sit around dying relatively young (given it was not a battlefield death).

I personally think that if there were major, open campaigns immediately after Ma Chao joined Shu, then Zhuge Liang would have found a way to use him prominently. Liu Bei's greatest strength was that he was never the type to let talent rot for past affronts or other questions - he was often willing and able to win them over, which Cao Cao did himself in different ways. That's what set those two apart from everybody else in the period.
 

Silva

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A lot of problems in RTK13 that wasn't addressed at all even with PUK. Diplomatic system needs work. Army balance too. They took way too many shortcuts. Why are you even hyped after RTK13?

Their latest AI felt like I'm playing with robots. They don't understand the concept of betrayal.

I know a lot of people complain that CIV AI are irrational and declare war at random, but that is a marked improvement than KOEI's 'honorable retard' AI accepting any deal and never breaking any truce making it very easy for players to just game the diplomacy system.
Chairman Yang > Cao Cao.
 

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