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

Fedora Master

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I played around some more with various factions, currently doing rather well on a H/H Yuan Shao. After getting used to the UI I admit it's not outright bad but it a) doesn't really fit the theme (Shogun 2 had an amazing UI regarding both usability and style) and b) lacks a lot of QoL features. Fine tuning numbers during diplomacy is fucking tedious, worse than it was in SH2.
The battles are... odd. I tried both Romance and Records, preferring the more classic style of Records overall, but neither version does anything regarding shitty weak charges and blobbing, two issues they had already fixed in Warhammer!
God damn it CA what are you doing?
 

cw8

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I wish advisors did more stuff than just buff ranged dmg, ammo and get trebuchets rolling. If somehow they had plots like in the old KOEI games where they can confuse enemy units, have units fight each other that'll be great. And then there's fire, Zhuge Liang favourite weapon. There's already fire environmental damage in the game, if you used fire shots with trebuchets, you'll see trees light up on fire, towers can burn down from fire damage. If somehow the fire affected burning of units that'll be great incline. And if you can somehow spread the fire in a forested map, while defending in sieges, in ambushes, that'll be a dream.
Some of my best gaming moments came from KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4. There's a starting scenario where Cao Cao has the entire north and central China. Liu Bei has one fucking minor city, Jiangxia, right beside Cao Cao. Cao Cao almost immediately attacks Liu Bei from his Xiangyang, one of the richest capital cities. If you play Liu Bei, you might think you're pretty much screwed except you have a great many generals, officers and Zhuge Liang. Just fight Cao Cao's huge army in the grass plains. Zhuge Liang does his weather switch to clear skies, and officer or 2 to literally set fire on the grass, Zhuge Liang does his wind direction switch right to Cao's army. And just watch as his huge army just burn to death. Repeat till he runs out of military force in Xiangyang and then take Xiangyang.
Not asking CA to implement the ability to control weather, it's ludicrous. But being able to start and spread fires could be a thing. It's almost how most of the big, decisive battles are won, through fire. CA had Byzantines flamethrowers back in MTW2. :D
 

Tigranes

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I wish advisors did more stuff than just buff ranged dmg, ammo and get trebuchets rolling. If somehow they had plots like in the old KOEI games where they can confuse enemy units, have units fight each other that'll be great. And then there's fire, Zhuge Liang favourite weapon. There's already fire environmental damage in the game, if you used fire shots with trebuchets, you'll see trees light up on fire, towers can burn down from fire damage. If somehow the fire affected burning of units that'll be great incline. And if you can somehow spread the fire in a forested map, while defending in sieges, in ambushes, that'll be a dream.
Some of my best gaming moments came from KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4. There's a starting scenario where Cao Cao has the entire north and central China. Liu Bei has one fucking minor city, Jiangxia, right beside Cao Cao. Cao Cao almost immediately attacks Liu Bei from his Xiangyang, one of the richest capital cities. If you play Liu Bei, you might think you're pretty much screwed except you have a great many generals, officers and Zhuge Liang. Just fight Cao Cao's huge army in the grass plains. Zhuge Liang does his weather switch to clear skies, and officer or 2 to literally set fire on the grass, Zhuge Liang does his wind direction switch right to Cao's army. And just watch as his huge army just burn to death. Repeat till he runs out of military force in Xiangyang and then take Xiangyang.
Not asking CA to implement the ability to control weather, it's ludicrous. But being able to start and spread fires could be a thing. It's almost how most of the big, decisive battles are won, through fire. CA had Byzantines flamethrowers back in MTW2. :D

In other words, yeah, I'm just going to reinstall ROTK...
 

Fedora Master

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s8hxAYl.png


Okay then, Coalition of Assholes is go! (He of course died a turn later but Lu Bu was his heir so CoA is still in effect.)
 

Fedora Master

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After playing to what I perceive to be about the late mid-game I can say with confidence that this game is shit and annoying. I conquered the north-eastern parts of the map and the sheer amount of diplo spam, ancillary spam, satisfaction spam and so forth kills my desire to play on. Battles are for the most part laughably broken anyway. Once you get two artillery units you can safely sit back and nuke everyone to bits. You can't autoresolve your way through the campaign though because the game is finely tuned to force you to play the unsatisfying battles. It's laughable. The supposedly improved diplomacy is a mess too, once coalitions form it's a constant back-and-forth of irrational war and peace declarations. The AI can't even form proper blobs of territory, much less build its provinces correctly.
 

JarlFrank

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Diplomacy in TW games was always a joke. By midgame you'd end up at war with anyone anyway, regardless of what you did, and most nations wouldn't accept peace deals ever.
 

cw8

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Diplomacy in TW games was always a joke. By midgame you'd end up at war with anyone anyway, regardless of what you did, and most nations wouldn't accept peace deals ever.

Get items and ancillaries, they're very good for diplomacy. Trade off territory if you have to. Sometimes good to trade a valued city for a few years of peace. I did that my last game. Sun Jian to the South declared war on me while I was warring the North. So I used Zhang Fei to take his Jianye, and since Jian Ye is so precious to him, I traded it off to him for peace and concentrated on taking the entire north. I then placed Zhang Fei just on top of Jian Ye. Sun Jian declared war again after a few years, and I took Jianye again and used it to barter peace for the 2nd time.
 

cw8

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DLC announced and so soon. It's not even the 3 Kingdoms era anymore, it's the Jin Dynasty of Sima Yan. Can't give 2 shits about the history once Sima Yan founded the Jin or Sima Yi's progeny so have no idea about the 8 princes. So much to build on for and during the 3 Kingdoms and they have to veer off to another era.

 

Fedora Master

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Diplomacy in TW games was always a joke. By midgame you'd end up at war with anyone anyway, regardless of what you did, and most nations wouldn't accept peace deals ever.

Get items and ancillaries, they're very good for diplomacy. Trade off territory if you have to. Sometimes good to trade a valued city for a few years of peace. I did that my last game. Sun Jian to the South declared war on me while I was warring the North. So I used Zhang Fei to take his Jianye, and since Jian Ye is so precious to him, I traded it off to him for peace and concentrated on taking the entire north. I then placed Zhang Fei just on top of Jian Ye. Sun Jian declared war again after a few years, and I took Jianye again and used it to barter peace for the 2nd time.

True, people go crazy for stone piggus and books. I decided to give it another try as Gong Du and while the early game is annoying as fuck once you get the ball rolling it's more enjoyable than the regular factions since you can ignore the family/relationship side of the game for the most part. Ironic.
 

Raghar

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Diplomacy in TW games was always a joke. By midgame you'd end up at war with anyone anyway, regardless of what you did, and most nations wouldn't accept peace deals ever.
I was lonely after decent TW, when 3K was just mediocre and tried Attila with all DLC non crashing version. And I'm not in war with EVERYONE.
Huns like me and agreed to non aggression.
Also people I liberated kinda like me.
 

Beastro

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Diplomacy in TW games was always a joke. By midgame you'd end up at war with anyone anyway, regardless of what you did, and most nations wouldn't accept peace deals ever.

ETW had a factor where you could stave off the AI arbitrarily declaring war on you by stationing armies on your border to keep them passive. It played a big role in the beginning to late game and helped tie down a good amount of your forces.

It was simple yet effective and about the limit of the AI's strategic thinking.
 

Fedora Master

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I kinda mellowed out on 3K, I wouldn't call it outright shit anymore but it certainly lacks a lot of QoL and has some weird design choices.
 

BlackAdderBG

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Like how bland and soulless they manage to make all characters in RoTK? Cao Cao is same as Yuan Shao, Liu Bei,Liu Biao and 100 more random name generator using same picture created poor fucks, that cost 1000 rice bags no matter their level. Cao Cao is unique as he starts on the left side of the skill tree. With how the big point around the game is heroes, random merchant form Medieval 2 has more character.
 

Fedora Master

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Like how bland and soulless they manage to make all characters in RoTK? Cao Cao is same as Yuan Shao, Liu Bei,Liu Biao and 100 more random name generator using same picture created poor fucks, that cost 1000 rice bags no matter their level. Cao Cao is unique as he starts on the left side of the skill tree. With how the big point around the game is heroes, random merchant form Medieval 2 has more character.
It's very obvious that CA have done nothing but cannibalize the features they came up with in their other games, particularly WaWa. I suspect they are pushing Warscape to its limits as far as mechanics go.
 

AwesomeButton

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Diplomacy in TW games was always a joke. By midgame you'd end up at war with anyone anyway, regardless of what you did, and most nations wouldn't accept peace deals ever.
Strategy games always fall in the trap that they are not complex enough for a good player, but too complex for an AI to behave sensibly. Also, historically designers have been under the false assumption that the more combat, the more fun the player will have, because players are these dumb drones, right. And this thinking extended to strategy games as well, with a few exceptions.
 

JarlFrank

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Diplomacy in TW games was always a joke. By midgame you'd end up at war with anyone anyway, regardless of what you did, and most nations wouldn't accept peace deals ever.
Strategy games always fall in the trap that they are not complex enough for a good player, but too complex for an AI to behave sensibly. Also, historically designers have been under the false assumption that the more combat, the more fun the player will have, because players are these dumb drones, right. And this thinking extended to strategy games as well, with a few exceptions.

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".
 

BlackAdderBG

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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.
 

JarlFrank

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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.
 
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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.
 

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