Total War: Three Kingdoms

If only the myth of “loaning arrows from Cao Cao” was simulated in this game

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Cao Cao should have learned fire arrows.

It was a foggy and windy weather that night according to the myth. Fire arrows probably won’t work that well. The author did get this plot covered.

I suppose we can wonder about this not being entirely accurate, but then nothing really is if we’re being honest. And I’m playing in romance mode and I’m pretty sure one dude didn’t in real life take out entire units single handily. ;)

I don’t bring the same expectations about accuracy to TW games that I do to say Combat Mission where really intense efforts by the developer were brought to bear in making every single aspect accurate so having an expectation the slope and thickness of armor on a Panzer III is spot on is actually a thing.

How do people deal with holding onto territory in TW games? One issue I always have is say I can afford 2 armies, but I am constantly getting pecked at from multiple directions. The speed armies move combined with weak garrisons tends to mean I have a hard time holding onto things reliably. A lot of my experience with TW comes from Warhammer, but it seems fairly similar here.

Normally try to maintain at most one or two open hostile borders through diplomacy and/or building up garrisons and expand taking into account chokepoints.

But it’s aleays a hard balance early on until you can secure a flank:

Upgraded garrisons on the outlying areas (ie no the main city) are actually really, really strong here.

Towers being insanely powerful helps, but you can usually hold out against or cripple an army attacking your lumber mill.

That’s good to hear about garrisons in TK. I had to install a mod for Warhammer that boosted upgraded garrison strength to something that was at least a bit of a deterrent. I’m just getting started with TK so was worried I was going to be dealing with the same issue.

They start out weak, but they end up with quite a few numbers depending on the structure.

By level 3 or so they’re on par with a lot of armies and with the help of guard towers it’s fairly common to win against chaff armies in my experience.

Towns and cities are a different matter. They basically have no garrison to speak of unless you build a specific military structure in them, but they do have walls and a ton of towers which can help quite a bit.

Good write up here, I am gonna pick it up when I have time Sunday night.

On defense:
During a lull in my initial expansion I recruited and mustered two additional retinues then dismissed the generals once the retinues were full. I kept these two characters in reserved and redeployed them when I needed backup. Redeployment wasn’t cheap, but still cost less than what I saved by keeping them in reserve. It looks like the cost of deployment is linked to character level, not retinue size, but I haven’t verified that.

Thanks, this is the much-coveted review by someone well-versed in the Koei games. For the first time since Shogun 2 I’m considering a purchase.

Is there a manual somewhere or are we expected to just use the info overlay to learn everything?

Total war acadmey from f1 but it’s a bunch of videos and I hate videos.

Yeah the worst review this has had is 78, which is pretty good.

I am sorely tempted to buy it.

I’ll hold off because I need to actually finish Druidstone.

Funny thing I regularly run into is someone hits me up with an offer, the last couple times to I believe it was to confederate, but when the offer pops up I of course want to check where they’re located and I can’t for the life of me make that happen. I click on their name and while that usually takes me to the region where they’re located on the map, it for some reason isn’t for the specific party making the offer.

So I’ve just been declining them because the terms sucked and I couldn’t locate them.

it would be nice if they jumped out on the map in like bright red, or in some way lit up to signify clearly who the hell is coming at me with this offer and where they’re located.

Btw, if I’m just being an idiot and there’s an easy way to do this clue me in please. ;)

I haven’t seen a way, but I am at the point where I pretty much know all my neighbors.

Playing as Liu Bei, I’m weighing my options of forming a Coalition prior to my Mission to form one with Liu Biao. I’m not sure how often allies will decline the entry of a new member.

Liu Bei is great for a peaceful game and one where most of your Court is happy and getting along with each other. It actively rewards me for playing the way I like to play.

Yeah I’m having trouble figuring out who some of these people are.

Ok I found this, it may help but you can’t use it while you get diplomatic offers :(

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I have no idea how coalitions work. I have no idea who’s a good member or whether I should just eat everyone.

So… how is it compared with Koei’s RoTK? RoTK 10 IMO is probably the pinnacle of the series, where you can role play as ANY one of the officers in ANY era. So let’s not compare this to that. How does it play compared to the recent entries, 11, 12, 13? 11 and 13 had English release.

Yeah, I’ll admit I get easily confused by who I’m dealing with, I suspect I’ll get used to it.

As for the problem of not being able to get intel around who is making offers to me, this is a common problem I’ve had with all TWs, so not a new thing. Basically the menu pops up asking you to accept or decline or negotiate and then you’re stuck with that menu choice w/o being able to fully navigate away from it to gather the info needed to make the decision.

As for diplomacy, still figuring it out, I absolutely love that that is something to figure out, this one is so much more fleshed out than any previous TW in the diplomacy department. If I had to guess, you’re going to need to sort it out sooner or later because you will likely find yourself being attacked from multiple fronts if you don’t work to keep the peace from one if not two directions.