Total War: Three Kingdoms

Spanish medieval romances are full of knights single handlely defeating a hundred “moors” (sic). It’s still bullocks when compared to the historical records of the battles, unless you are talking about assaults on choke points.

The description of three Kingdoms armies above sound very similar to early and mid medieval armies, with a core of knights (professional soldiers) and a horde of untrained men at arms. I’m not convinced Sengoku Jidai period warfare was much different. Style of warfare seems influenced mostly by technology and political system more than anything else, and feudalism seems to create these sort of uneven army compositions.

But OP heroes have been in TW for a while if the right conditions met. I remember a mp battle I fought in shogun 2 where my general and 12 bodyguards (leveled up) defeated about 500 ashigarus at a castle gate (took several minutes since TW games were slower then, and I triggered the rally and second wind abilities a couple times).

One of the Hardcore Histories details the combat techniques of middle eastern armies [ I think I remember being the Persians, but maybe the Syrians?] which used skirmishing as their whole strategy, before bronze armor and shields were introduced that could repel the basic missiles.

Somehow I imagined it to look like this, if the snowballs were arrows / sling rocks instead :)

Well, the Chinese were using heavy calvary during the Three Kingdoms period, whereas the Japanese relied more on heavy infantry – even up to the Sengoku period. Also, Chinese logistics and maneuvering was much more developed (probably since China is larger and has much more open space than Japan).

Though, I think the differences between the geography of Japan and China will probably have a bigger impact on gameplay than the armies.

Yeah, cavalry is one of the reasons I’m looking forward to this. Both Shogun 2 and Rome 2 where more about infantry and matchsticks (for Shogun) with cavalry really being a support weapon for most sides (some Rome 2 factions could use really good cavalry, but they tended to be mostly cavalry).

Heavy cavalry and crossbow artillery (long range, massed, somewhat fast firing artillery) are the two weapon systems that I’m more excited about for in this. Those along elite heroes able to hold the line or surgically strike should allow for more extreme tactics that Roman legions or matchbook kill zones.

Yeah, the hollywood Braveheart version is just bogus, they never did much running, it was madness to do so, you’d walk, and you would throw stuff, melee contact would probably be rare thing to be honest.

I even heard stories about cavarly who would charge, but if the enemy didn’t break, would just stop, and try again…they had no intention of charging into a solid block of men ever…

I don’t know if this makes it more interesting to use in a movie, but it sure as heck isn’t depicted well anywhere.

No one has mentioned the red Cliff movies?

Not yet. Oh wait…

now i remember why i love qt3 <3

Can you tell us about them? I like movies and this period of history so I’m interested.

Didn’t the movies diverge a lot from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms? I remember there being some good scenes, but I was disappointed in how they turned out. Maybe they just aren’t any good for watching on a small screen.

The first time I saw the Red Cliff movies it was good to see a bunch of big name Chinese stars like Tony Leung on screen together, and the scale and scope of the set design were incredible. But I didn’t know anything about RoTK and story-wise it was a confusing pastiche of famous scenes from the books crammed into the 5 hour run-time for the two movies put together. I watched it a few years later after I knew the story and it was much better - at least in the sense that it was just cool to see big set piece scenes you knew from the book up on screen, like seeing the battle of Helm’s Deep in LotR. I think the only significant divergence (other than leaving out lots of stuff) was how the battle ended, since in the book it’s a lot more complicated how Zhuge Liang tricks Cao Cao and stuff.

I didn’t like those movies. Like is often the case, I think, with Chinese movies, the bigger they get, the vainer they are.
John Woo’s action directing is only unique, to me, through that talent he has got to push very human characterization through crazy scenes.
In a surprising feat, he managed to make the ROTK characters uninteresting. I felt that the movies were a huge hollow shell. A major disappointment.

I am curious about ancient Chinese archery and its effect on battle. I might do a little research but my impressions from action movies from China is that is was awesome. And siege engines. This is the right move for CA – parallel historic and fantasy game paths. For some of us it is just an embarrassment of riches.

giphy

Finally Sega saw the light and decides to give Koei proper competition (or at least saw all the money being left on the table by Koei). There are other Three Kingdom strategy games, mainly from China, but none of them has the polish of a Koei game. (Frankly some of them simply stole artwork from Koei). In the past, the only competition to RoTK game is the older iterations (like Windows 10 competing with Win 7).

The last Three Kingdom strategy game from Koei, RoTK 13, is still a buggy mess based on all the reviews on Steam. They also try to milk you to death with endless DLCs, even though the base game + expansion already cost an arm and a leg. The pinnacle Koei game for me is still RoTK 11, with 3D graphics and is seamless between battle and administration, i.e. you can switch at will between implementing grand strategy and battlefield tactics. Not the clunky strategy/battlefield divide in Total War games. Given that RoTK 12 doesn’t have a wide release, and 13 is still a buggy mess, I’ve been itching for a RoTK games. I almost pulled the trigger on RoTK 13 during the Steam end of year sale, but reading all the comments about the bugs rightly stopped me.

The other branch of the Three Kingdom game is with the Dynasty Warriors series (also from Koei). They steadily add a strategic layer to an ostensibly action game. The problem is the action part is a complete bust, because they are pure button mashers and have none of the finesse of a Devil May Cry game. IMO It is a cash cow for Koei simply because of the characters and the production value, not because of the gameplay.

CA and Sega must have full Chinese language support on release (with full English subtitles). Otherwise to me it is as wrong as playing a Total War Shogun game reading English translation of Japanese name and places. There is enough money (i.e. sales in China) on the table to justify that finally.

Red Cliff was a good action movie, but a bad RotTK movie. If you want to see a decent adaption, they made a couple tv series about it, the most recent being pretty good. I think you can watch it on youtube with english subtitles (I can’t speak to how the translation is, I watched it entirely in Chinese).

I think the most significant advancement in Chinese archery was their early use of the crossbow. Though, since the Three Kingdoms period was an internal conflict, I don’t know if that will be much of a factor. It will be interesting to see how barbarian mercenaries are handled (horse archers!).

Have you seen the Advisor’s Alliance about Sima Yi? It’s meant to be very good.

I think @Jason_McMaster’s Chunoku are the ultimate proof of this.

Ah, Hero. I love that movie so very much. ;)

would you say you ‘love it long time’.
? 😛