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Except it's up 1 to 21.
1+6+1+6+1+6=21

Sure, but 3 generals is a bit strange and frankly boring. Like in Warhammer Total War I wish they had given you separate slots for the characters instead of them taking up the space of a whole unit.

Here they are effectively just giving you 1 character slot for free, and then forcing you to give up 2 of your unit slots anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:
What does shock me though is how the AI behaved in some sieges, completely passive, like rome II passive as in not reacting at all.

Then there is the one battle of someone against a yellow turban rebellion army, which he literally won with taking nearly 0 casualities.

Granted this was a preview build that was at the time some months old but still....

One would hope that they wouldn't have gone backwards and used the pre-patch Rome 2 AI.

You would think that they could use some of their older AI mechanics from older Total War games instead of rebuilding from scratch each time. The AI in Shogun 2 was pretty decent.

Not Online!!! wrote:


but frankly what concerns me more is the fact that an army now only can hold 18 units.
down from 20 that doesn't bode well in my opinion.

Again, the change in the size of the army is not a new thing. This is something that's been known for a while. And I suspect that it serves two purposes.

1.) In the old days, armies didn't need to have a general assigned. So if you had a border that you wanted to garrison, but didn't want to actively campaign in, then you could leave a few leaderless units to keep an eye on the border while you went and did things somewhere else. For instance, in the Shogun series, Oda could leave a couple of units to keep an eye on the border with Tokugawa while he sends his armies and generals to conquer Ise. In the more recent games, armies *must* have a general assigned to them. This means that if you're actively campaigning against the Vampire Counts in TW:WH, then you can't assign a few extra units to keep an eye on the passes to Bretonnia. The Three Kingdoms method allows a middle ground that allows you to leave a smaller army behind to watch the border while you send your troops off to go fight the more important battles.
2.) The developers presumably want to include a *lot* of historical figures as commanders. That pretty much requires that armies be smaller if you don't want players using just a tiny handful of commanders. Additionally, we know that it's possible to get a leader under your control inserted into an enemy faction where they can end up as a general. That general can then potentially switch back to your faction with at least some of his troops. Having a full stack of troops leave for the enemy like this would be much more devastating (and potentially unbalancing) than just losing half a dozen units.

Finally, I believe it's been stated by CA that in historical mode, generals will have a bodyguard unit, whereas in romance mode they'll be lone heroes. With up to three generals in an army, that's six units per general. Do we know if that's six units INCLUDING the general? Or is it six units PLUS the general? Because if it's the latter, then that would mean that armies actually consist of up to 21 units.

I think most people agree that the "mandatory general" mechanic was a pretty dumb idea. Why can't I just have a few units stay in a key location as a deterrent? Generals are expensive to maintain, and forcing all of your armies to have one was stupid.

I love the idea of campaign characters also being combat units like Total Warhammer introduced, but for crying out loud they shouldn't take up a whole unit slot. Each army should have 20 unit slots, a slot for the general(and his unit) and then 2 slots for support characters.

Especially since the current method really messes with my OCD sometimes when I'm making an army with Warhammer Total War. I hate having an odd number of slots to play with or having a single unit of anything thats not a character.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think most people agree that the "mandatory general" mechanic was a pretty dumb idea. Why can't I just have a few units stay in a key location as a deterrent? Generals are expensive to maintain, and forcing all of your armies to have one was stupid.

I love the idea of campaign characters also being combat units like Total Warhammer introduced, but for crying out loud they shouldn't take up a whole unit slot. Each army should have 20 unit slots, a slot for the general(and his unit) and then 2 slots for support characters.

Especially since the current method really messes with my OCD sometimes when I'm making an army with Warhammer Total War. I hate having an odd number of slots to play with or having a single unit of anything thats not a character.

I miss forts, behind rivers, was hillariously funny in Empire total war.

The whole support charachters fits a game like Warhammer total war, however in a historical title i think they have not to exist imo, they should go back to shoguns system in that case.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sure, but 3 generals is a bit strange and frankly boring. Like in Warhammer Total War I wish they had given you separate slots for the characters instead of them taking up the space of a whole unit.

Here they are effectively just giving you 1 character slot for free, and then forcing you to give up 2 of your unit slots anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:
What does shock me though is how the AI behaved in some sieges, completely passive, like rome II passive as in not reacting at all.

Then there is the one battle of someone against a yellow turban rebellion army, which he literally won with taking nearly 0 casualities.

Granted this was a preview build that was at the time some months old but still....

One would hope that they wouldn't have gone backwards and used the pre-patch Rome 2 AI.

You would think that they could use some of their older AI mechanics from older Total War games instead of rebuilding from scratch each time. The AI in Shogun 2 was pretty decent.

there is a meme somewhere, with family guy but instead of mentally handicapped there is CA's TW Ai at the bottom.

But from what we've seen sofar that makes other TW ai look like Napoleon Bonaparté compared to a 5 year old.

The Empire building video is interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Y4RvthA_M

Supply (by season, no less) and towns get a better look than I've seen so far.

Ma Teng's start looks really interesting, though I suspect he snowballs really fast with the income benefits.

Not really sold on referring to building chains and commander types by color, however. The colors they've attached to various concepts have absolutely no meaning to me.

Tremble in fear! The tyrant Dong Zhuo has come!

When you start Total War: Three Kingdoms for the first time, you'll have the ability to pick from one of eleven warlords.

But if you defeat Dong Zhuo in battle, or reach the rank of Emperor, you'll unlock a twelfth - the mighty tyrant Dong Zhuo!

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-three-kingdoms-warlord-legends-dong-zhuo?fbclid=IwAR29UD2lxM8t8RRQD7a_9o56fE0BtiiVpqQpnFHXdfSqs6MKDOtqaKsW-Cs


Dong Zhuo has some very good commanders among his ranks (including Lu Bu), and the control of the Han Emperor (the article notes that controlling the Han Emperor allows a warlord to forcibly incorporate "Han" territories). Dong Zhuo's mechanic is "Intimidation", which is gained by gaining control of additional territories, winning battles, and executing other characters. It's lost by promoting characters, losing battles, and through natural decay over time. High Intimidation means that his vassals are more "satisfied", and there's less corruption. Low Intimidation means the opposite. Intimidation can also be used to "improve" the chances that another warlord will accept the diplomatic deal that you're offering.

Dong Zhuo starts in the center-north of the map. He's particularly opposed by Sun Jian, Yuan Shao, and Cao Cao. On the one hand, you could stand back and let your enemies to the east wear each other down. The drawback to this is that whomever emerges will likely be in a very good position to confront you afterwards. On the other hand, you could start expanding early. But this is likely to cause your enemies to ally against you once again (as they did during the Coalition just before the start of the game).

Dong Zhuo's dilemma, unsurprisingly, revolves around Lu Bu. While most dilemmas revolve around a single important decision, Dong Zhou's dilemma is a series of choices that will determine what the exact outcome is. In Romance mode, the choices will revolve around the young and beautiful Diaochan. Both men are in love with her, and Dong Zhuo has seized her for himself. However, while Diaochan plays a prominent role in the early portion of the novel 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms', she's a fictional character. So in Historical mode, the dilemma will instead revolve around a series of personal differences between Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu, coupled with the political scheming of Wang Yun (an important official who historically convinced Lu Bu to help assassinate Dong Zhuo; in the novel, he's the adoptive father of Diaochan). And yes, one possible outcome of Dong Zhuo's dilemma is that you end up being assassinated by Lu Bu.

It's a nice throwback to rome i unlocks. That said solong the AI still is the Preview level stupid so long i will pass.

You know, I really like these bio pages for the characters, but I wish the 'further reading' sections were more robust. It's always just the Kongming online encyclopedia, the book itself (no particular edition or translation) and the same biographical dictionary by de Crespigny.

That isn't a slight, it's just not a solid 'sole source' for any sort of research (sole source is bad practice anyway). I would've told any undergraduates in my classes back when I was a grad student that a biographical dictionary was a good starting point to get an outline, but not something to build on.

It makes their research for the title feel really shallow. And Kongming raises my academic hackles something fierce, given the staff page and the fact that the Koei and Dynasty Warriors games get the same amount of weight as the novel, with history trailing behind.


Granted I know most of their audience probably won't care, but I'd like to see a blog from the writing/research team with a deeper bibliography at some point.

I mentioned the issue pages back I think.

A lot of his history is currently only available in Chinese. Very little of the body of work on the period has been translated into other languages.

Voss wrote:
And Kongming raises my academic hackles something fierce, given the staff page and the fact that the Koei and Dynasty Warriors games get the same amount of weight as the novel, with history trailing behind.


Granted I know most of their audience probably won't care, but I'd like to see a blog from the writing/research team with a deeper bibliography at some point.

What LordofHats said. We're lucky to have the amount of history that we do about the Romans. And even then, there are huge gaps in our knowledge. China's got a very long and ancient past, but they had to deal with issues like people rewriting the past to fit modern (at the time) interpretations (which is essentially what the novel was), or outright destroying all records of elements that they didn't like. Couple that with the fact that China's only really been unified in the modern era since the Communists won the civil war, and that it's really only been open to the West since the early '70s (when President Nixon went to China), and you've got a situation in which you've got a lot of haphazard elements of history... that are largely still only in Chinese since there's only really been enough time to start translating the most important parts of it into foreign languages. Assuming China stays stable for a while (always a question mark, since the country likes to collapse into very bloody pieces every now and again), we'll hopefully get more Chinese history translated into other languages. In the meantime, though...


Also, Koei makes Dynasty Warriors (along with the more serious Romance of the Three Kingdoms games).



Dynasty Warriors right now is essentially a mid-point between the novel and history. The early games followed the novel closely, from what I understand. Later games have shifted things somewhat in the direction of history, though, largely in the interests of doing things like making Cao Cao less over the top villianous, and giving Wu more to do (since from what I understand, the novel is largely "Wei vs. Shu, with guest appearances by Wu").

If you're interested in researching the history, supposedly the best place to look is a book called "Record of the Three Kingdoms". And Amazon appears to have an English language Kindle edition for $10US.

I'd say the story Dynasty Warriors tells is still largely based on the romantic literature of the period, but they've gone out of their way to note differences between the folklore and confirmed historical records in their in-game encyclopedia, and in a few areas have trumped the romantic versions of events with the more historical.

Dio Chan played a larger role in earlier games than she does now. She's mostly just there these days, and not brought up as a reason for Lu Bu to betray his Dong Zhuo.

Wu's abandoning of their alliance with Shu is largely played with the historical version in more recent games as opposed to the more romantic one of earlier entries too, though that shift has combined with the introduction of more and more of Guan Yu's kids, many of whom are largely fictional (or are so unknown they might as well be).

So, they just announced a delay to may 23rd.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-three-kingdoms-development-update

Probably a good thing.

And it won't affect the warhammer 2 dlc date, which will now release before three kingdoms. Though there still isn't any details on that that I have seen. I assume its skaven vs lizards at long last, and April seems likely given the context.

Imperator Rome will also come out before 3k now, though personally I think that needs a lot more work and not just polish.

Given what's been seen from videos there's been alot of reasons to delay. The AI is practically non-existent and the tactical layer seems weaker then ever.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Given what's been seen from videos there's been alot of reasons to delay. The AI is practically non-existent and the tactical layer seems weaker then ever.

Indeed.
So far the AI showed more ROME 2 behaviour than anything else really.

 LordofHats wrote:
Dio Chan played a larger role in earlier games than she does now. She's mostly just there these days, and not brought up as a reason for Lu Bu to betray his Dong Zhuo.

?

In both DW 8 and 9 (the most recent game) she's key in persuading Lu Bu to turn against his master.

If you're going to have her in the game and have the betrayal, this is important. While Diaochan is fictitious, she is loosely based on a real person. Lu Bu was sleeping with one of Dong Zhuo's maids. One of the reasons why Lu Bu turned against Dong Zhuo was apparently the fear that this affair would be discovered, and Dong Zhuo would have him executed as a result. The fictitious part is the idea that the woman in question was working with Wang Yun, or that she intentionally seduced both men to turn them against each other.

DW9 also has Diaochan leave immediately after Dong Zhuo's death, while most games keep the two together as lovers (in fact, Lu Bu's desire for revenge for her death is the driving force behind his actions in the spin-off Warriors Orochi III).

though that shift has combined with the introduction of more and more of Guan Yu's kids, many of whom are largely fictional (or are so unknown they might as well be).

Part of the problem here again comes down to gaps in historical knowledge. The Dynasty Warriors games need to have characters for Shu late in the game. So they have to populate the list with individuals like Guan Yu's kids. I saw a comment elsewhere complaining about Ma Dai still being alive at the end of the Shu campaign in DW9, and the comment was made by someone else that Koei had to make it that way. If they didn't have him (and Zhuge Liang's wife, who's also still around long after her husband has died), then they'd be short of characters. The Guan kids are there to help address that shortage.

Eumerin wrote:
In both DW 8 and 9 (the most recent game) she's key in persuading Lu Bu to turn against his master.

Hmm. I don't remember her being that important in 8, but I haven't played 9. She definitely fell off to the wayside during 6 and 7.

She definetely played that role in DW3 and 4 as well, I hated DW 5 so much that I havn't played any since then!

In DW3 at The Battle of Hu Lao Gate, Lu Bu will join the allies against Dong Zhou if Diao Chan is defeated as he blames Dong Zhou for her death.
(Although this only happens if you are fighting on Dong Zhou's side, and not playing as either Lu Bu or Diao Chan).

Zhang Liao will also join the allies if still alive at this point, as he is a sub-general in Lu Bu's unit for this battle.

 LordofHats wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
In both DW 8 and 9 (the most recent game) she's key in persuading Lu Bu to turn against his master.

Hmm. I don't remember her being that important in 8, but I haven't played 9. She definitely fell off to the wayside during 6 and 7.

In 8, the actual betrayal isn't depicted in any of the four original campaigns. But there's an unlockable side mission that has you playing as Diaochan to recruit Lu Bu against Dong Zhuo, and save Wang Yun. Additionally, during the Hulao Gate battle, if you bypass Lu Bu (as you're supposed to when playing as Wei) and then attack Diaochan, Lu Bu drops what he's doing and makes a beeline for you (Spoiler: This is bad). Finally, DW8XL Extreme Edition adds a Lu Bu campaign. Diaochan plays an important role in the "overthrow Dong Zhuo" mission in that campaign (iirc, she's one of the three playable characters in that mission). She leaves at the end of the mission, but comes back later on if you meet the necessary requirements.

She also appears during Cao Cao's failed attempt to assassinate Dong Zhuo (i.e. the first Wei mission), and helps him escape from the palace. Lu Bu appears in that mission as well, though only as an antagonist. IIRC, there's no evidence of any affection between the two during that mission.

Well, despite the delay, they're still doing content videos. Records mode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fD1rzvghxc

Highlights:
30 years into the campaign

Amazing map, with a dust storm effect limiting visibility

characters do bring retinue units in records mode.

unit stamina apparently has 'more impact' on records mode.

Reinforcements take a long time to show up in the first battle. Which gives a sense of realism, but makes the fight much easier than it needs to be. The garrison is almost completely slaughtered before the reinforcements make contact.

Taking the arrow towers seemed really quick compared to other historical TW games.

---
On the down side, the AI was completely suckered by two cav units and put all its ranged units on them, while the rest of the enemy units did basically nothing.


I liked that it was a nice long battle, but the AI looked terribly static, even declining to attack his stationary crossbowmen with no ammo. Looked pretty, but also looked like Firaxis-level AI (for those unfamiliar with the recent Civilization games, that's real bad.

System requirements were posted in the blog today. Fortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be needing to upgrade anything for *this* game (though I'll likely be on the lower end of things).

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/three-kingdoms-tech-effects-and-system-specs?fbclid=IwAR1AfPZ03QdXZYR8_RRoeEOtorMbrAC1zPjiaaTbjdSXKksA0vMYxKzY8p0

Eumerin wrote:
System requirements were posted in the blog today. Fortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be needing to upgrade anything for *this* game (though I'll likely be on the lower end of things).

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/three-kingdoms-tech-effects-and-system-specs?fbclid=IwAR1AfPZ03QdXZYR8_RRoeEOtorMbrAC1zPjiaaTbjdSXKksA0vMYxKzY8p0

Same here, I'm definitely at the point where my GPU is letting the side down.


However, I'm really not a fan of the rest of that blog. Repeatedly saying 'we aren't going to do the work' sends a poor message. [Even though from a programming perspective, I get it- if TAA gives better results, than do that]. But the highly, highly critical 'fans' of CA are going to take that statement and run with it to Meme-land.

Voss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
System requirements were posted in the blog today. Fortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be needing to upgrade anything for *this* game (though I'll likely be on the lower end of things).

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/three-kingdoms-tech-effects-and-system-specs?fbclid=IwAR1AfPZ03QdXZYR8_RRoeEOtorMbrAC1zPjiaaTbjdSXKksA0vMYxKzY8p0

Same here, I'm definitely at the point where my GPU is letting the side down.


However, I'm really not a fan of the rest of that blog. Repeatedly saying 'we aren't going to do the work' sends a poor message. [Even though from a programming perspective, I get it- if TAA gives better results, than do that]. But the highly, highly critical 'fans' of CA are going to take that statement and run with it to Meme-land.

WELLLLLLL: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/540722836664330202/543EAB3D8FCFF167DBEA00E9120B6FE491FA3D56/


CA fired themselves into the meme land category with Rome II, that said it is unlucky worded.
Also don't forget the preview battle of Carthago and the "Biggest budget yet" . They were caught when they fethed up, and the community let one time go with ETW.
It is imo just correct when they get reminded that they did feth up.

The highly critical fans are basically at the EAHATE level of intelligence. CA could publish a blog where they only said good things and were rehoming the homeless and giving people kittens and all good things and the hate crowed would still meme-hate it to the ground.

I think CA realises this and is mostly ignoring them - the supreme haters are basically on a trolling roll.




That's not to say CA hasn't made mistakes or blunders, but that the "hate crowd" has moved on from legitimate complaint into just hating for hatings sake alone



Also I do agree that blog could be worded a LOT better, then again they might be baiting to get the SLI and duel card users out of the woodwork and get them complaining in large enough numbers to justify the work. Far as I'm aware running duel cards is very far from the norm; so a marginal gain for a feature very few use - yeah I can see why they wouldn't invest into it. I think they are basically saying "prove" there's enough of you out there to make it worthwhile investing significant resources into this. Sure one day multi-card setups imght be more common, but right now my impression is the average gamer has 1 card

 Overread wrote:
The highly critical fans are basically at the EAHATE level of intelligence. CA could publish a blog where they only said good things and were rehoming the homeless and giving people kittens and all good things and the hate crowed would still meme-hate it to the ground.

I think CA realises this and is mostly ignoring them - the supreme haters are basically on a trolling roll.




That's not to say CA hasn't made mistakes or blunders, but that the "hate crowd" has moved on from legitimate complaint into just hating for hatings sake alone

A: EA hate is very valid, yes, sorry to say that but F EA and their gak practices. The poor studios under them are "often" not the problem though.
B: Blunders is a veeery nice word for CA/ Sega and the Total war series. In fact the community has often been to lenient in my opinion: See ETW, Rome II, the questionable first day DLC decisions (Chaos or greek city states)

Reviews are coming in for Three Kingdoms:




A couple other sites are posting their reviews as well, I'll post them as I see them, if its an interesting read.

I pre-ordered because I'm a Total War fiend, but I'm weirdly not hyped for this one. At all. TW:WH2 has so many variations of playstyle that I haven't gotten bored with it yet and I'm not hungry for anything new. And this era does nothing for me so far. Maybe after I play it a bit late next week I'll change my tune. Some of the features previewed seem like great additions, where other stuff that I've seen has me scratching my head.

I've been watching a lot of playthroughs and reading some of the reviews. It looks rather good. At lot of the Cons have been 'its so complex' which is a good sign, as if you bother to learn the game, that goes away with time.

Diplomacy looks really good for once, and they seemed to have improved the earlier AI problems at least somewhat.

There is honestly more unit and leader variety than I expected, and the game as a whole looks more robust than most TW titles. I'm pretty excited for it again, after being rather dubious in late winter.


----
Though by comparison, I am very tired of TW2. The changes to skaven and lizards are fine, but feel too little too late. And ikkit is just frankly broken for a campaign- just a steamroll.
As far as variations of play style goes, at this point it feels more like skins for the standard swords/spears/cav (rock/paper/scissors) with ranged/magic support. Corruption is just really tiresome for me at this point, the vortex campaign is annoying and ME is just too big (too long in turn times), and with that annoying chaos invasion that isn't even vaguely interesting anymore. If they bump up some of the old world factions and do a smaller campaign map, it might suffice as a placeholder for TW3.

I really want this game to be good. I think I'd enjoy it even if it was mediocre simply because of it's setting and how long I've wanted TW to make a game for it. It seems like if nothing else CA has managed to capture the epic scale and the romance of the era, which is maybe the most important part. If nothing else, modders will take whatever mess they leave and create something great.

 LordofHats wrote:
I really want this game to be good. I think I'd enjoy it even if it was mediocre simply because of it's setting and how long I've wanted TW to make a game for it. It seems like if nothing else CA has managed to capture the epic scale and the romance of the era, which is maybe the most important part. If nothing else, modders will take whatever mess they leave and create something great.

The problem imo is that the engine and it's modification of it they used since ETW is Genius for units with ranged attacks but bad for formation fighting, and in the infantry charges you can see this very well. In WH2 they fixed it eventually, but so far all we've seen from the lets plays is that they didn't translate that into three kingdoms.

Personally, i would've loved the warlord era for china. The prevalence of guns would've lowered the issues with the engine and politics would be just as cuthroat as in 3kingdoms.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Personally, i would've loved the warlord era for china. The prevalence of guns would've lowered the issues with the engine and politics would be just as cuthroat as in 3kingdoms.

IMO, it breaks down when gunpowder becomes too prevalent on the battlefield. I got Napoleon back in the day (and later Empire, though I didn't play much of it). And the game didn't do a good job of handling things for that era, imo.

As for what I've seen...


Lots of talk about the new diplomacy system, which is generally well-received.
Reviewers talking about how much they like the generals in Romance mode.
One review that spent far too much time gushing over female generals, and how amazing it was that you could marry your daughters off to another state, and then see those same daughters come back as enemy generals that would destroy your armies on the battlefield (/rolleyes).
A conspicuous absence of talk about the AI. I think the grand total of AI comments that I've seen is a quick mention that enemy troops tend to stay for too long in places where they'll get shot. As I recall, that was a problem mentioned a few months ago. So I'm a bit suspicious about the current state of the game's artificial intelligence.