Total War: THREE Kingdoms - Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/7...HREE_KINGDOMS/

Easy link for easy purchases. :yes:

For the record, I will be purchasing the game so if anyone would like to play some multiplayer with me when the game comes out, do let me know! :bow:

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/co...for_total_war/

Use the discount code " r/totalwar " to get an extra 25% on Three Kingdoms!

Getting the game is not in the cards for me at the moment. So please share your thoughts and experiences with the game! :hail:

I'm five hours in as Cao Cao and I'm reasonably impressed so far. I've not much idea what I'm doing, of course that's part of the fun of a new game is figuring it out.

The basic military unit make up isn't dissimilar of course to Shogun in that you've got your typical archer/melee/cav thing at play. I'm playing in the romance mode so I've got a general who can head into battle and do a lot of damage which is amusing as hell, the 1x1 dual thing while a battle is raging all around them amuses me no end.

To my tastes the focus on relationships between all the people you recruit and w/in your family adds an interesting new twist and the diplomacy is so much better fleshed out that honestly by comparison I'd suggest there is no diplomacy in any previous TW it's just that much better done.

So, take it from someone who is still fully convinced the best same CA ever made or ever will make is Shogun 2/ ROTS / FOTS, this is pretty damn good stuff. This of course has the huge asterisks attached to it, I've played this all of 5 hours, the proof will be how I feel about it after a couple hundred hours. I'll circle back and let you know..

I've got a little over 40 hrs in. I agree with what easytarget has said above.

I skipped the Warhammers & the Britannia thing entirely; my last foray into TW games were R2 and Attila. From that perspective, 3K is far more polished on release; I'm sure there's some bugs here and there, but tbh I haven't noticed them. Visually gorgeous. Battle AI seems roughly what I remember from R2/Attila; not overly impressive, not egregiously terrible either. Campaign AI appears to have improved tremendously (perhaps because the economy & army recruitment/composition are easier for it to handle?).

That said, there's a strikingly clear demarcation between "early" and "mid/late" game. It's pretty easy to put 2 or 3 commanderies together, build up a couple of full-stack armies, and get an economy going. Enemies to snuff out or push back are plentiful. Around about 50-60ish turns, however, this all changes. AI characters are also expanding, consolidating, and ranking up. When several of them hit Marquis, then lots of vassalization starts occurring, coalitions get solidified, and a sense of "gridlock" sets in. Everyone, large & small, is now enmeshed somehow or other in the various interlocked webs. No more easy targets; pretty much any military activity quickly involves more than half of China, with at least a dozen full-stack armies duking it out. Becomes a LOT harder to expand, and diplomacy becomes paramount. Ranking up to Marquis is pretty easy; but then getting to Duke and higher becomes exponentially more difficult. In both playthroughs I've tried thus far, I got to a "stalemate" point where I could manage to defend my territory, but found myself unable to sustain any further long-term expansion.

I think this is intentional. My impression is that this isn't supposed to be a "paint map all your own color" game. The player is supposed to put together a good coalition/alliance and build a vassal network for the major mid/late game wars. The question is whether allied AI is up to that task in responding to the players War Coordination efforts (basically, assigning an ally or vassal to send their armies against specific enemy territories). I haven't gotten far enough along yet to have a good feel for whether/how that works out.

Speaking of Steam... it's the biggest launch!

https://www.vg247.com/2019/05/27/tot...unch-2019/amp/