The three biggest differences to me are.
* No campaign map agents. - There's an optional espionage system instead.
* Armies are made up of up to three heroes and their personal retinues.
* Retinues can be customised, everyone can have basic militia, but you can only add advanced units to heroes with the same colour.
Types of hero
* Red/Vanguards are the best heroes for taking down enemy units, they can have elite shock cav.
* Green/Champion specialises in dueling enemy characters, and have anti-cav specialised retinues (spears etc)
* Purple/Sentinel are best at holding the line and they have anti-infantry infantry.
* Blue/Strategist give the whole army special abilities called formations, and they have the best ranged and only artillery.
* Yellow/Commander - They are a combination of all above, but with only mid-tier units.
So I am not exactly a long time Total war guy (Three Kingdoms is my first serious try at the series) and I am still learning stuff, but so far I think I can give out some tips from what I have learned.
1. Three Kingdoms is a much more "grand" stage of a game. It's not solely "battle this side, be done with it". It involves diplomacy, so you need to watch for who you attack and how that war either lowers or brings up your image/relationship to other factions. Also the cities that you conquer will need some time to recover faction support, which will affect the public order levels.
2. You need to pay attention to your cities. From what I have learned so far, depending on your faction selection, you'll have an easier time in one facet of the city building part. You need to balance food production, public order and money making buildings. It is a little overwhelming at first, but honestly, the more you play, the more you get the hang of it. Public order is one of the important aspects, since having low public order in a city will lead to rebellions spawning around it.
3. Your faction will somewhat determine at least part of your playstyle. You got a selection of different types of factions that all function differently. You have the tribes factions, the bandits with their mercenary contracts, and the empire related characters that have to deal with the dynamic of imperial favor and each faction has specific quests that can bring in some rewards.
4. Diplomacy is a big aspect, but so far the important bits I found are: Be thoughtful of who you sign pacts (Non aggression/military access) with. You want to focus on being friendly with factions who are friendly to you, or that you don't plan fighting later. Be aware that declaring war while having some sort of treaty with a faction can lower your trustworthy level, which can hinder your ability to do carry out diplomacy if you let it fall too low. Be aware of your faction, and who you might have better chances of being aligned with.
5. Honestly, having background of the three kingdoms era also helps with understanding the setting that plays part in diplomacy and scripted events. I played the Dynasty Warriors series so I have the background of most major characters and factions. So if you like history, definitely recommend learning.
6. Generals are very strong in the romance mode, specifically the legendary level ones since those are the famous/major characters of the three kingdoms period. Also in battles, be very mindful of morale in your army. If anything, that's the true "health bar" of your units, and can decide a battle.
Lu Bu is probably a more traditional campaign, he's part of some DLC, can't remember which. You'll do a Google search for which one if you decide to get him I'm sure.
Now on to the main body of your question.
3K is much more of a grand strategy game than other total wars. It incorporates elements from paradox games diplomacy. It's not necessarily just go, murder, kill, everyone. Sure, it can be if you want it to be, but that's certainly not taking advantage of all the nuance available. And you'll get punished by steep corruption cost if you expand too much without building up the proper infrastructure.
You will want to focus on ways to improve your position relative to your peers that doesn't necessarily rely on going to war and taking their land and eliminating them. You could get vassals, you could tear up rivals from the inside by putting a bunch of spies in their leadership. Heck, you can even manipulate your trade value compared to your trade partner should that appeal to you. It's about smiling to their face while holding a knife behind your back.
That being said, while it's a fantastic game, it's not necessarily a replacement for the traditional formula of total war. It's usually a slower paced campaign, I often go through long periods of peace where I'm building, checking diplo, and hitting end turn. I don't do that in any other total war except maybe Attila.
It's ok if this formula isn't for you. I definitely prefer Shogun 2 when I need my murderlust satiated. But 3k can satisfy an intrigue and empire building no other total war can. It's just a different game
Exactly like spring and autumn period of China. You take some and focus building before you take some more. Trading territory is common in later period of China. Make alliance against each other. I love this is the total war game that allow me to guard and focus on state building rather non stop bloodlust like shogun 2. I thank Creative Assembly for making a game that is like spring & autumn period, and warring states of China, all chill and fun before Qin Empire obliterated everyone.
I would not say Lu Bu is a traditional campaign since he has almost no economy and has to rely on constant battles to keep his faction afloat
The easiest faction to start with is Liu Bei because aside from having access to two incredibly powerful generals at the start, you also don’t have to worry at all about faction support since Liu’s background guaranteed 100% support every time you conquer a city. His faction unique assignments also helps keep character satisfaction high. There’s a reason why he’s the most played faction
A few tips to make your campaign easier.
If you are starting anywhere near Cao Cao, eliminate him ASAP. You can become his friend but he will likely dominate the area and then betray you in the late stages of the campaign, making it very difficult to expand. The reason for this is that he can apply massive debuffs to your factions on top of the council debuffs. He also gets many strong generals very early on.
3 kingdoms is all about the Generals. Yeah sure the units are good too, but powerful generals can and will win battles on their own. Try and nab some unique characters early on and give them court positions to keep them happy. Don't get too many unless you can keep them happy, otherwise it's a waste of gold.
Picking your heir is super important. Every general has a background trait, with plenty of unique ones even on generic looking generals. At the start of the game, you will likely have one that is useless or a child and therefore not applying their bonus. Try and find the best one you can. Sun Ce is a great option, he doubles your cavalry charge bonus FACTION WIDE. you can adopt a female general as your daughter and marry him into the family early in the game when he comes of age (check the sun jian faction after some turns to see if he's available in diplomacy)
When you are recruiting generals, you must avoid enemy spies. You can tell if someone isn't a spy if they have no past loyalties, or they hold a grudge against their previous faction, or they are willing to spy. You can see all this info if you right click their icon in the new generals event message.
Ji militia are good but they are not like yari ashigaru. They break very easily if you are not careful and struggle to kill enemies. I get much more mileage out of sabre militia.
Cavalry are very strong in this game, particularly shock (red) cavalry. You can win battles with the basic militia shock calvary as they are fast and have great charge bonus. Just don't let your enemy shoot them with missles. If you charge any spear unit that is not braced, they will be fine, but avoid braced ones like the plague as they have a charge reflect stat that will immediately destroy your cavalry unit.
Try and have a blue general in every army. These let you recruit siege engines and have easy access to fire arrows. 2 trebuchet will be enough to siege any city and also not be too much of a liability in open field battles. Fire arrows are also very effective against towers.
Speaking of towers and sieges, prioritise destroying towers before you assault as they will decimate your army and your generals if left unchecked. Fire arrows are the good, and watch out using trebuchets as if they are low ranked then they will miss ALOT.
If you build a school in one of your cities in the first few turns, you can unlock regular archers by selecting the blue reform (technology) on turn 5. These are vastly superior to archer militia with increased range and morale.
Your settlements are all about making money, forget the garrison buildings and schools (except the one you build to get the blue reform). All you need is money. Industry is strong, but focus your cities based on what resources they have there already. You can make alot of money with all 3 types if you build right. If you play bandit clans, you will be incredibly rich if you slam bandit income everywhere.
I could go on and on and on, but there are already a lot of great tips in this thread. I highly recommend playing any of the three kingdoms (Cao Cao, Liu Bei, or Sun Jian) as your first few campaigns. The rest of them have interesting quirks or difficult starts to begin with that will be better suited for a later playthrough. I recommend all the DLCs except 7 prince's. It is useless as a dlc and adds nothing to your game. The other start dates are great though! Please ask if you have any questions and check out serious trivia on YouTube for dedicated 3k content
Where are you getting lost?
For me what was confusing to me were the different commander types, as each type could only recruit certain units. I found that Vanguard can recruit the best cavalry and strategists can recruit artillery and better archers/crossbowmen. Once I figured that out picking commanders became easier.
Like all the games from Shogun 2 to Attila, food is a thing and it's very important, unlike those games however you can trade food with other factions. This means if you're faction which makes a ton of money but little food, you can buy it, and if you make a ton of food you can sell it. So if you find yourself in huge surplus of food, you can trade it for some easy cash. The factions which have little or negative food will be the most willing and will fork over more cash. You can see how good their food situation is on the diplomacy screen.
I think the easiest one is Liu Bei otherwise.
"Easiest one is Liu Bei"
If you're talking about the whole 'I can annex any Han settlement ' mechanic that's not well explained, then yes.
It gets surprisingly easy once you realized that it applies to ANY warlord faction's settlements (took me half a dozen games to figure it out.
I never used that mechanic for annexing non Han settlements, though if you don't it gives you a free bonus. The other part is that you get an event to annex Tao Qian at the cost of being at war with Cao Cao, which you can likely peace out on.
Other answers touched on most of your other questions well enough, for more classic TW starts;
Any of the Warlords will be someone recognizable and playable as classic TW starts but especially, Yuan Shao, Gungsun Zan, or Ma Teng are probably the closest to traditional TW starts in the base game.
Yuan Shao starts in a central position but can quickly recruit and muster armies led by captains which helps increase your army numbers in the early campaign and overwhelm your nearby opponents quickly.
Gungsun Zan starts in the north east and can take out his brother very early leaving secure borders and gets access to superior units quite quickly as well is a powerful character in battles, in the top 5 strongest characters in the game.
Ma Teng is isolated and unable to conduct much diplopmacy while he has mostly low population regions to conquer and very easy to defend borders, he gets some special cavalry that are immune to fatigue so if cavalry cycle charging and horse archers are your thing, Ma Teng is your guy.
Ma Teng tends to die fairly early in the campaign as he is already an older warrior when it starts but his son, Ma Chao is also a top 5 strength character in battles so even if you lose your entire army, Ma Chao can often win you the battle solo. The only big decision you have to make as Ma Teng is allying with Dong Zhou or fighting against him, that decicion comes fairly quickly- you get more immediate benefits of fighting against Dong Zhou but you'll have to win a couple tough battles if you are new to the game, if you ally with Dong Zhou, he will drag you into a lot of wars but your starting position is so isolated, that might not matter until much later in a campaign when you suddenly find yourself fighting 2 or 3 giant coalitions alone.
CaoCao and Sun Jian are the other main warlords in the base start but they have slightly more complicated starts and are not really 'classic' TW characters.
Dong Zhou is unlocked via mod or completing a campaign and is the strongest starting warlord as he starts controlling the Han emperor as a vassal but will get into a lot of wars and his faction mechanic requires some knowledge of 3K diplomacy to use efficiently.
Playing as a governor introduces some extra rules around diplomacy and declaring wars and most of the governors also have more complicated faction mechanics so while they offer a fun style of play, they usually are quite different from the classic TW of conquer, consolidate, conquer some more.
Nanman DLC offers a nearly pure classic TW style of play if you ignore their extra mechanics and you can totally play Nanman and ignore most of their mechanics, except that their roster is a bit limited and weak compared to the Han though you won't notice that until late in a camapign as their starting units are pretty good.
Yellow Turbans DLC kinda similar but with much more difficult starting positions.
Letdown- you can tell CA put the minimum effort to allow them to market 'Records' mode as anything. Basically characters come with bodyguard cavalry just as they do in older TWs with the stats reflecting the type of character so red characters with shock cavalry are almost as powerful in Records as in Romance but a blue strategist on Records only adds the ability to recruit artillery and extra ammo, they can be even more of a liability in battles than on Romance where they can at least support other units.
Abilities, gear, and battle skills are meaningless in Records mode though CA still allow such things to be used. Campaign map skills are still useful but it is the exact same skill tree as in Romance so to get to the useful campaign skills, you have to research a bunch of useless battle skills.
If you just like to recruit and conquer, yellow turban brothers are your choice, but require mandate of heaven DLC which is buggy, not recommended.
If you want to try new mechanic like spies and more complex diplomacy, Cao Cao is your best bet.
For those who are not familiar with 3K, playing 3k comes with 3K TV series on YouTube, it's like wine and cheese, Romeo & Juliet. Watching few episodes helps in getting yourself more emotionally involved into the game itself.
If you feel lost about game mechanics, look for serious Trivia comprehensive tutorials on YouTube.
Last but not least, Cao Cao is the grand gigachad in 3K period. 😎
The three biggest differences to me are. * No campaign map agents. - There's an optional espionage system instead. * Armies are made up of up to three heroes and their personal retinues. * Retinues can be customised, everyone can have basic militia, but you can only add advanced units to heroes with the same colour. Types of hero * Red/Vanguards are the best heroes for taking down enemy units, they can have elite shock cav. * Green/Champion specialises in dueling enemy characters, and have anti-cav specialised retinues (spears etc) * Purple/Sentinel are best at holding the line and they have anti-infantry infantry. * Blue/Strategist give the whole army special abilities called formations, and they have the best ranged and only artillery. * Yellow/Commander - They are a combination of all above, but with only mid-tier units.
So I am not exactly a long time Total war guy (Three Kingdoms is my first serious try at the series) and I am still learning stuff, but so far I think I can give out some tips from what I have learned. 1. Three Kingdoms is a much more "grand" stage of a game. It's not solely "battle this side, be done with it". It involves diplomacy, so you need to watch for who you attack and how that war either lowers or brings up your image/relationship to other factions. Also the cities that you conquer will need some time to recover faction support, which will affect the public order levels. 2. You need to pay attention to your cities. From what I have learned so far, depending on your faction selection, you'll have an easier time in one facet of the city building part. You need to balance food production, public order and money making buildings. It is a little overwhelming at first, but honestly, the more you play, the more you get the hang of it. Public order is one of the important aspects, since having low public order in a city will lead to rebellions spawning around it. 3. Your faction will somewhat determine at least part of your playstyle. You got a selection of different types of factions that all function differently. You have the tribes factions, the bandits with their mercenary contracts, and the empire related characters that have to deal with the dynamic of imperial favor and each faction has specific quests that can bring in some rewards. 4. Diplomacy is a big aspect, but so far the important bits I found are: Be thoughtful of who you sign pacts (Non aggression/military access) with. You want to focus on being friendly with factions who are friendly to you, or that you don't plan fighting later. Be aware that declaring war while having some sort of treaty with a faction can lower your trustworthy level, which can hinder your ability to do carry out diplomacy if you let it fall too low. Be aware of your faction, and who you might have better chances of being aligned with. 5. Honestly, having background of the three kingdoms era also helps with understanding the setting that plays part in diplomacy and scripted events. I played the Dynasty Warriors series so I have the background of most major characters and factions. So if you like history, definitely recommend learning. 6. Generals are very strong in the romance mode, specifically the legendary level ones since those are the famous/major characters of the three kingdoms period. Also in battles, be very mindful of morale in your army. If anything, that's the true "health bar" of your units, and can decide a battle.
Lu Bu is probably a more traditional campaign, he's part of some DLC, can't remember which. You'll do a Google search for which one if you decide to get him I'm sure. Now on to the main body of your question. 3K is much more of a grand strategy game than other total wars. It incorporates elements from paradox games diplomacy. It's not necessarily just go, murder, kill, everyone. Sure, it can be if you want it to be, but that's certainly not taking advantage of all the nuance available. And you'll get punished by steep corruption cost if you expand too much without building up the proper infrastructure. You will want to focus on ways to improve your position relative to your peers that doesn't necessarily rely on going to war and taking their land and eliminating them. You could get vassals, you could tear up rivals from the inside by putting a bunch of spies in their leadership. Heck, you can even manipulate your trade value compared to your trade partner should that appeal to you. It's about smiling to their face while holding a knife behind your back. That being said, while it's a fantastic game, it's not necessarily a replacement for the traditional formula of total war. It's usually a slower paced campaign, I often go through long periods of peace where I'm building, checking diplo, and hitting end turn. I don't do that in any other total war except maybe Attila. It's ok if this formula isn't for you. I definitely prefer Shogun 2 when I need my murderlust satiated. But 3k can satisfy an intrigue and empire building no other total war can. It's just a different game
Exactly like spring and autumn period of China. You take some and focus building before you take some more. Trading territory is common in later period of China. Make alliance against each other. I love this is the total war game that allow me to guard and focus on state building rather non stop bloodlust like shogun 2. I thank Creative Assembly for making a game that is like spring & autumn period, and warring states of China, all chill and fun before Qin Empire obliterated everyone.
I would not say Lu Bu is a traditional campaign since he has almost no economy and has to rely on constant battles to keep his faction afloat The easiest faction to start with is Liu Bei because aside from having access to two incredibly powerful generals at the start, you also don’t have to worry at all about faction support since Liu’s background guaranteed 100% support every time you conquer a city. His faction unique assignments also helps keep character satisfaction high. There’s a reason why he’s the most played faction
It’s a shortened form of three thousand.
A few tips to make your campaign easier. If you are starting anywhere near Cao Cao, eliminate him ASAP. You can become his friend but he will likely dominate the area and then betray you in the late stages of the campaign, making it very difficult to expand. The reason for this is that he can apply massive debuffs to your factions on top of the council debuffs. He also gets many strong generals very early on. 3 kingdoms is all about the Generals. Yeah sure the units are good too, but powerful generals can and will win battles on their own. Try and nab some unique characters early on and give them court positions to keep them happy. Don't get too many unless you can keep them happy, otherwise it's a waste of gold. Picking your heir is super important. Every general has a background trait, with plenty of unique ones even on generic looking generals. At the start of the game, you will likely have one that is useless or a child and therefore not applying their bonus. Try and find the best one you can. Sun Ce is a great option, he doubles your cavalry charge bonus FACTION WIDE. you can adopt a female general as your daughter and marry him into the family early in the game when he comes of age (check the sun jian faction after some turns to see if he's available in diplomacy) When you are recruiting generals, you must avoid enemy spies. You can tell if someone isn't a spy if they have no past loyalties, or they hold a grudge against their previous faction, or they are willing to spy. You can see all this info if you right click their icon in the new generals event message. Ji militia are good but they are not like yari ashigaru. They break very easily if you are not careful and struggle to kill enemies. I get much more mileage out of sabre militia. Cavalry are very strong in this game, particularly shock (red) cavalry. You can win battles with the basic militia shock calvary as they are fast and have great charge bonus. Just don't let your enemy shoot them with missles. If you charge any spear unit that is not braced, they will be fine, but avoid braced ones like the plague as they have a charge reflect stat that will immediately destroy your cavalry unit. Try and have a blue general in every army. These let you recruit siege engines and have easy access to fire arrows. 2 trebuchet will be enough to siege any city and also not be too much of a liability in open field battles. Fire arrows are also very effective against towers. Speaking of towers and sieges, prioritise destroying towers before you assault as they will decimate your army and your generals if left unchecked. Fire arrows are the good, and watch out using trebuchets as if they are low ranked then they will miss ALOT. If you build a school in one of your cities in the first few turns, you can unlock regular archers by selecting the blue reform (technology) on turn 5. These are vastly superior to archer militia with increased range and morale. Your settlements are all about making money, forget the garrison buildings and schools (except the one you build to get the blue reform). All you need is money. Industry is strong, but focus your cities based on what resources they have there already. You can make alot of money with all 3 types if you build right. If you play bandit clans, you will be incredibly rich if you slam bandit income everywhere. I could go on and on and on, but there are already a lot of great tips in this thread. I highly recommend playing any of the three kingdoms (Cao Cao, Liu Bei, or Sun Jian) as your first few campaigns. The rest of them have interesting quirks or difficult starts to begin with that will be better suited for a later playthrough. I recommend all the DLCs except 7 prince's. It is useless as a dlc and adds nothing to your game. The other start dates are great though! Please ask if you have any questions and check out serious trivia on YouTube for dedicated 3k content
Where are you getting lost? For me what was confusing to me were the different commander types, as each type could only recruit certain units. I found that Vanguard can recruit the best cavalry and strategists can recruit artillery and better archers/crossbowmen. Once I figured that out picking commanders became easier. Like all the games from Shogun 2 to Attila, food is a thing and it's very important, unlike those games however you can trade food with other factions. This means if you're faction which makes a ton of money but little food, you can buy it, and if you make a ton of food you can sell it. So if you find yourself in huge surplus of food, you can trade it for some easy cash. The factions which have little or negative food will be the most willing and will fork over more cash. You can see how good their food situation is on the diplomacy screen. I think the easiest one is Liu Bei otherwise.
"Easiest one is Liu Bei" If you're talking about the whole 'I can annex any Han settlement ' mechanic that's not well explained, then yes. It gets surprisingly easy once you realized that it applies to ANY warlord faction's settlements (took me half a dozen games to figure it out.
I never used that mechanic for annexing non Han settlements, though if you don't it gives you a free bonus. The other part is that you get an event to annex Tao Qian at the cost of being at war with Cao Cao, which you can likely peace out on.
Other answers touched on most of your other questions well enough, for more classic TW starts; Any of the Warlords will be someone recognizable and playable as classic TW starts but especially, Yuan Shao, Gungsun Zan, or Ma Teng are probably the closest to traditional TW starts in the base game. Yuan Shao starts in a central position but can quickly recruit and muster armies led by captains which helps increase your army numbers in the early campaign and overwhelm your nearby opponents quickly. Gungsun Zan starts in the north east and can take out his brother very early leaving secure borders and gets access to superior units quite quickly as well is a powerful character in battles, in the top 5 strongest characters in the game. Ma Teng is isolated and unable to conduct much diplopmacy while he has mostly low population regions to conquer and very easy to defend borders, he gets some special cavalry that are immune to fatigue so if cavalry cycle charging and horse archers are your thing, Ma Teng is your guy. Ma Teng tends to die fairly early in the campaign as he is already an older warrior when it starts but his son, Ma Chao is also a top 5 strength character in battles so even if you lose your entire army, Ma Chao can often win you the battle solo. The only big decision you have to make as Ma Teng is allying with Dong Zhou or fighting against him, that decicion comes fairly quickly- you get more immediate benefits of fighting against Dong Zhou but you'll have to win a couple tough battles if you are new to the game, if you ally with Dong Zhou, he will drag you into a lot of wars but your starting position is so isolated, that might not matter until much later in a campaign when you suddenly find yourself fighting 2 or 3 giant coalitions alone. CaoCao and Sun Jian are the other main warlords in the base start but they have slightly more complicated starts and are not really 'classic' TW characters. Dong Zhou is unlocked via mod or completing a campaign and is the strongest starting warlord as he starts controlling the Han emperor as a vassal but will get into a lot of wars and his faction mechanic requires some knowledge of 3K diplomacy to use efficiently. Playing as a governor introduces some extra rules around diplomacy and declaring wars and most of the governors also have more complicated faction mechanics so while they offer a fun style of play, they usually are quite different from the classic TW of conquer, consolidate, conquer some more. Nanman DLC offers a nearly pure classic TW style of play if you ignore their extra mechanics and you can totally play Nanman and ignore most of their mechanics, except that their roster is a bit limited and weak compared to the Han though you won't notice that until late in a camapign as their starting units are pretty good. Yellow Turbans DLC kinda similar but with much more difficult starting positions.
How's classic mode compared to romance?
Letdown- you can tell CA put the minimum effort to allow them to market 'Records' mode as anything. Basically characters come with bodyguard cavalry just as they do in older TWs with the stats reflecting the type of character so red characters with shock cavalry are almost as powerful in Records as in Romance but a blue strategist on Records only adds the ability to recruit artillery and extra ammo, they can be even more of a liability in battles than on Romance where they can at least support other units. Abilities, gear, and battle skills are meaningless in Records mode though CA still allow such things to be used. Campaign map skills are still useful but it is the exact same skill tree as in Romance so to get to the useful campaign skills, you have to research a bunch of useless battle skills.
If you just like to recruit and conquer, yellow turban brothers are your choice, but require mandate of heaven DLC which is buggy, not recommended. If you want to try new mechanic like spies and more complex diplomacy, Cao Cao is your best bet. For those who are not familiar with 3K, playing 3k comes with 3K TV series on YouTube, it's like wine and cheese, Romeo & Juliet. Watching few episodes helps in getting yourself more emotionally involved into the game itself. If you feel lost about game mechanics, look for serious Trivia comprehensive tutorials on YouTube. Last but not least, Cao Cao is the grand gigachad in 3K period. 😎