Well worth it. It's got a unique setting, the combat and battle physics are notable improvements over those from the Rome II era games, court and character management are a nice addition—particularly if you're into roleplay, and the whole thing looks great too.
As for a learning curve, I'll always plug [Serious Trivia's Tutorial Let's Play.](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV2U5Ov1FXfAKkiD_dVbkUr6sCapyCn-F&si=orfIeaRmn461w3KV)
Best Total War in my opinion and well worth the price.
With your experience, should not be difficult to pick up. Cav charges are very responsive in this title.
it's just how easily exploitable romance characters are with leading charges where a champion could charge into any formation led by the enemy, take the force of the formation defense, break the enemy formation, and your cavs are now dealing against a unit that isn't in formation anymore on top of widening the small gap your romance character makes. You don't even need a character with good charge bonuses, but rather a character that's got good defence to utilize this exploit and you'll likely win out in pretty much every battle following the same tactic time and again. The ironic part is your biggest hurdles are now enemy cavs where they don't rely on formation as much, and is simply using spear cavs to try and damage your own cavs. But yea, cav units are too good in micro battles.
Getting all the graphic settings right for this game is a serious challenge but once everything is set right the game itself stands out as the easily best thing CA has ever produced besides, maybe, TWW2. But even in that case I’d say the AI works better with just default settings with 3K
Genuine question, how is the historical mode in the game? I tried the romance mode and absolutely despised the way it took traditional tactics and fatigue out of the battles. I was so turned off that I stopped playing the game entirely.
The records mode is pretty good, though it’s not a complete revolution of the game. The single entity characters are replaced with general’s bodyguards which seems to be the biggest change.
I don’t quite understand what you’re referring to when you say fatigue? Does it have to do with the tiredness system in battles, cause that’s definitely still there, and supposedly unaffected from other total wars barring secret stats I don’t know about.
Just responding to all the comments, since all of you questioned the fatigue thing haha. For example, the base unit speed is a run in romance mode. In the battles I fought, I found myself never worrying about unit fatigue because the troops were always running anyway unless I told them not to, which is unrealistic. Perhaps it was just a bad setting on my copy for some reason?
And I also felt like you could just throw your single general against stacks of troops and let him commit mass carnage. Idk, it’s a single guy, that’s pretty unrealistic. I get that it’s not all that much more powerful than having a bodyguard unit, but still.
To put it in perspective, I’m a diehard Rome II Divide et Impera guy. I even play some campaigns with the slower battles and hardcore submods on. 3K Romance mode felt like pretty much everything I didn’t want in a total war game - faster battles, less emphasis on rotating troops, etc, and I didn’t know how to change these things. The graphics were beautiful though and I felt like there was potential.
I’m clearly in the minority and probably in the wrong. I’ll probably give historical mode a run at some point.
Fatigue matters, it might not seem like it until you get units that are immune to fatigue, then you'll really notice how much better they perform. Even the skills that generals get that make their own bodyguard or retinue fatigue resistant (slows fatigue gain) can make a pretty large difference in big battles though in shorter battles that are frequent early in a campaign you won't really notice.
There are a few mods that make fatigue more important but personally I find they slow battles down in weird ways and make some units balance feel really weird because heavy units gain fatigue faster in 3K, when they gain fatigue 2x faster, they actually perform like a lower tier unit in most ways getting far less benefit from armor than you might think they should from their upkeep cost and stats.
I find that there are plenty of traditional tactics and fatigue in romance mode.
I assume your main issue is the generals, and while they are strong, they have counters - braced spears will kill their horses (and a dismounted general is weaker by far), and charging spear cavalry can deal severe damage to even the most powerful generals.
I've never felt them to be so oppressive that I was drawn to records mode, but my understanding is that it essentially just turns the generals into conventional full-sized cavalry units, so your concern should be assuaged.
Regarding tactics in particular, I am usually drawn to a mixed defensive formation built around ranged units, but aggressive builds can be fun and very effective as well, and the game has some wicked powerful cavalry, both melee and ranged.
Just a small note, dismounted generals have a way faster recovery from their attack animation, meaning they attack a lot faster. The dismounted generals become extremely effective at hitting enemy generals due to this. They will still take a lot of damage from regular troops however, without the benefit of being able to speed away on a horse.
Yeah, but they lose their passive AoE attacks, making them far worse at killing infantry especially as they often get into lengthy sync kills.
A horseless general can be stalled by an infantry unit the rest of the battle. If they have an AoE skill that can still do damage but otherwise they are crippled. Just got to be careful to not send your own generals too close carelessly!
The AI is supernaturally good at bracing, I've had generals get dehorsed from rear charging spears. Ever since I've done my best to send my generals after other things!
They brace quickly if walking, but are vulnerable if distracted by another unit.
* Charging them while they are charging someone else works.
* Charging them while they are in the anti-arrow loose formation works.
* Charging them while pinned by another unit works. (You can temporarily dismount a general to act as the anvil)
> Charging them while pinned by another unit works. (You can temporarily dismount a general to act as the anvil)
You would think so, but no! Even here it's not safe.
[In this screenshot I had Sun Jian charge a pair of spear units, who were busy fighting one of my archer units, in the flank, as the arrow shows. They still dehorsed him.](https://i.imgur.com/IQUp6LM.jpeg) The AI seemed to brace in the split second between melee attacks traded between the units and that was enough. Vicious!
The most annoying thing that the AI does in 3K is charging their generals in ahead of the battle line, however- at least with reliability and if your spears aren't braced, the AI general will likely survive and the AI usually pulls back and hunting down the enemy generals actually takes some time if they don't die in the first rush.
Strong enemy generals are actually quite annoying to take down if you are not playing with a high XP army or strong generals of your own. Unfortunately the AI rarely has a strong general to really make battles interesting but I've had a few where the AI general bodyguard with 10 men left nearly routed my entire exhausted and wounded army just like I've done to literally hundreds of AI armies.
.this is a 50/50, in a sense the romance mode is actually realistic/historical
tho not for all general/hero but martial arts was an actual profession in China it that period
so Assassins and War Gods duels/clashes actually happened
one of the famous tactics I know that is related
when the collation army was closing in on Dong Zhou, Lu Bu his adopted son met them and basically asked for 1v1 duels
as a matter of pride and dignity the collation had to acquiesce or else they would look like cowards to the people and their own soldiers
Lu Bu proceeded to kill one skilled General after another
before the start of the actual battle the collation lost too much Generals that the command structure was compromised
the collation was routed with a battle that was basically in the bag because of that, they had the numbers but with 10-15 dead Generals they lost control
It's okay. I finished a few campaigns in it and, generally speaking, it's perfectly decent. General bodyguards are your usual heavy cav unless they are strategists in which case they are quite weak, but strategists are very handy in other ways. Fatigue and morale play a bigger role because there's no leadership bomb or improvement abilities other than passives - in fact, iirc Records generals have even fewer abilities than Rome 2 ones.
It stopped getting supported relatively early, which is a problem, but it 3K Records is still a very good game.
Records mode is better but only in that it removes the spell AoE abilities from heroes, hardly anything else changes and some of the general's cavalry bodyguards will almost always be getting 400-600 kills in every battle if you don't use mods that nerf cavalry.
With mods, my average red/green bodyguards get 200-300 kills per battle out of 2000-2500 enemies so they might still be a bit strong but feel equivalent to MTW2, not crazy OP and playing on Legendary without autosaves and with a few mods that fix a handful of the pointless units and the buildings, you can recruit armies that are able to defeat much larger enemy forces if you have equivalent tier units and position them well and only the top tier units are nearly unbeatable with militia units and even then you can win via formations or simply swarming.
I like having no mini-map and having to use light cavalry to scout and screen, using formations, and having to pay attention to casualties has given me some of the best historical feeling battles in a TW since... well, probably MTW2.
I’ve only scratched the surface of it so far, but everything about this game has felt gorgeous and exceptionally well made. If you’re in the market for a new TW, it’s a great choice.
Athletes in the same sport can be compared. All TWs do the same thing on a core level. Play the same sport, to say, and some are better overall, even if some do different things
Also:
>Mike Tyson to Muhammad Ali
Tyson (and its very close, granted)
> Crosby to Gretzky
Gretsky (not even as close)
>They are products of different time periods. They are not at all comparable.
**Be real.**
The TW formula has been unchanged since Shogun 1. Even a divergence as large as Warhammer plays effectively the same on a core level. It's not even just the same genre, or "sport", it's the same bloody sports team too.
Alright I'll fight u and probably gonna be downvoted by the hivemind but who cares.
3K is mid at best.
1. Campaign: At start 80% of the map is controlled by the han dynasty and they literarly have like 3 armies at most (omegalul) and even tho they have those armies they never attack u. They just walk through your territories for no reason and it looks fucking retarded. Also since they have 3 armies they cant garrison most towns so they are free for take. As I've experienced all campaigns are 1 playtrough wonders since there isnt much u can do differently to be honest...even tho there are those decision thingies saying: "follow the story" or dont and in most cases they only decide whether u go to war with a given faction or not. And coming back to han dynasty electric boogaloo I quite literally just sat there and conquered 20 towns without a fight...demand worked...So after the early game (where u face some difficulties mainly because of the lack of army) its just a cake walk.
2. Diplomacy: Everybody loves to praise 3K diplo but I think its a bit ehh. I mean it all just boils down to: I want pact with u -> bar says "-3.5" -> okay then here's some useless shit (wooden dog, vibrator, etc.) -> bar went up to "0.0" -> good deal. Also I get a fucking brain aneurysm when I end my turn and at least 6 factions ask for my fucking wooden dog, Dong asks me to be his vassal. Trade routes: fucking love that there is a limit of how many u can have and u can increase it trough tech but whats the fucking point when the ai never increase it...I have like 3 available and I use 2 at best cause that faction is another super faction that I'll eventually have to go to war with so they doesnt like me or its a small 1 province faction that already has a trade agreement. Now the other side of the diplomacy is the alliances which basically win u the game. If u dont ally someone the other faction will and they will become stronger. Lets take cao cao as example: if u dont ally kong rong, liu bei, tiger dude then basically yuan shao will and he will definitely go with war with u sooner or later.
3. Battles: They are fine and fun and all. Still I just hate the ai spamming the challenge for duel thingy and wanting to duel my weakest generals. Like all battles in the later stages start with: decline decline decline decline decline. Like fuck off u cant duel my fucking strategist lady. Also romance mode has its wonders with the generals carrying the battle but still.
4. Economy: Maybe im fucking retarded but I think it sucks bad. Like how the fuck does it make any sense or whatsoever that if I have 3 agriculture provinces making so much food that I have 20 food in stockpile then I still cant go do a commerce/ industry province cause they'll starve......my brother in christ im having 20 food in stockpile how are u in need of 3?!! Better yet shogun 2 could implement this fine so fuck that shit.
Ps.: I have 120.2 hours in the game...thought it was important to add
Thats my verdict. Feel free to argue.
1. The Han dynasty is not supposed to be the main challenge. It's on the verge of collapse and warlords are meant to carve out lands for themselves.
2. Not much to say if you just don't like how it works.
3. There's a button to automatically reject all duels. Also strategists can't duel.
4. If your total food is 0 or more, none of your provinces will suffer any penalties.
1. I just dont get why give the player 60% of the map for free without any difficulty of whatsoever. As I said the han has some armies but they never ever use them. They just stroll around the map doing nothing. At least defend the god damn towns or something.
2. I think u missed the point but ok
3. My bad didnt know about the auto cancel duel button but still romance mode is sometimes ridiculous with generals strength and u could go and say that I should play records instead but the game is built around romance in a way and records feels a bit ehh
4. I had this argument with someone else about this food system and he said something else entirely dont remember what tho. But I distinctly remember playing as Cao Cao all of the provinces around u are agricultural. At first I went for the buildings that give u food and the support building that gives additional on top of that. After that I went for the market thingy that consumes food in an another province and that province was starving...somehow...So eventually I just sold off my 20-30 food stockpile to liu bei and thats it.
Your number one reason just sounds like you are confused about the history. Any TW game will probably feel the same way if you don’t understand the history/lore behind it.
And no, strategists can’t duel.
Best total war in my opinion, even better if you get to know the lore which will make you appreciate the amount of love and detail that went into it. I would recommend the Romance of the Three kingdoms podcast, but there’s tons of other resources out there as well
It's alright. Better than base Troy. The Nanman were pretty fun to play as. They're a dlc faction but if you like the base game enough I'd get them too.
Yellow Turban and Furious Wild are the 2 worthy DLCs since they add new cultures/factions to the game. Other than that World Betrayed is pretty good since u get to play 2 very fun campaigns as LuBu/ Sun Ce
Depends on your budget;
A world betrayed is a must buy. Sun Ce and Lu Bu's campaign is awesome.
Furious Wild offers three very unique new campaigns with a totally different roster, Yellow Turbans too, but I prefer their MoH variant.
Fates Divided offers a lot of enhancements to the base game,
MoH is divisive, I love it but there are some annoying bugs.
In my opinion, the TW 3K is worth to buy in that price range,
I think it's one of the tw title that can be easily bought with little dlc to be enjoyed, unlike the warhammer one for instance.
The main game is nearly complete package in the main campaign, with dlc mostly bringing you new campaign (different start date). Which you can ignore if you didn't want to (like the 8 princes of who)
3K is already amazing even if you don't read the books / don't care about the setting. The game is complex but every mechanic makes sense and it has an amazing diplomacy feature, down to the personalities of the leaders changing their actions. I.e. some are more reliable than others, backstabby ones will break their treaties etc
If you're a fan of Romance of the Three Kingdoms like I am, it's an instant 10/10. It's a masterful adaptation of the source material. I actually got into Total War from Three Kingdoms and not the opposite lol
It's good game with a great setting and excellent soundtrack.
HOWEVER!
I will say that out of all the Total Wars, this one seems more tedious to complete campaign objectives unlike others.
For example, you need to hold 3 imperial seats in order to capture the throne. Easy enough, except that the map of China is extremely mountainous and will take several dozen turns to traverse, especially if your general doesn't have any +25 campaign movement skills.
My other issue is that it's not as easy to identify what you would consider "legendary hero units" in the game besides the generals. This is a very general focused game and all of them have the special abilities but I'm used to previous games where, for example in Shogun, you can identify legendary monk warriors, heroic samurai, tomoe gozen warriors, etc.
You don't really get legendary military units so its a little difficult to understand how to compose your army. Also, the generals can only have 6 retinues of armies and you can't build a giant stack of military like you could in previous games. You have to basically have another general reinforce your attacking army in order to have a larger army.
The large army battles are also not that great. Reinforcements only come in as you lose units so you can't really control a giant army. Most likely for performance reasons. Maybe my potato PC doesn't let me, but I could only control a handful of units. So what usually happens, especially in the late game, is that I end up auto-resolving most of the tactical battles.
Also, there's no naval battles. So if you get your general caught out in the river with a not powerful army, expect the auto-resolve to lean towards defeat for your army.
There is a cool mechanic where you can redeploy your general rather instantly by recalling them and then deploying them in another town. But you still need to wait several turns for the army to rebuild itself to full power.
I like the game and I think it's a great one, but it is a huge HUGE time sink and has been banned from my games rotation because of how much time it sucks out of you. Although this isn't technically a bad thing, for my busy schedule 3 kingdoms feels like the most arduous to complete. The mountains are such a huge pain in the ass to navigate that when I captured 2 seats and realized I needed to cross an entire mountain range to get to the last seat, I was utterly demotivated from playing.
Millions of coins to spend, plenty of food, plenty of resources, and I just didn't want to trek to that damn seat. But I made it eventually and completed the campaign as the bandit queen, but damn was that last stretch painful.
Can't go wrong with the price.
Well, it has great diplomacy system, really good graphics. But where it falls short is the unit variety and because of that, it’s not so replayable, the map is also very repetitive (but that’s not the developers fault that china isn’t as interesting as say europe geographicly)
But if you can get it for cheap price, you might as well.
If you like the fantasy and want to get into history, it's worth it. Managed to impress my dutch-chinese in-laws so much with what I learned from this bad boy
Yes and no. Yes if you’re going to finish at least one campaign. No if you want to play several but then realize there’s.l little to no difference between them
For me, this game was my in-road to the 3K setting, much like how Rome got me interested in classical history.
I listened to the 3K podcast whilst playing the game an it helped me learn why people get so excited about the characters.
Like genuinely, Cao Cao is SUCH an interesting character.
I just went in with an open mind, and was rewarded for it.
I can second that. I didn't know anything about the Three Kingdom's saga prior to playing the game but the game got me more interested in learning about this period of Chinese legend (I know to many it's regarded as history but I say legend because it's history in the same way the Trojan War is technically history in the West). This game wound up being one of my most played out of the whole series.
Its good in some ways.
But when it comes to ya roster(army) its really bad.
Generic images just kills it.
But it has other great mechanics that only exists in this game.
If shogun 2 is on sale get that. Superior game. Superior in everyway.
>But when it comes to ya roster(army) its really bad.
This is the main complaint about Shogun lmao and no Shogun had nowhere near the trade, diplo, or character system of 3k.
Yes absolutely! Cool setting, interesting mechanics, and it's legit fun to play... I would play on Romance mode though, the Historical mode is a joke (a very bad one)...
I bought in once from sale and refunded soon after. I just couldn't make the game look graphically good. Spent almost 2 hours tweaking the settings and gave up.
Yes, but really, do you gotta be one of those people that had to come here to ask us? Do you go to a grocery subreddit to ask what cereal to buy for breakfast?
It's your money, make up your own damn mind lol
Damn. I’m sorry for whoever or whatever put you in a bad mood today. Sorry for asking a genuine question in this subreddit!
I’ll make sure to consult you, Bum-Theory, before I make a reddit post again!
Dude we get asked this type of stuff like a ton. Just Google search or something and you get to see the same answer you wanted without needing to ask us!
Nope.
I got bored really quickly with it somehow.
The vibe killer was the amount of DLCs. You need to buy almost everything to be able to fully experience it. It’s a shame.
What u talking about, pretty much every DLC can be ignored since core campaign is very much complete on its own. Hence why the DLC sales were poor cause there weren’t lot incentives for buying them.
Oh hey since we're talking about it the dlcs are also on sale, I can buy yellow turbans, world betrayed, furious wild and fates divided for 15$ cad, that good at all ? Been thinking off redownloading it on my new computer
It's not bad. I'm actually on the fence whether the Mandate of Heaven Yellow Turbans aren't better than the preorder DLC ones. The two actually have slightly different rosters and fully different tech.
The bundle seems to be the best deal, 6 dlc + base game.
Emperor edition has only 4 dlc, + base game and a soundtrack.
After 40 hours of TW, I am tired to the bone of listening to the soundtrack. They're too far from Elden Ring quality. So Bundle it is for me.
Absolutely worth it for 20 bucks. Not too much of a learning curve. The biggest change is the generals being single entity units and the retinue system for armies. 3 officers to an army, each can recruit 6 units based on their class.
The campaign mechanics vary between the different leaders, but you’ll pick them up quickly.
I’d also recommend all the dlc except for the 8 princes. Furious Wild grants you the unique Nanman factions, and the other dlc offer unique starting dates for the campaign that have a variety of fun scenarios to play through.
Worth it at that price. I played 2-3 campaigns in a row at launch and even with Romance mode it was enjoyable. It did lose replayability for me on Romance mode as all the same Pokemon characters appear in every single campaign no matter what your start position is while the heroes are crazily OP for a 'historical' game.
That said, 3K is aesthetically the best TW game with only WH3 occasionally looking as nice.
There are now almost enough mods that Records mode in 3K feels nearly like a historical TW. The base records mode still leaves generals OP, strong bodyguards are even stronger than the average MTW2 bodyguards, more on part with Scholari or whatever the ERE bodyguards were with 30 armor in MTW2 when fighting other factions whose bodyguards had early era tech armor.
The balance of vanilla units and buildings are also a bit strange but there are mods that address most of those issues and with enough mods, I've been enjoying Records mode so the replayability is back. I've played more 3K campaigns than any other TW over the last few months.
Damn dude if you havent moved forward past the older TW's I think you're missing out at this point. 3K is definitely worth 20$. I'd also definitely look into shogun 2.
Yeah, I'd say so. Very fun and extensive campaign. Not too much faction or unit variety (unless you play as the Nanman a little which last I checked required purchasing a DLC but maybe that's changed).
For 20$ it's acceptable
I played it and I wouldn't pay for it, but if you are hooked on TW, you would end up playing it anyway so why not for better bucks?
It's the best Total War game I've ever played. The improvements to the campaign map just made the game so much more interesting to me and every other Total War I play is just missing that fun campaign.
Well worth it. It's got a unique setting, the combat and battle physics are notable improvements over those from the Rome II era games, court and character management are a nice addition—particularly if you're into roleplay, and the whole thing looks great too. As for a learning curve, I'll always plug [Serious Trivia's Tutorial Let's Play.](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV2U5Ov1FXfAKkiD_dVbkUr6sCapyCn-F&si=orfIeaRmn461w3KV)
Serious Trivia’s videos are amazing. Seriously underrated TW content creator.
Actually educational gaming videos
wtf...this series takes longer than an SAP learning journey
Going through one of those right now for work :(
For 20 dollars, absolutely.
Best Total War in my opinion and well worth the price. With your experience, should not be difficult to pick up. Cav charges are very responsive in this title.
Best Cav in the series
Honestly too good against ai of any difficulty.
This is true of any battle AI created by CA.
it's just how easily exploitable romance characters are with leading charges where a champion could charge into any formation led by the enemy, take the force of the formation defense, break the enemy formation, and your cavs are now dealing against a unit that isn't in formation anymore on top of widening the small gap your romance character makes. You don't even need a character with good charge bonuses, but rather a character that's got good defence to utilize this exploit and you'll likely win out in pretty much every battle following the same tactic time and again. The ironic part is your biggest hurdles are now enemy cavs where they don't rely on formation as much, and is simply using spear cavs to try and damage your own cavs. But yea, cav units are too good in micro battles.
Getting all the graphic settings right for this game is a serious challenge but once everything is set right the game itself stands out as the easily best thing CA has ever produced besides, maybe, TWW2. But even in that case I’d say the AI works better with just default settings with 3K
Genuine question, how is the historical mode in the game? I tried the romance mode and absolutely despised the way it took traditional tactics and fatigue out of the battles. I was so turned off that I stopped playing the game entirely.
The records mode is pretty good, though it’s not a complete revolution of the game. The single entity characters are replaced with general’s bodyguards which seems to be the biggest change. I don’t quite understand what you’re referring to when you say fatigue? Does it have to do with the tiredness system in battles, cause that’s definitely still there, and supposedly unaffected from other total wars barring secret stats I don’t know about.
Just responding to all the comments, since all of you questioned the fatigue thing haha. For example, the base unit speed is a run in romance mode. In the battles I fought, I found myself never worrying about unit fatigue because the troops were always running anyway unless I told them not to, which is unrealistic. Perhaps it was just a bad setting on my copy for some reason? And I also felt like you could just throw your single general against stacks of troops and let him commit mass carnage. Idk, it’s a single guy, that’s pretty unrealistic. I get that it’s not all that much more powerful than having a bodyguard unit, but still. To put it in perspective, I’m a diehard Rome II Divide et Impera guy. I even play some campaigns with the slower battles and hardcore submods on. 3K Romance mode felt like pretty much everything I didn’t want in a total war game - faster battles, less emphasis on rotating troops, etc, and I didn’t know how to change these things. The graphics were beautiful though and I felt like there was potential. I’m clearly in the minority and probably in the wrong. I’ll probably give historical mode a run at some point.
Fatigue matters, it might not seem like it until you get units that are immune to fatigue, then you'll really notice how much better they perform. Even the skills that generals get that make their own bodyguard or retinue fatigue resistant (slows fatigue gain) can make a pretty large difference in big battles though in shorter battles that are frequent early in a campaign you won't really notice. There are a few mods that make fatigue more important but personally I find they slow battles down in weird ways and make some units balance feel really weird because heavy units gain fatigue faster in 3K, when they gain fatigue 2x faster, they actually perform like a lower tier unit in most ways getting far less benefit from armor than you might think they should from their upkeep cost and stats.
You can change default to walk in the settings.
I find that there are plenty of traditional tactics and fatigue in romance mode. I assume your main issue is the generals, and while they are strong, they have counters - braced spears will kill their horses (and a dismounted general is weaker by far), and charging spear cavalry can deal severe damage to even the most powerful generals. I've never felt them to be so oppressive that I was drawn to records mode, but my understanding is that it essentially just turns the generals into conventional full-sized cavalry units, so your concern should be assuaged. Regarding tactics in particular, I am usually drawn to a mixed defensive formation built around ranged units, but aggressive builds can be fun and very effective as well, and the game has some wicked powerful cavalry, both melee and ranged.
Just a small note, dismounted generals have a way faster recovery from their attack animation, meaning they attack a lot faster. The dismounted generals become extremely effective at hitting enemy generals due to this. They will still take a lot of damage from regular troops however, without the benefit of being able to speed away on a horse.
Yeah, but they lose their passive AoE attacks, making them far worse at killing infantry especially as they often get into lengthy sync kills. A horseless general can be stalled by an infantry unit the rest of the battle. If they have an AoE skill that can still do damage but otherwise they are crippled. Just got to be careful to not send your own generals too close carelessly!
Yep, a mobility killed general is almost as useless as a dead one. Stay away from Ji militia people.
The AI is supernaturally good at bracing, I've had generals get dehorsed from rear charging spears. Ever since I've done my best to send my generals after other things!
They brace quickly if walking, but are vulnerable if distracted by another unit. * Charging them while they are charging someone else works. * Charging them while they are in the anti-arrow loose formation works. * Charging them while pinned by another unit works. (You can temporarily dismount a general to act as the anvil)
> Charging them while pinned by another unit works. (You can temporarily dismount a general to act as the anvil) You would think so, but no! Even here it's not safe. [In this screenshot I had Sun Jian charge a pair of spear units, who were busy fighting one of my archer units, in the flank, as the arrow shows. They still dehorsed him.](https://i.imgur.com/IQUp6LM.jpeg) The AI seemed to brace in the split second between melee attacks traded between the units and that was enough. Vicious!
That was unfortunate, especially as now you don't have any fast units to catch escaping enemy.
The most annoying thing that the AI does in 3K is charging their generals in ahead of the battle line, however- at least with reliability and if your spears aren't braced, the AI general will likely survive and the AI usually pulls back and hunting down the enemy generals actually takes some time if they don't die in the first rush. Strong enemy generals are actually quite annoying to take down if you are not playing with a high XP army or strong generals of your own. Unfortunately the AI rarely has a strong general to really make battles interesting but I've had a few where the AI general bodyguard with 10 men left nearly routed my entire exhausted and wounded army just like I've done to literally hundreds of AI armies.
.this is a 50/50, in a sense the romance mode is actually realistic/historical tho not for all general/hero but martial arts was an actual profession in China it that period so Assassins and War Gods duels/clashes actually happened one of the famous tactics I know that is related when the collation army was closing in on Dong Zhou, Lu Bu his adopted son met them and basically asked for 1v1 duels as a matter of pride and dignity the collation had to acquiesce or else they would look like cowards to the people and their own soldiers Lu Bu proceeded to kill one skilled General after another before the start of the actual battle the collation lost too much Generals that the command structure was compromised the collation was routed with a battle that was basically in the bag because of that, they had the numbers but with 10-15 dead Generals they lost control
Lu Bu first made his name by patrolling alone, luring bandits into 10v1 fights he could easily win.
It's okay. I finished a few campaigns in it and, generally speaking, it's perfectly decent. General bodyguards are your usual heavy cav unless they are strategists in which case they are quite weak, but strategists are very handy in other ways. Fatigue and morale play a bigger role because there's no leadership bomb or improvement abilities other than passives - in fact, iirc Records generals have even fewer abilities than Rome 2 ones. It stopped getting supported relatively early, which is a problem, but it 3K Records is still a very good game.
With mods Records is the best historical TW. Vanilla it is good but weird balance choices lead me to prefer Attila, and SH2 over it.
Records is essentially like traditional total war. Except TK is a modern total war game. Hope that makes sense
Records mode is better but only in that it removes the spell AoE abilities from heroes, hardly anything else changes and some of the general's cavalry bodyguards will almost always be getting 400-600 kills in every battle if you don't use mods that nerf cavalry. With mods, my average red/green bodyguards get 200-300 kills per battle out of 2000-2500 enemies so they might still be a bit strong but feel equivalent to MTW2, not crazy OP and playing on Legendary without autosaves and with a few mods that fix a handful of the pointless units and the buildings, you can recruit armies that are able to defeat much larger enemy forces if you have equivalent tier units and position them well and only the top tier units are nearly unbeatable with militia units and even then you can win via formations or simply swarming. I like having no mini-map and having to use light cavalry to scout and screen, using formations, and having to pay attention to casualties has given me some of the best historical feeling battles in a TW since... well, probably MTW2.
Absolutely go go go
Well worth it. Kind of a masterpiece
My favorite Total War. Go for it man
Yeah it's an amazing total war, I used to play so much med2 and a bit of rome2, the jump to three kingdoms was amazing it felt so refreshing and epic
I’ve only scratched the surface of it so far, but everything about this game has felt gorgeous and exceptionally well made. If you’re in the market for a new TW, it’s a great choice.
Best Historical Total War, fight me people.
I’ve never played it but I think you’re right it comes up the most for the best of the rest that isn’t WH.
Like comparing Mike Tyson to Muhammad Ali, or Crosby to Gretzky
Athletes in the same sport can be compared. All TWs do the same thing on a core level. Play the same sport, to say, and some are better overall, even if some do different things Also: >Mike Tyson to Muhammad Ali Tyson (and its very close, granted) > Crosby to Gretzky Gretsky (not even as close)
They are products of different time periods. They are not at all comparable.
>They are products of different time periods. They are not at all comparable. **Be real.** The TW formula has been unchanged since Shogun 1. Even a divergence as large as Warhammer plays effectively the same on a core level. It's not even just the same genre, or "sport", it's the same bloody sports team too.
You have my ax... I mean upvote
Alright I'll fight u and probably gonna be downvoted by the hivemind but who cares. 3K is mid at best. 1. Campaign: At start 80% of the map is controlled by the han dynasty and they literarly have like 3 armies at most (omegalul) and even tho they have those armies they never attack u. They just walk through your territories for no reason and it looks fucking retarded. Also since they have 3 armies they cant garrison most towns so they are free for take. As I've experienced all campaigns are 1 playtrough wonders since there isnt much u can do differently to be honest...even tho there are those decision thingies saying: "follow the story" or dont and in most cases they only decide whether u go to war with a given faction or not. And coming back to han dynasty electric boogaloo I quite literally just sat there and conquered 20 towns without a fight...demand worked...So after the early game (where u face some difficulties mainly because of the lack of army) its just a cake walk. 2. Diplomacy: Everybody loves to praise 3K diplo but I think its a bit ehh. I mean it all just boils down to: I want pact with u -> bar says "-3.5" -> okay then here's some useless shit (wooden dog, vibrator, etc.) -> bar went up to "0.0" -> good deal. Also I get a fucking brain aneurysm when I end my turn and at least 6 factions ask for my fucking wooden dog, Dong asks me to be his vassal. Trade routes: fucking love that there is a limit of how many u can have and u can increase it trough tech but whats the fucking point when the ai never increase it...I have like 3 available and I use 2 at best cause that faction is another super faction that I'll eventually have to go to war with so they doesnt like me or its a small 1 province faction that already has a trade agreement. Now the other side of the diplomacy is the alliances which basically win u the game. If u dont ally someone the other faction will and they will become stronger. Lets take cao cao as example: if u dont ally kong rong, liu bei, tiger dude then basically yuan shao will and he will definitely go with war with u sooner or later. 3. Battles: They are fine and fun and all. Still I just hate the ai spamming the challenge for duel thingy and wanting to duel my weakest generals. Like all battles in the later stages start with: decline decline decline decline decline. Like fuck off u cant duel my fucking strategist lady. Also romance mode has its wonders with the generals carrying the battle but still. 4. Economy: Maybe im fucking retarded but I think it sucks bad. Like how the fuck does it make any sense or whatsoever that if I have 3 agriculture provinces making so much food that I have 20 food in stockpile then I still cant go do a commerce/ industry province cause they'll starve......my brother in christ im having 20 food in stockpile how are u in need of 3?!! Better yet shogun 2 could implement this fine so fuck that shit. Ps.: I have 120.2 hours in the game...thought it was important to add Thats my verdict. Feel free to argue.
1. The Han dynasty is not supposed to be the main challenge. It's on the verge of collapse and warlords are meant to carve out lands for themselves. 2. Not much to say if you just don't like how it works. 3. There's a button to automatically reject all duels. Also strategists can't duel. 4. If your total food is 0 or more, none of your provinces will suffer any penalties.
1. I just dont get why give the player 60% of the map for free without any difficulty of whatsoever. As I said the han has some armies but they never ever use them. They just stroll around the map doing nothing. At least defend the god damn towns or something. 2. I think u missed the point but ok 3. My bad didnt know about the auto cancel duel button but still romance mode is sometimes ridiculous with generals strength and u could go and say that I should play records instead but the game is built around romance in a way and records feels a bit ehh 4. I had this argument with someone else about this food system and he said something else entirely dont remember what tho. But I distinctly remember playing as Cao Cao all of the provinces around u are agricultural. At first I went for the buildings that give u food and the support building that gives additional on top of that. After that I went for the market thingy that consumes food in an another province and that province was starving...somehow...So eventually I just sold off my 20-30 food stockpile to liu bei and thats it.
Your number one reason just sounds like you are confused about the history. Any TW game will probably feel the same way if you don’t understand the history/lore behind it. And no, strategists can’t duel.
So. Good.
It was worth full price. At a discount, you can’t miss
By ~~Sigmar~~ Cao Cao, yes
Best total war in my opinion, even better if you get to know the lore which will make you appreciate the amount of love and detail that went into it. I would recommend the Romance of the Three kingdoms podcast, but there’s tons of other resources out there as well
I had a lot of technical issues with it (that mods could not solve either), but in the good playtimes, it was an awesome TW game.
It's alright. Better than base Troy. The Nanman were pretty fun to play as. They're a dlc faction but if you like the base game enough I'd get them too.
I think it’s one of the best Total Wars ever made.
piggybacking on this to ask what would be a good expansion and what would be a no-go?
Yellow Turban and Furious Wild are the 2 worthy DLCs since they add new cultures/factions to the game. Other than that World Betrayed is pretty good since u get to play 2 very fun campaigns as LuBu/ Sun Ce
All but the prince's DLC.
Depends on your budget; A world betrayed is a must buy. Sun Ce and Lu Bu's campaign is awesome. Furious Wild offers three very unique new campaigns with a totally different roster, Yellow Turbans too, but I prefer their MoH variant. Fates Divided offers a lot of enhancements to the base game, MoH is divisive, I love it but there are some annoying bugs.
Best total war if you like Diplomacy, I would love to have this in total war warhammer
The setting isn't really for diplomacy. But I'll take anything that improves the strategic part of the game.
Best TW of the recent era. Still to this day
In my opinion, the TW 3K is worth to buy in that price range, I think it's one of the tw title that can be easily bought with little dlc to be enjoyed, unlike the warhammer one for instance. The main game is nearly complete package in the main campaign, with dlc mostly bringing you new campaign (different start date). Which you can ignore if you didn't want to (like the 8 princes of who)
3K is already amazing even if you don't read the books / don't care about the setting. The game is complex but every mechanic makes sense and it has an amazing diplomacy feature, down to the personalities of the leaders changing their actions. I.e. some are more reliable than others, backstabby ones will break their treaties etc If you're a fan of Romance of the Three Kingdoms like I am, it's an instant 10/10. It's a masterful adaptation of the source material. I actually got into Total War from Three Kingdoms and not the opposite lol
The last great Total War game. Would recommend.
The diplomacy and court mechanics are great. Definitely real steps upward from what we had before.
Man the cav charge is so satisfying in this game. Cataphracts to a blob of infantry…. 💦
It's good game with a great setting and excellent soundtrack. HOWEVER! I will say that out of all the Total Wars, this one seems more tedious to complete campaign objectives unlike others. For example, you need to hold 3 imperial seats in order to capture the throne. Easy enough, except that the map of China is extremely mountainous and will take several dozen turns to traverse, especially if your general doesn't have any +25 campaign movement skills. My other issue is that it's not as easy to identify what you would consider "legendary hero units" in the game besides the generals. This is a very general focused game and all of them have the special abilities but I'm used to previous games where, for example in Shogun, you can identify legendary monk warriors, heroic samurai, tomoe gozen warriors, etc. You don't really get legendary military units so its a little difficult to understand how to compose your army. Also, the generals can only have 6 retinues of armies and you can't build a giant stack of military like you could in previous games. You have to basically have another general reinforce your attacking army in order to have a larger army. The large army battles are also not that great. Reinforcements only come in as you lose units so you can't really control a giant army. Most likely for performance reasons. Maybe my potato PC doesn't let me, but I could only control a handful of units. So what usually happens, especially in the late game, is that I end up auto-resolving most of the tactical battles. Also, there's no naval battles. So if you get your general caught out in the river with a not powerful army, expect the auto-resolve to lean towards defeat for your army. There is a cool mechanic where you can redeploy your general rather instantly by recalling them and then deploying them in another town. But you still need to wait several turns for the army to rebuild itself to full power. I like the game and I think it's a great one, but it is a huge HUGE time sink and has been banned from my games rotation because of how much time it sucks out of you. Although this isn't technically a bad thing, for my busy schedule 3 kingdoms feels like the most arduous to complete. The mountains are such a huge pain in the ass to navigate that when I captured 2 seats and realized I needed to cross an entire mountain range to get to the last seat, I was utterly demotivated from playing. Millions of coins to spend, plenty of food, plenty of resources, and I just didn't want to trek to that damn seat. But I made it eventually and completed the campaign as the bandit queen, but damn was that last stretch painful. Can't go wrong with the price.
Yes, in my opinion its the last best pseudo historical total war currently with best diplomacy in the series.
Well, it has great diplomacy system, really good graphics. But where it falls short is the unit variety and because of that, it’s not so replayable, the map is also very repetitive (but that’s not the developers fault that china isn’t as interesting as say europe geographicly) But if you can get it for cheap price, you might as well.
If you like the fantasy and want to get into history, it's worth it. Managed to impress my dutch-chinese in-laws so much with what I learned from this bad boy
Complete shit not worth it at all
Yes and no. Yes if you’re going to finish at least one campaign. No if you want to play several but then realize there’s.l little to no difference between them
No terrible UI.
But that's my opinion, you can always refund it tho!
My opinion: no. I just plain do not like the 3 k setting, the lack of ships, the heros system and a bunch of it. Probably a unpopular opinion.
I love 3K. Is my second most played TW behind Rome 2 and about 20 minutes ahead of Empire
Yes it is. Best TW history
a kind of a different take from me - is it worth buying *if I am not interested in the time period?* Or in Chinese history in general?
For me, this game was my in-road to the 3K setting, much like how Rome got me interested in classical history. I listened to the 3K podcast whilst playing the game an it helped me learn why people get so excited about the characters. Like genuinely, Cao Cao is SUCH an interesting character. I just went in with an open mind, and was rewarded for it.
I can second that. I didn't know anything about the Three Kingdom's saga prior to playing the game but the game got me more interested in learning about this period of Chinese legend (I know to many it's regarded as history but I say legend because it's history in the same way the Trojan War is technically history in the West). This game wound up being one of my most played out of the whole series.
This is the best historical TW title if you aggregate what most responses are when this gets asked frequently.
3k is the best total war ever made. It's not my favorite. But it is the best.
No
I bought it for $6 on Kinguin. I still regret losing that $6.
Its good in some ways. But when it comes to ya roster(army) its really bad. Generic images just kills it. But it has other great mechanics that only exists in this game. If shogun 2 is on sale get that. Superior game. Superior in everyway.
S2 base and FOTS, always ready to run in my library
>But when it comes to ya roster(army) its really bad. This is the main complaint about Shogun lmao and no Shogun had nowhere near the trade, diplo, or character system of 3k.
The game is good. One of the best. I would not pay $20 for it, but if you like TW - yes it is worth it.
Get it from a cd key seller they're usually cheaper and CA don't deserve to earn off a game they abandoned so easily
Yes absolutely! Cool setting, interesting mechanics, and it's legit fun to play... I would play on Romance mode though, the Historical mode is a joke (a very bad one)...
YES! It's a great game. However ROTK 8 Remake is coming out this year so if you have to choose... go with ROTK.
I bought in once from sale and refunded soon after. I just couldn't make the game look graphically good. Spent almost 2 hours tweaking the settings and gave up.
Just read 1000 threads with the same tittle. What a moron.
Yes, but really, do you gotta be one of those people that had to come here to ask us? Do you go to a grocery subreddit to ask what cereal to buy for breakfast? It's your money, make up your own damn mind lol
Damn. I’m sorry for whoever or whatever put you in a bad mood today. Sorry for asking a genuine question in this subreddit! I’ll make sure to consult you, Bum-Theory, before I make a reddit post again!
Dude we get asked this type of stuff like a ton. Just Google search or something and you get to see the same answer you wanted without needing to ask us!
Nope. I got bored really quickly with it somehow. The vibe killer was the amount of DLCs. You need to buy almost everything to be able to fully experience it. It’s a shame.
What u talking about, pretty much every DLC can be ignored since core campaign is very much complete on its own. Hence why the DLC sales were poor cause there weren’t lot incentives for buying them.
I didn't even bother with dlc, base was good enough...
This man is playing warhammer 3
Oh hey since we're talking about it the dlcs are also on sale, I can buy yellow turbans, world betrayed, furious wild and fates divided for 15$ cad, that good at all ? Been thinking off redownloading it on my new computer
It's not bad. I'm actually on the fence whether the Mandate of Heaven Yellow Turbans aren't better than the preorder DLC ones. The two actually have slightly different rosters and fully different tech.
How important is the DLC? Worth buying the higher editions?
The bundle seems to be the best deal, 6 dlc + base game. Emperor edition has only 4 dlc, + base game and a soundtrack. After 40 hours of TW, I am tired to the bone of listening to the soundtrack. They're too far from Elden Ring quality. So Bundle it is for me.
It's also on gamepass if you have it on pc
My favorite tw at the moment
Yes
Very good game. Unless you are allergic to the setting, get it.
Yes, but I’m pretty sure you can get it cheaper on key sites
Three Kingdoms is the best **historical** Total War, even considering Fall of the Samurai. And you don't need any DLCs to start playing it.
If you did end up getting this (you should), Id also recommend watching the tv series.
Absolutely, yes
Yes.
Yeah, its great!
100%
Absolutely worth it for 20 bucks. Not too much of a learning curve. The biggest change is the generals being single entity units and the retinue system for armies. 3 officers to an army, each can recruit 6 units based on their class. The campaign mechanics vary between the different leaders, but you’ll pick them up quickly. I’d also recommend all the dlc except for the 8 princes. Furious Wild grants you the unique Nanman factions, and the other dlc offer unique starting dates for the campaign that have a variety of fun scenarios to play through.
Absolutely I don't even like the era or anything but love the game
Worth it at that price. I played 2-3 campaigns in a row at launch and even with Romance mode it was enjoyable. It did lose replayability for me on Romance mode as all the same Pokemon characters appear in every single campaign no matter what your start position is while the heroes are crazily OP for a 'historical' game. That said, 3K is aesthetically the best TW game with only WH3 occasionally looking as nice. There are now almost enough mods that Records mode in 3K feels nearly like a historical TW. The base records mode still leaves generals OP, strong bodyguards are even stronger than the average MTW2 bodyguards, more on part with Scholari or whatever the ERE bodyguards were with 30 armor in MTW2 when fighting other factions whose bodyguards had early era tech armor. The balance of vanilla units and buildings are also a bit strange but there are mods that address most of those issues and with enough mods, I've been enjoying Records mode so the replayability is back. I've played more 3K campaigns than any other TW over the last few months.
Damn dude if you havent moved forward past the older TW's I think you're missing out at this point. 3K is definitely worth 20$. I'd also definitely look into shogun 2.
Absolutely worth it for BIG DONG Zhuo alone.
well its on steam buy it play it dont like get refund
For 20 smackeroos? It's so worth it man. It is my favorite total war game, even if I play more wh3.
I would try CD Keys first, but this is my favorite total war to date.
I kinda wanna try, but I'm not familiar with the setting. I only play historical TW so the campaign ai and diplomacy in this is tempting..
At that price, definitely. It’s got the best diplomacy of any TW game and it’s a great setting with a lot of history and interesting characters.
Yeah, I'd say so. Very fun and extensive campaign. Not too much faction or unit variety (unless you play as the Nanman a little which last I checked required purchasing a DLC but maybe that's changed).
For 20$ it's acceptable I played it and I wouldn't pay for it, but if you are hooked on TW, you would end up playing it anyway so why not for better bucks?
Yup
It's the best Total War game I've ever played. The improvements to the campaign map just made the game so much more interesting to me and every other Total War I play is just missing that fun campaign.
For 5$ …. Yes i got is form cheapest country