>be CA>create the best and fastest-selling TW game ever, with a superior diplomacy system, province buying and generals as unique persons that can switch factions instead of rng randos that are just named elite units>announce a sequel, drop the project>instead go back to making games with the same lower-quality formula you used before TW3K
It even showed you the exact mathematical value of every diplo agreement, so you knew exactly what the ai would agree to, instead of having to guess and be refused 20 times.
>>2425472Ok but it sucked.
Hyenas happened OP, 130 millions of USD$ burned overnight on a stilborn proto-Concord simply cannot be recouped in just a single year you know.
>>2425474>It even showed you the exact mathematical value of every diplo agreementThis is bad. Transparency makes it so you just squeeze them for every shekel every time rather than try to propose a deal that you think they'll agree with (and if it fails they'll snub you for the rest of that turn and in some old-school strategy games they even get pissed for longer). People talk a lot of shit about diplomacy in RTW and Med2 but the unpredictability is preferrable to whatever the hell is going on with nu-TW. Forever-alliances remove such a big part of these types of games.
Three kingdoms is hands down the greatest historical Total war. I still play it to this day and have stopped playing other Total War games. Too bad CA is filled with a bunch of Jews who want to drop all historical titles and just keep releasing Warhammer content for reddit man-children but are too ashamed to say it. There's even Romance mode for retards who want to play a hack and slash game instead of a tactical war game.
>>2425472>Explain thisSome1 with high position come to office with hangover and said "abandon this" when had to think about ways to increase dlc sales.
>>2425472unlike wesnoth fans, TW fans love rng
>>2425472basically>make a DLC nobody asked for and everyone hated >"ok no more updates for you ungrateful fucks"
>>2425472It's one of my favorite games, but I can't stand the early game just because how boring the units are. Every single unit up until like turn 20 is just a dude with pajamas and a small leather chest plate. I love the characters and story though (I've read the book)
>>2425472The game is finished. Play it or don't. Not every game needs to be Fortnite.
Playing as Yuan Shao for the first time, and his Captain Retinue mechanic is so cool. I've always wanted to upgrade each of my units individually for different specialties, and this is exactly what I was looking for. I'm having a blast playing him. Which faction mechanic do you enjoy the most?
>>2425923Holy crap shut upYou would learn the numbers after 100's of hours so they might as well make it accessibleYou know, gameyI don't want to fuck around being rejected for 50 fucking in-game years
>>2427253>Every single unit up until like turn 20 is just a dude with pajamas and a small leather chest plate.That's how I feel about Shogun 2
>>2427347Cao Caos diplo shenanigans, even more because of his rice abundance, so he can easily buy provinces off his allies and incite proxy wars against his enemies, before he eats them both.
>>2425472I'm surprised there isn't a Three Kingdoms 2 considered how chinks like 3k.
>>2427253>using dudes>not using all fire catapults all the timeb r u h
>>2428343CA managed to piss off the chinks after 3K got released with their retarded mod policy and some publisher drama, which I totally forgot the details.
>>2428349Shitty DLC of periods that no chinks ever wanted to play(it hurts their feelings or something)
>>2428353also the period is AFTER the three kingdoms so there's no reason for it to exist, let alone be one of the first DLC's.It's basically like if there was a game about the revolutionary war and then it got DLC for the civil war.
>>2428348That's why i said not until turn ~20 nigger. Kong Rong crossbow spam is better anyway.
>>2425933Romance mode is so shit. Cao Cao can beat Lu Bu in a 1v1. For the sub humans who don't know these people, Cao Cao is a strategist and Lu Bu was the most skilled warrior in all of China.
>>2428450skill issue
>>2428357I think it would make a decent DLC as the last DLC, not the first, since it brings a grim closure to the 3 kingdoms struggle. Too bad CA totally shat the bed with 3K.
>>2428683Yeah that could've worked, It's just the prime example of how CA had no real plan or knowledge of what fans of 3K wanted at the start lol.
>>2427347Definitely loved playing as the Ma family the most. Ma Teng giving ALL cavalry a flat 15 bonus damage and the faction coming with unique horse archers meant I was completely unbeatable.
>>2428970Same, I tend to like factions without any 'unique' mechanics past passive buffs (see Cao Cao's schemes). Can recommend the 190 Expanded mod, if you're OK with turn times being on par with TWWH and some bloat. Expands the map westward, adds units & characters for the steppe factions (among others)
>>2429240NTA I took a look at 190E when I was searching for mods that added characters and factions but weren't Chinese with outdated translations, but it seemed unnecessarily complex with its overhaul part. Also idk why all the factions are playable if half of them are Not Tested or just blanks without any mechanics. Left a feeling of unfinished bloat compared to vanilla. Still, it seems like the only real option for what I'm looking for. I collected a vanilla+ type of pack for myself, but may just take the plunge and try to get the hang of its mechanics after all.
>>2429255Yeah, it's a *lot* of bloat as what feels like every faction on the map gets a full court of characters and some faction things, but since we're not getting 3K2 any time soon I've been hooked by it. Some of the 'new' factions are neat; Han Sui gets a spy focus, Gongsun Du can choose wether to focus on expanding into Korea or taking Han lands with tradeoffs for each etc.It does however add a boatload of characters (or updates to existing ones with new art & skills), so if you want to catch 'em all it can be a fun time.
>>2428970what are horse archers even good for? they barely do any damage
>>2430470I played quite some time ago so they may have been nerfed, but a full stack of horse archers packed enough arrows to whittle down entire armies while barely taking any damage in return. A raw +15 to their melee damage made them do great work on charges to anything but the sturdiest units, which you could mix in a couple units of heavy cav to deal with.
>>2428970Ma is very fun. Was my first campaign that i played past turn 10. You get 6 unique units so it feels quite different than other Han factions.
what's a fun army composition for 3k? spamming 6 trebuchets gets boring real quickly
>>2425472Because Grace got mad at bikini Sun Ren mod and made CA nuke the whole modding community
>>2425472Three kingdoms was the test plan for SHOGUN 3, which will release once mw3 flopstrust the plan
Alright lads, what am I in for?
>>2430763Kino but also a lot of semi-confusing names and facesIt builds up pretty good and focuses mostly on the big players, though some characters are cut for cast necessity
>>2428450Stranger things happened in the story, I could see it happen
Who was in the wrong here?
>>2430763every character has a family name, a given name, a courtesy name, and a childhood name
>>2430841Cao Cao was wrong for believing this defection could've been genuine. Huang Gai was to the Sun clan as the Xiahou brothers were to the Cao clan; there's absolutely nothing that could've made him defect
>>2430763
>>2430763thirding the name thing, took me like 50 episodes to get them all but iirc the usually show the names on screen most of the timeanyway enjoy its a very fun ride
>>2431063the vassaltide was kino
KILL YUAN SHAOKILL YUAN SHAOKILL YUAN SHAO
>>2430763DA DU DU
>>2425472TW is a game battles which are realistic enough that real-life tactics work in-game for the same reason they worked for real. >Stop making TW like that, start making PDX-lite slop with cartoon battles where meaningless stat numbers are all that countOh this shit doesn't sell unless we target an audience with no fucking clue, that falls for deceptive marketing repeatedly.
>>2425474That's not good though.
>>2425923I agree. Diplomacy in a strategy game just feels wrong if you know every detail.
>>2432232because its so mucb better than spamming proposals until they finally agree
>>2430763Thought five episodes in:Cao Cao is kino.Dong Zhou is kino.Liu Bei is literally me.
>razes your citynothin' personnel, bro
>>2425923In real life, you and the opposing lord or both of your emissaries would sit down and talk about proposals at length, until a solution is found. You can't build serious relationships if you don't even know what the opposing party is expecting of you. TW3Ks diplomacy system assumes those talks have already happened and it's clear what both parties want and what they're willing to give in return.
>>2425472tw3k main target audience was chinamen (go figure) and they :1. Have a different paypig culture where they will only spend money on gacha boobies and if there are none the game should be sold competely with no DLCs2. Have a different perception of their own history (as shown with the Sima princes DLC all of whom are considered to be cunts and DLC getting reviewbombed)Thus CA didn't get enough money from chinese market and decided to make more tww slop for people with liquid brains
>>2430763It is fun until it gets to DADOODOO but then it gets better near the endkeep in mind that ccp made it a family friendly show so too much time is spent on melodrama for old women
>>2433582>executes all your male officers>takes all your female officers captive
taiping rebellion dlc...por favor...
>>2425472they could have used this as a foundation and made shogun 3 sengoku period with the same mechanics, soft fantasy generals/ heroes and a relatively small mapbut no the retards made troy and pharaoh two game literally nobody asked for
>>2425472this game's general framework with koei's RPG lifesimming would be the literal perfect game for me
>>2436234i really like pharaoh after they fixed it though
>>2433906Speaking of chinks and boobies they wanted to add their own anime titties but a fat hag community manager threw a fit over bikini Zheng Jiang and ordered the mods taken off the workshop (I think, I know she also whined about it on plebbit), which did not help CAs image among the chinese who did not appreciate some woke white karen telling them what to do.And the DLC policy was misguided yeah. I think they were going for something like mini-campaigns from other games or rise of the samurai type thing, but they sort of missed what the appeal of the game was. By the time 8P happens all named characters from romance who are the selling point are dead, 8P only has the titular princes as unique characters and everyone else is generic so it was really boring. Nobody, even among those interested in 3K, outside of china knows who they are and chinks don't like them as mentioned because it's seen as embarrassing the dynasty failed so soon and it lead to most of china getting conquered by barbarians.
>>2430763The worst fight scenes you've ever seen. Medium shot of Guan Yu swinging halberd (sound effect: whoooo)Medium shot of dispisable general slightly moving sideways to dodge ( sound effect : whoooo) then swinging spear (sound effect whooo) Medium shot of Guan Yu swinging halberd (sound effect whooooo)Closeup of halberd and spear clashing (sound effect chhhhhh) with neither actor visible. Medium shot of Guan Yu swinging halberd (sound effect whhhhhoo)Medium shot of disposable general struck and killed (sound effect chhhshhhlick)Repeat x 200
>>2436564kino
>>2428448>he takes 20 turns to get fire catapultshuh?
giant fucking ballistas > trebuchets
>>2436564And right after this frankly terrible horseback fight scene. Wide shot of actually 100 extras in ill-fitted costumes on an actual wall, banging on real drums.Traveling shot of another 100 dudes in the most obvious plastic armor, amidst torches and pyres sporting legitimate fire watching actors on actual horses riding at each other waving sticks in each other faces. Static shot of soldiers and horses playing dead in a quarry and you catch the guy that lifts his head to look at the camera because it happens every time.Wide shot of 200 extras riding 200 horses down that one fucking road with the trees.And then it's a dialogue scene full of continuity errors and the music abruptly cuts mid sentence.And then it's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIqKH_3M6ksIt's why i couldn't hate on this tv show in the end it's completely cheap and completely impressive. It contains a scene where they lit a stable on fire and one of the horses catches on fire and they left the shot in, because it's the only one they had.
>tfw the yellow sky rises
holy shit
>>2437340MTU character portraits really are top-notch, both in terms of coom and actual quality of illustration.
If CA didn't shit the bed they could have use 3K as base to develop something like Spring and Autumn period or rise of Mongol total war.
>>2437415I thought they'd use the the better faction ranks, coalitions, the emperor mechanics, the idea of retinues being more tied to specific general to make Shogun 3. They could also make it hero style since the period is equally mythologised. Instead 3K ended up being a dead end and the next "mainline", in giant fucking airquotes, game ended up going back to older version.
The Azure Sky is dead; the Yellow Sky will soon rise. When the year is jiǎzǐ, there will be prosperity under Heaven
on what difficulty are you faggots playing these games? Normal seems way too easy and on hardest the ai is blatantly cheating.
>>2437588The Yellow Turbans are so broken in Mandate of Heaven lol
>>2437415>>2437531my dream Total War game is Three Kingdoms being used to build Total War: A Song Of Ice And Fire. Get rid of the feng shui rock paper scissors design and everything else is a perfect framework for it
why does cavalry suck so hard? it just gets stuck and mobbed
>>2437646I play on normal. I don't really like sweat inducing challenge, and at my level of skill the AI still sometimes manages to surprise me, like attacking from a different vector, pulling up a superior force that deserves a proper battle, or moving in such a way that I'm forced to balance my supplies and movement range to achieve objectives. I have to think a bit on how to approach this usually. That's enough of a challenge for me.
>>2437646Normal, maybe hard if I really want a more challenging run. I don't like the idea of AI cheating especially the stupid in battle cheats. Why does my unit of spearmanii lose against identical unit of spearmanii just because it's AI and they have money and recruitment cheats so I'm outnumbered on top of it and have to fight a doomstack every turn with units that are just arbitrarily weaker. I think it leads to unfun degenerate meta where half the units are not viable and I never learned to be very good at the cheese anyway.I'd rarely ever play the same campaign twice so I never really develop optimised build orders and strats. I don't really play those games for the challenge and rely most on the self imposed limitations of doing whatever feels cool rather than what is good to make the game interesting.
>>2437646very hard for both
Why CA gave up is beyond me when by their sales metrics 3k was doing fucking amazing and still did reasonably well even after it was sunset. Like it out sold fucking warhammer 3. My only guess is while the metrics for the game itself sold well the DLC didn't, even though they could have concluded DLC updates would keep sales coming.>>2427253I'm always allergic to sameface syndrome, so I legitimately wonder if any Chinese media has depicted more of a heterodoxy to how armies/units looked. I know China had great bureaucracy and organizational skill relative to unga bunga chieftains but I still am skeptical that you could achieve regimental organization that matches modern day armies. At the same time maybe? It'd depend on what period chinese art depicted, as we have plenty showing variance in dress for Europeans or Muslims but maybe fashion trends over there were such that all the villagers from shi lu wai really did just wear a single color, a single style. I'm skeptical of that though.>>2437415My hope'll just be they do that with the medieval 3 engine.
>>2438507the DLC sold like shit because 75% of it is garbage. The Nanban and Yellow Turbans are cool but most of the starting date DLC is either plagued with bugs CA never bothered to fix, way less fun than the default start, or both. Also Chinese players (the target audience of the game) hated the Eight Princes DLC because it's considered an embarrassing nothingburger shitshow in Chinese hisoriography (imagine if the first Rome 2 campaign DLC was set in the fucking Year of 5 Emperors instead of a time period anyone would give a fuck about)
>>2438536Most of the actual QoL or decent additions were added as part of the free update so yeah, unless you really like the starting date for that specific faction, there was little to nothing those DLCs could offer.
>>2438536>Rome 2 campaign DLC was set in the fucking Year of 5 Emperorsthats cool
>>2438536Ironically, you're wrong. If Rome 2 had a Year of the Five Emperors DLC then it'd be a fun free for all, maybe even with mechanics related to getting rid of the Emperor.Hell, you can do that yourself in Attila with the assassination mechanic. I've assassinated the nigger you start with before because he got too uppity.
>>2438642>>2438536To continue because I hit submit a bit early, the difference between western and Chinese historyaboos is that the Chinese demand they always look awesome and insist that China has been a continuous empire since forever and has never fallen once, while if you're a Romaboo your greatest fantasy is restoring the Roman Empire from its crumbling ashes.
The empire has never fallenYet the most famous and fun time periods are when the empire shattered into a million pieces.
>>2438643>if you're a Romaboo your greatest fantasy is restoring the Roman Empire from its crumbling asheswhat coyld have been
>>2437765
Its a mystery to this day, the game could have saved CA from a lot of troubles. It relased, it had massive success and potential, it was killed asap.To this day I'm somewhat convinced that the MI6 intervened for some kind of antichink secret policy and CA had to commit somehow
Bought 3k on a whim as my first modern TW game. I could not get this shit to run on Windows 10. It would crash on campaign start. Tried upgrading drivers, checking file integrity, etc. but no change. Refunded.Anyone have any luck running newer TW on Ubuntu?
>>2440593idk I'm running 3k on Windows 10 fine. Maybe it's broken when running on your specific hardware.
>>2440639As expected. :(Thanks anyway, anon.
>>2425894... what?
>>2438536>>2438643It makes me wonder how did CA even THINK the eight princes was going to sell well in china to start with, they know the chinese hate anything that could be an embarrassment to china and the war of the eight princes is very much that, was none of the devs a ccp adjacent that could tell they were retarded and to scratch that idea NOW
>>2440593>>2440639Im also playing this on win10 and the only issues I have come from the 20 mods that can cause some problems like UI bugging outdidnt have an issues with the base game but Im also a guy who never updates his drivers
>>2440721>they know the chinese hate anything that could be an embarrassment to chinaBased on how they handle the game post launch, no, CA knew jack shit about the situation in China and repeatedly stepped on the landmines.
>>2440721Building a game where one of the main appeals is the characters and for your first DLC jumping a hundered years to when they are all dead and only the titular 8 even have art was just retarded all along even without getting into how chinks view that period in particular.Also alt/minicapiagns were just never all that popular and I don't understand why CA keep trying to make it a thing. And somehow they lesson they took was to double down on the start date plan but put in less effort. Mandate of Heaven was tied more into the grand campaign but realistically it was like a 20 turn minicampiagn because victory conditions are really easy and there's not much point in playing any factions other than han empire. World Betrayed has Lu Bu and Sun Ce have their own faction mechanics you can't otherwise get at the other startdates but otherwise it's the same as grand campaign but everyone is slightly bigger. Fates divided does literally nothing. They have updated Cao Cao together with it's release but you don't need to buy it and there's nothing unique about 200 start. Obviously nobody bought that shit.
>"EUNUCHS could be here" he thought, "I've never been in this part of the palace before. There could be EUNUCHS anywhere." The cool wind felt good against his mianguan. "I HATE EUNUCHS" he thought. The Song of the Yue Boatman reverberated through the palace, echoing through the halls even as the cheap rice wine circulated through his regal thick veins and washed away his (merited) fear of castrated men and their palace intrigues. "With a harem, you can fuck anyone you want" he said to himself, out loud.
>>2440721My schizo takeIt was deliberate, they didn't want ccp control or chinese audience wagging the dog or making ebil titty mods that would have come with longer term success so they went>ok we made good money on basegame, we can't outright leave without hurting le feelings of le chinese people so let's make ourselves unwanted with a cheap fuck you dlc
>>2430763Is that the one where the actor who played Cao Cao absolutely kills it?
>>2440721>make three kingdom game>first DLC is way past the three kingdoms>never added a start date where the three kingdoms are actually formed
>>2443211its boring when the 3 kingdoms are formed, you cant make the game interesting at that point
>>24432113k start would be bad, bunch of interesting characters are already dead and it was mostly just a stalemate and ultimately none of them actually win because they fell into corruption and degeneracy within a generation and the biggest one got couped and then easily rolled the other ones this time. Not that Jin lasted very long either ending with 8P.Also in terms of gameplay it would be like a 10 turn campaign because as a player you'd just rush the others and force them to abdicate. It would have to be a very different game to really model northern expeditions and why they failed for example.
I liked water margin better.
>>2440721Some would say sabotage so they can allocate more resources to Warhammer titles, but considering 3K did well initially that would be a tremendous waste.
>>2443382At least there would have been unique mechanics for Sun Quan but that would have been the only reason to play 3K.
>>2448776I don't think 8p was a sabotage, just misguided because they thought they can do a RotS/Charlie/whatever model and that just didn't fit what people expected from the game.I'm sure later on they did deliberately choke out the game and wanted to convert all the chink players into wh3 cathay.
>>2449550>I don't think 8p was a sabotage, just misguided because they thought they can do a RotS/Charlie/whatever model and that just didn't fit what people expected from the game.It's less RotS/Charlemagne and more popping the champagne too early. They saw the massive numbers in China and had a "This is it, we're gett'n fuck'n rich mate!" moment expecting Chinks to gulp up everything they served up.At around the same time they: - Made a quickshot DLC so rushed the Chinese voicelines of these reskins still shouted the names of the generals they were reskins of at each other. Full of bugs, deprived of content but above all a horrid cashgrab.- Sold all the Chinks who did buy the game legally to Tencent as they pushed to make deals with Steam China which had the potential to fuck over all the VPN buyers.- Community managers poured further oil onto the fire by attacking Chinese modders.Simply put, CA saw how their bet paid off and they made a game that Asians actually liked. But never made any market research to realise that unlike the Western fandom, Chinese are not shit-eaters with a severe Stockholme syndrome. Make them happy and they'll shower you with gold, try to fuck them over and they'll dick you back.Chinese gacha world has become worldwide since then so you can clearly see this in practice. You don't need to make the greatest thing ever but you absolutely must keep your fanbase happy. Genshin almost got sunk when they made Zhongli crap or tried to nerf Neuvillete. Girls Frontline died an unglamorous death by adding male love interests (attempt to expand with girls which alienates the original playerbase). In the west you can abuse your fans for decades and they will still come begging for more, the only rule is that they need to get invested first (which Hyenas, Marathon and others of its ilk) and only then proceed to peg them with no lube and squeeze them silly (AoE Remakes, Overwatch, Total War take your pick). They thought to do the same in CN.
>play this game for the first time>didn't realize you could marry generals>after 120 turns >now hoping that the geriatric 60+ Xiahous could breed some kids for Cao Cao's grandsons to play withalso it would be nice to have some wives not pickable as generals. Court is already bloated as is
Eight princes would have worked better as the last DLC after they exhausted the three kingdoms timeline
