Total War: Three Kingdoms - the next major historical Total War title set in ancient China

[A horse of course]

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Total War was good for its time because it had potential. Battles with several thousand entities moving across 3D landscapes in real time showed a lot of promise. It just chose to grow in all the wrong directions while keeping the tactical element stagnant, so if they decide to make all their games about goblins and dwarves going forward it might be for the best.

The series was innovative in 2000. With Stephen Turnbull they even had educative credibility. Today it and their fans are just cingeworthy.

Btw I can still remember the shitstorn when Rome Total War eventually came out and the patient fans (who had even eatched a TV programme to see the development) had to realize the combat had become 2 times faster. Many people opted out back then already others tried to rescue everything with "killspeed" mods. It was already the beginning of the end and it's hard to believe what bullshit they have done to the series since then.

Ohh I remember. I fucking loathed Rome 1, a more overrated decline-fest has never existed. It's like people have forgotten the retarded units and cartoony graphics.

CA are ashamed to be making Historical games, just as Games Wokeshit hate being a toy soldier company. They deserve eachother.

 

[Fedora Master]

I don't see how 3K failed at anything. It did exactly what it promised, a romanticized version of ancient China. The combat is no worse than other modern TW titles and the campaign gameplay is superior in many regards.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's like people have forgotten the retarded units and cartoony graphics.

Yes I have because I haven't played vanilla in over a decade

Rome was my first Total War and I loved the concept. Played Shogun and Medieval 1 only later, and Rome and Medieval 2 with a ton of mods.

As arcadey as Rome 1's battles are, it serves as a good modding platform.

 

[Atlantico]

I don't see how 3K failed at anything. It did exactly what it promised, a romanticized version of ancient China. The combat is no worse than other modern TW titles and the campaign gameplay is superior in many regards.

I can see how you failed, when you started singing the praises of Dragon Age Inquisition.

You should check that thread. It will be posted to frequently and indefinitely.

 

[Theodora]

I don't see how 3K failed at anything. It did exactly what it promised, a romanticized version of ancient China. The combat is no worse than other modern TW titles and the campaign gameplay is superior in many regards.

It didn't fail at anything, clickbait-y youtubers just clinging on to (justified) annoyance at CA being shitty to their cons00000mers (unceremoniously backing out of announced content/support, and continuing the yearly cycle like it's some fifa shit).

Game itself was (is) pretty cool, if troubled with bugs and DLC balancing issues.

 

[Average Manatee]

It must have failed in sales for its DLC since they stopped churning them out.

 

[Fedora Master]

There's only so much you can do with the setting, and considering these idiots wasted the first DLC on a period that isn't even 3K anymore...

 

[Theodora]

It must have failed in sales for its DLC since they stopped churning them out.

Supposedly they may instead (also?) have reached the reasonably sustainable limits of bloat from multiple sets of DLC mechanics attempting to function despite one another.

 

[Burning Bridges]

It's like people have forgotten the retarded units and cartoony graphics.

Yes I have because I haven't played vanilla in over a decade

Rome was my first Total War and I loved the concept. Played Shogun and Medieval 1 only later, and Rome and Medieval 2 with a ton of mods.

As arcadey as Rome 1's battles are, it serves as a good modding platform.

What I liked about RTW1 is the amount of hidden content it had, much more than any other game I played.

For example I discovered you could play as Armenia thourgh a simple textedit and I they had given them some of the best, most well done units, and a very interesting part of the map and I played this faction for several weeks.

My theory is that they switched direction during development, from battle simulation to adolescent arcade bullshit. Thats why all the good content was still there but barely used. But in the meantime they had added for example the retarded dog units, that could result in battles entirely fought between animals.

The change of direction had already been noticeable with MTW which was much less simulation than STW. In fact I hated MTW more than RTW because it was such a shallow, generic campaign compared to STW focussed on Sengoku Japan.

After that they went completely retard and I stopped even trying their games after a short ragequit I had with STW2.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

It's like people have forgotten the retarded units and cartoony graphics.

Yes I have because I haven't played vanilla in over a decade

Rome was my first Total War and I loved the concept. Played Shogun and Medieval 1 only later, and Rome and Medieval 2 with a ton of mods.

As arcadey as Rome 1's battles are, it serves as a good modding platform.

What I liked about RTW1 is the amount of hidden content it had, much more than any other game I played.

For example I discovered you could play as Armenia thourgh a simple textedit and I they had given them some of the best, most well done units, and a very interesting part of the map and I played this faction for several weeks.

My theory is that they switched direction during development, from battle simulation to adolescent arcade bullshit. Thats why all the good content was still there but barely used. But in the meantime they had added for example the retarded dog units, that could result in battles entirely fought between animals.

The change of direction had already been noticeable with MTW which was much less simulation than STW. In fact I hated MTW more than RTW because it was such a shallow, generic campaign compared to STW focussed on Sengoku Japan.

After that they went completely retard and I stopped even trying their games after a short ragequit I had with STW2.

I'm surprised no one has even attempted to copy the formula. I think there was a russian game yeeeeears back by 1C but it was barely functional software.
It's 2021 and we're still fucking about with 20 unit armies made up of a few thousand troops, max. It's really quite embarassing.

I don't really give a shit about graphics, ironically I think the Warhammer/warscape engine games are quite hideous at times. it says a lot when you need to downsample to even make the image quality presentable, terrible engine.

I'd be more than happy with Rome unit graphics but with 40-50k troop armies. Why aren't we there? Do people really give a shit about mo-capped animations?

 

[JarlFrank]

I'd be more than happy with Rome unit graphics but with 40-50k troop armies. Why aren't we there? Do people really give a shit about mo-capped animations?

In fact, I find that the fancy animations ruined melee combat dynamics in the warscape engine.

Rome 1 and Medieval 2 worked perfectly. Soldiers would mostly stay in formation and perform stabs and strikes. There were some fancier animations in Medieval 2 but they were relatively rare, and very few animations were synchronized.

From Empire onward, fighting animations focused a lot on synchronized moves: one unit would play a specific fancy attack move while the other would play a fancy defense move. Obviously they mocapped two guys fighting and synchronized the animations of attacker and defender, leading to stilted and static animations that always play out the same, are lengthy, can't be broken off, and end up with soldiers out of formation. Empire was especially egregious about it, two line infantry formations clashing would end up with dozens of choreographed duels happening between individual soldiers. No unit cohesion, no shoulder-on-shoulder closed bayonet walls meeting the enemy, no ganging up of 3 soldiers vs 1 if a guy ends up surrounded. 300 men vs 300 men, but it's just 300 simultaneous duels.

While melee combat in the age of musketry was a quick and chaotic affair, it certainly wasn't like... that.

The problem persists to this day because CA love their synchronized choreographed fighting animations.

Meanwhile, the guy behind DarthMod has gone away from TW modding and is making his own tactical combat games now. Ultimate General and Ultimate Admiral, which are decent games with serviceable AI (definitely much better than the one in TW games) and functional mechanics. And most importantly, huge army sizes and a focus on big sweeping tactical maneuvers instead of the special ability spam modern TW has turned into.

 

[Burning Bridges]

fizzelopeguss

There have been games that copied the formula and even improved on it. Have you tried Scourge of War Ghettysburg? Waterloo? Ultimate General?

The recently released War on the Sea also goes in a similar direction, but pretty much the crappy one that always ends in snowballing and tediously repetitive submarine attacls.

The thing that no game has ever done again is combine good battles it with a meaningful strategic campaign. But this goes for all types of games including the so called grand strategy games that have become spreadsheets that can color maps. Game developers have always been incredibly loath to create complicated strategic layers to any type of game. And modern game development is basically retards who can only program things for which they find a sample app in Unity. There have been a few good strategy games like the Ageod series but people did not buy them and the developers ended up broke. Which means gamers don't deserve good strategy games and Shogun Total War was a fluke when some talented developers and historians believed they could change the trend. ´

Shogun Total War was a masterpiece, one of the absolute highlights of my gaming career, but it was just mildly successful. Fast forward 2 years and MTW won much more success with an already much more retarded formula. So average gamers essentially get what they deserve and we are only the exception who should pay 10 times for better games from smaller devs, but no one is willing to do that.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Burning Bridges

What did you dislike about Shogun II if I may ask? I was going to try it out since I heard good things about it, especially Fall of the Samurai. The battle and kill speed look almost like a showstopper for me though.

Anyways, you just made me install the original Shogun. Didn't play it much back in the day, I really got into the series with Medieval I (which I loved) and abandoned it after Rome turned battles into arcady kill fests running at 10x speed. I still remember the disappointment after being totally hyped for Rome and then playing the demo for the first time... Then years later I got into Medieval II, which slowed the battles down considerably and felt more like Shogun and Medieval I in that regard, but had a host of other issues that heavily tainted the vanilla experience.
All in all, this series is really the definition of squandered potential.

 

[Silva]

TalesfromtheCrypt , some mod for slowing down army speed in Shogun 2 is mandatory, otherwise the default is too on the arcady side. I remember using Darthmod. I bet there are others.

 

[Burning Bridges]

My frustration with Shogun 2 were the sum of many small things that I can't stand. Huge sprites, spherical maps and a lot of other stuff that pushes the childish and arcade in my face.

With the original I had managed to at least pretend that it was a serious strategy game, simplified to some abstract pieces but masterfully done. Although the strangeness already started with the first expansion (the first mongol battles were a foretaste of the killspeed madness that would come)

Shogun 2 feels more like an ordinary game for millenials who knew jack shit about Japan and just want a that looked like their "favorite" games.

There were also technical issues the battle graphics are actually shyte and there were horrible artifacts in the the 3d view. The original may be ancient but it had none of those issues. I easily got 500 or 1000 hours in that one, playing every campaign with every faction and some of them several times on the very hardest difficulty (though they often turned into a complete standstill when the Hojo horde was still a thing)