Episode 470: Total War: Three Kingdoms

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 470:

Total War: Three Kingdoms
This week's show is the alternate universe version of our 2013 episode on Total War: Rome II. It was two hours of non-stop slamming that poor game - a real massacre. But here we find ourselves in 2019 with Total War: Three Kingdoms in front of us, and things are different. It's good. It's very good. The load times are short. The AI seems competent. The vibrant Three Kingdoms setting is brought to life with both a story mode and a gloriously ahistorical mode that lets the characters shine. Rob, Fraser, T.J., Rowan, and special guest Ginny Woo explore this new entry that bridges the gap between the historical Total War games their offshoot fantasy cousin.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

 

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[Khan Khomrad]

A two hour episode? Looks promising!

 

I'm very much happy to hear that 3 kingdoms is apparently a very good Total war game right out of the box after all of the problems they had with historical games in the last few years.

[spacerumsfeld]

Imma just keep plugging this guy’s awesome work in any thread about Three Kingdoms. Hello gamers!

 

http://www.3kingdomspodcast.com/

[SamS]

More Kiwis on the podcast please.

[SamS]

 

Good episode.

 

There are lots of little tidbits I love about this game – but there is one particular thing which I think is just brilliant that I love seeing. The responses from other leaders when you turn down their offers. In every other TW game, you get spammed with diplo requests and every time you refuse you get some snarky version of “well screw you too buddy”. When that happens I’m like “hey, you came to me, I’m the one dealing with this annoying shit every turn and you’re giving me attitude??”. But I didn’t realise just how much that grated on me until this game. It is such a delight now with diplomacy when you turn down Kong Rong or someone they just give you a “cool, no problems” and that’s it.

 

On the shadow unit cards - there is an option buried in the graphic menu that lets you turn them into normal unit cards that have the actual troops on them - it's a million times better.

 

One more point - Rob you didn’t “Hannibal” it over the mountains – you "Deng Ai’d" it over the mountains! Someone actually went and looked at what it took for Deng Ai to sneak an army into Liu Bei's kingdom in Sichuan  https://bzdww.com/article/38005/

 

[ilitarist]

This is a first TW game I got shortly after release and I'm surprised how well it holds up. It gets a much better balance between battles and campaigns I feel. On normal it feels like the game really wants me to win tactical battles but it's important to note that AI actually learns new tricks on higher difficulty levels. Like archers stop wasting ammo on your generals or anti-ranged units.

 

I found WH ok, I somewhat liked Attila but had no desire to play it beyond a single campaign. But here it feels like the campaign is dynamic and goal-oriented, I'm not just conquering stuff for the sake of getting bigger income numbers to make further conquering easier. AI feels proactive, personalities feel well realized. Even filling the map with a passive Ham Empire works well: it's not an independent actor but a pie and you want your piece. It's a little hard to distinguish all those Lu and Liu and Leu guys and gals, and it makes me hopeful for a similar game in a more familiar or better-explained setting. Cause it looks like CA got hang of diplomacy not just because the setting helps, nothing stopped them from making well-realized personalities in Warhammer but they never felt important.

[Akalabeth]

Not episode specific, but anyone else noticed 3ma is bumped off the top google results? I used to go to the podcast that way but now some African music group has bumped 'em off front page along with some sort of science gizmo - at least for my search results.