Thread #2315678
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What's the verdict on this?
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>>2315678
hao...... hao
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>>2315678
Best TW you can get now and only game in the series with actual diplomacy.
Drooling retards refused to play it because
>chinese names too hard to remember
unironically as an argument. I'm sure now that it was free on epic people are going to pretend like they found a hidden gem despite the fact the game had the highest player numbers than warhammer.
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>>2315751
>>chinese names too hard to remember
>unironically as an argument
its solid argument tho
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>>2315751
Being able to have allies that don't just backstab you after 10 turns for no fucking reason is what makes 3K my favourite game in the whole series, and to me the game is the best looking in the series.
Infact I'm going to reinstall thanks to this thread, a tragedy that the devs abandoned it
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>>2317056
The namelist pulls on minor historical figures or romance characters but you don't really need to know that generic officer DingDong was a real low-level official who ended up getting recorded. It's a bit of fanservice for real chinese history autists but it's not really necessary for understanding the context or enjoyment of the game. Neither do I think remembering ChingChing was your administrator and PingPong the crossbow general is particularly harder than the same for Hans Sauerkraut and Wolfgang Schnitzel.
Insofar as the problem exists it's that you just don't remember the names of random generics in your roster regardless of what language it's in. I guess some people just care about that more and like renaming things "recruitment castle 1".
Anyway, it's okay to not know things or even decide that you are not really interested in chinese history, what annoys me is people coming up with those cope excuses coming from wilful ignorance and sense of superiority rather than just say it straight.
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>>2317093
Chief Manygames agrees.
I, too, want to see Han Ready fighting the Officer Manipulator and his most fearsome general, Clothed Spine!
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>>2317109
Heh, translating names is always silly. People don't realise they are named after random nonsense because it's in greek or because it's archaic and not recognizable in modern language but there's like a gorrlion men named rock.
Even that aside people just filter out that names are words that could have had any meaning and it only feels funny when you encounter one you are not used to.
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>>2317051
>There are two types of people
>Those who played dynasty warriors as kids
Three types, you're forgetting those who played the OG-DW on the psx. Most kids started with 2 and its big battles, not the original beat-em-up
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>>2318351
>Best cavalry by far
But regular infantry is too weak. Cavalry should either have been so expensive you could only have a few regiments or it should maybe have been toned down a bit. Ranged + cav is all you need and then the infantry men are mostly standing around for the flavor.
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>>2318377
historically the chinese were able to field a lot of cavalry, so having them in small numbers would have been innacurate.
the problem is that cavalry in tw and especially nu-tw is designed to charge and trample other units even when it doesn't make sense historically and that completely fucks with unit dynamics. only medieval cavalry should be able to do massed charges and even then it should be designed to be a high-risk high-reward maneuver. cavalry in 3k simply shouldn't be able to do what it does.
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>>2318377
Infantry isn't even really weak, the problem is that the AI fields too many militia units in its armies and doesn't replace them with higher tiers. Sabre militia can do damage if they get a good charge, but ji militia is next to useless, and archer militia are just a pure liability that only contribute to routing the AI army faster due to army losses. Proper regular infantry units like Sabre infantry can be really strong, especially if given charge negate and charge speed / run speed buffs by their general. Any unique infantry unit with high inherent or stacked morale can be hard for cavalry to deal with. I recall Yuan Shao's unique ji infantry being particularly annoying.
There are other hard cavalry counters like repeating crossbows that completely remove their charge bonus from a distance, but the AI almost never uses those either, and certainly not with any kind of thought.
I once did a legendary campaign as Yuan Shu making only sword infantry and repeating crossbows and nothing else. It was really fun.
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>>2315678
a good game that CA threw the biggest bitchfit about and abandoned because nobody bought the DLC that nobody asked for
>hey you know this ancient chinese era that is one of the largest driving forces behond people wanting the play this game?
>well this DLC isn't set then
>WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED FUCK YOOOOOOUUUU
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>>2319035
>Game got released
>chinks modders started throwing out mods
>one of their community manager got angry that some of them sexualized the female characters
>CA started a workshop takedown and deleted many mods.
>this pissed off a huge chunk of their chink playerbase.
3K is just a shitshow of misstep, mismanagement and straight up lying from CA.
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>>2319565
>reading about the struggle of one Chinaman to bring us all beautiful China women
>a literal NPC starts condoning CCP censorship because the modder rustled the feathers of CA gestapo the wrong way
Jesus Almighty.
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>>2315751
Second best, Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai still top it due to having better battles (which is arguably the point of the series) + naval combat. Though you are right about the diplomacy and character side, it made the game sit at a very funny place where it could have eclipsed both Koei's RoTK AND Dynasty Warriors series. Such a waste.
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>>2315678
I really liked it. It could've been one of the best TW if the DLC direction wasn't retarded.
I was a complete chinalet before I started playing this game and it got me pretty interested in their history.
I still get the urge to play it maybe once a year as Cao Cao.
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It's pretty good. Coincidentally I was playing it just yesterday. Right now I'm playing a Yuan Shao game to save the Han Empire from usurpers.
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>>2327316
>AI has different personalities, this is expanded upon for unique characters
>AI is willing to accept sensible deals like territory swaps, vassalization, occasionally it will even offer them although it likes to pester you for ancillaries (can be modded out)
>Most AI personalities will be content or be your ally or vassal if you take care of them, even during realm divide
>You can end realm divide via diplomacy if you crush them in battle and have strong diplomatic bonuses, reducing end game fatigue
>Ally and vassal territory counts towards the final victory condition
>Characters can be friends or rivals, if you beat up some faction leader personally then his enemies love you for it, or let him go
>Useful from the first turn to the last
>Reduces settlement micro fatigue. The most territory you have the more corruption in your realm so sack new captured towns and trade them off for sweet deals or even create your own vassals so you can max out trade partners.
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>>2327542
Can be checked from the faction select menu.
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>>2327002
>Yuan Shao game to save the Han Empire from usurpers.
Yuan Shao would have 100% usurped the Han had he actually managed to reunite China (and had he crushed Cao Cao at Guandu, it would have been quite easy for him to do so, considering that unlike Mengde he wouldn't have to take years to pacify the north and thus wouldn't give time to Liu Bei nor Sun Quan to consolidate south). His sons would have caused a dynastic civil war even more retarded than the Sima thoughveit.
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>>2330132
Rise has some interesting gameplay only insofar as it really feels like a devolution of the base game. Your peasants feel more peasanty, basic towns have no walls, etc. I think where it falls short is the limited factions and lack of detail. It's just base shogun 2 but lower tech with nothing truly interesting to make up for it. So it ends up being worse than the base game instead of an interesting sidegrade. Meanwhile fall is the base game entirely improved with higher detail in every way.
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>>2330132
CA generally speaking always screws up when making DLCs that scale back the time period, because they don't make enough changes to the gameplay to make up for the relatively more primitive technology, so it always feels like a simplified version of the base game. It's not an inherent issue with a lack of proper gunpowder units, because Wrath of Sparta from Rome II had this problem, too.
I still find these kinds of campaigns interesting from an analytical standpoint because it exposes just how much CA's battle designers rely on quantity of units to obfuscate how simple the games are mechanically, rather than improving the individual quality of them so that even smaller unit rosters feel complete and interesting to play with.
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>>2315678
I didn't understand how to play it. I booted it up and I just wanted to play a normal game for a normal person, but there were too many things I had to jump through with modes and factions and starting dates. I think I played two or three battles and then quit.
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>>2338202
Default start date is 190, default game mode is Romance, Cao Cao is the hero of the story so pick his faction. There you go, the most normal way to play.
Han Empire faction is basically free real estate so expand whichever way you want, but try to get some non-aggression and trade treaties going with some of your other neighbors so you don't get overwhelmed by too many fronts.
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>>2338202
Total War is a normal strategy game for normal people. It's about as mainstream a franchise as possible when it comes to strategy games.
Pick the default start date and choose any faction. The game starts you off with simple missions like kill some easy enemy and build a building. You can always restart the campaign once you are familiar with all the mechanics but it should be fairly easy to get into. This game was my first entry into Total War and it did not have a steep learning curve.
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>>2327316
I do believe they patched it but near release you could literally be the interfactional jew, most fitting with Kong Rong.
You send envoys to literally every faction and offer a large sum of money in return for gold per turn (and you could easily get good portion more total gold from that deal even while making it 'favourable' for the other party, improving your relations), in addition all the faction leaders would like you for making repeat trade deals with them.
basically you could have the whole of china indebted to you raking in massive gold per turn just from debt payments and if you decided you did not like someone you could send all your debt slaves after them
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>>2338738
You used to be able to trade temporary food for entire farmlands, which I think was the early meta that people did with Kong Rong. The AI is now smart enough not to do that, though you can still sometimes get crazy deals selling food to someone like Liu Biao who's usually starving but swimming in cash.
I find Yuan Shu has the most fun diplomacy game these days; after you spend the early game bribing people into "acknowledging legitimacy" they eventually want to pay YOU for it once you're very friendly / best friends. It's a repeatable deal that only benefits you and makes everyone and their friends like you more for doing it.
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>>2338654
>Cao Cao is the hero of the story so pick his faction
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>>2338654
>Cao Cao is the hero of the story
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>>2339548
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Trying it out right now and feel like I'm missing what's supposed to make it so much better than other titles.
>they added faction specific mana from WH2 but so far don't see it adding enough gameplay diversity
>mustering is, I suppose, more thoughtful than time to recruit at full strength, but makes AI cheats even more apparent with one province AI throwing full stack every turn at me
>though it makes army positioning less strategic because you can make a whole army within 2-3 turns
>no building locked recruitment makes building minigame even more brainless (since you can ignore military buildings even more just play to whatever resource commandery has for more money)
>wuxing, three commander system funnels you into samey army templates even harder than ever, AI of course can't make use of it and recruits almost only militia chaff on randomly put on characters, reds are always better than yellows, greens and grays are also redundant, I think greens are the better ones, but I may sleep on some gray unit
>harmony/disharmony and satisfaction is a non-mechanic, since same traits like each other just hire green checkmark nonames over others
>you always want to join a large coalition to never be its target and that's the extent of them
>battle AI is so retarded it dedicates half its frontline to chase my skirmishing cavalry thus every battle is the same running of their columns into my formation and getting easily encircled - I don't remember other games being this bad about it
I don't know, maybe I'm sleeping on some mechanic that makes it click. I suppose I'll be happy if Threat turns out to be a good development on Realm Divide
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For me its Kong Rong and conquering China via usury and public libraries
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>>2345266
>t. fatous lord
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>>2319347
>Capture Lu Bu
>take his weapon and give it to my wife Sun Ren, then banish him
>don't have to deal with the Bastard of Three Fathers' betrayal tendencies and he has to watch my wife conquer China for me with his weapon while he is neutered
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>>2345738
Only near the end of the period iirc. Chariots never instantly went out of style once cavalry tech was discovered; it's always a gradual change, especially because chariot and cavalry might have filled different roles on the battlefield. Total War generally does a really poor job of depicting that, though.
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>>2317015
>>2315751
I've been laughed out of Total War threads before for saying these games suck because their diplomacy sucks, so I'm glad to see there are other so-called retards out there that want features that these games have to work right instead of passing off flaws as "it's total WAR, not total diplomacy!"
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>>2345810
I'm of mixed feelings. Ideally I think Diplomacy should exist but it should be very transactional and short lived. Todays allies are tomorrows enemies sort of deal. Alliances should be made based on ongoing wars or tensions, not be long lasting things that go on for the whole campaign or that stick around reliably once the threat the alliance was formed over is gone. The exception being settings where the whole dynamic is sort of based on alliances. In Warhammer you can and probably should have a stable friendship between factions like Bretonnia and The Empire when Chaos is running around. For something set in medieval Europe alliances shouldn't last longer than a few turns.
I do hate Trade Offer stuff though. I like fighting for resource bonuses, but I hate asking faction after faction if they want to trade. Trade income should just be passive income based off what resources you have that factions you are not currently at war with around you do not have.
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>>2346729
I think diplomacy should be a huge part of TW, since war is essentially a breaking down of diplomacy, and it being so basic in TW is an injustice. Aside from the lack of options, there's too much permanence in TW diplomacy, any small deal is a big commitment and breaking them causes everyone to hate you. Also how is the AI still so fucking stingy?
Honestly I'd even be ok with streamlining the city building aspect so long as we get some really cool and intricate diplomacy in its place. 3K was a good first step and I was excited to see where they would take that but of course they ditched the system.
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>>2346729
Shogun 1 was like that. Alliances just was promise of NAP(although you could do joint attacks) with some small cash bonus. AI was opportunistic and would backstab you at moment notice(just like real nippon warlord would do).
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