Total War: Three Kingdoms is a game set back in history. There is a battle going on in China and are supposed to take part in it along with maintaining your hold on the 75 provinces under you. The game requires you to have some sense of diplomacy and making smart moves in maintaining the administrations while also always keeping an eye on your enemy units. Let us learn about the different aspects of the game together with our Total War: Three Kingdoms Beginners Guide.
Total War: Three Kingdoms Beginners Guide
You can only understand the game as you move along in it though there are some key points that you should know before starting the game. The game features two modes, namely:
- Records Modes
- Romance Mode
In addition, just like the names, there is a significant difference between the modes.
Records Mode
This mode is for players who like the grinding and realism in their games. This mode features more realistic fights where you do not have many skills and have to fight the enemies with using your functions and experience.
Romance Mode
This is the more unrealistic mode of the game that features the fights to be more thrilling and catchy as the leaders in them are as much like your Hollywood heroes where one man can fight groups of people.
The heroes here are very skilled already and can easily take down the enemies. The mode actually makes you obsessed with the fights and justifies the name of the mode.
Character Rules
The map is very big in Total War: Three Kingdoms hence the character number being equally larger.
Hundreds of characters are scattered around different commanderies and armies that once do not come back in the game. Some Characters are actually the leaders or officers who have ruled at the time period.
Some characters may even have bad blood between them. The game has a ‘satisfaction’ category that is the character’s loyalty towards you. A red cross (X) between two people means that they are not getting along.
Then there are some characters with a golden nameplate. These characters are legendary and assigning them positions based on this will benefit you, as the characters are tougher to kill.
They have better stats and can bear wounds before falling to the ground.
Development
There will be reforms that you will be selected after every five turns and each reform will have a different type of bonuses. You need to focus on your development and you should have a plan from starting so you can select things based on that.
You will be getting bonuses like increased food production that is necessary if you want to extract the gold. More food will increase the gold extracted from the peasantries. Food production can also be increased by trading with other factions.
You require gold to hire people with skills so they can work for you. You can construct more buildings and increase transportation facilities as well. The bonuses also include an increase in your treasury by adding more revenue.
Wu Xing
According to Wu Xing, there are five world elements namely:
- Earth: Yellow
- Fire: Red
- Water: Blue
- Wood: Green
- Metal: Grey
Officers will have color codes that will represent their archetype:
- Vanguards who belong to the Fire (red) code see towards the shock cavalry and focus on the Instinct stat.
- Sentinels belong to the last element that is Metal (grey). They are the defensive fighters who handle the shielded infantry and construction discounts.
- Commanders that below to the Earth (yellow) code provide bonuses to the melee cavalry, faction opinion and peasant income depending on the authority stat.
- Champions belong to the Wood (green) code and they are the soldiers of your armies. They are skilled fighters who are tougher to kill and they handle the health of their population.
- Strategists are who belong to the Water (blue) code and they handle trading for the forces. Which means that the focus on the Cunning stat which is the ammunition and military supply.
Commanderies
Capture the commandery that is not under you or your ally. This will help you in maintaining the public order. Public order has to be maintained around a hundred because if it decreases then the public does not listen to you and becomes rebellious.
If you handle the public order, it will help you in maintaining the cost of the building and reduce taxes. It will also help you in maintaining the army presence.
Public Order
Public Order can be maintained by constructing more buildings, lowering the taxes, completing more assignments, or giving jobs to people according to their ranks.
In case you are still unable to maintain the public order, you will be notified of the rebellion that is about to happen. You will have enough time to set up troops around the city to stop them from coming inside and conquering your city.
Each time your troops defeat a rebellion group and another appears, your public order will increase and soon the rebellion will stop.
Declaring War again Faction
Just because your territory is larger than the neighbor territories does not mean that you can declare war on them. You cannot start conquering every faction that you see is weaker than you.
First, you have to see whether there is a balance in the public order, food production and corruption since corruption rise with the growth in population.
Eliminate the factions gradually and on one front. If you try to fight different factions on multiple fronts then they are going to attack from places that are not safe. If you conquer your settlement then they will slowly start conquering your whole territory.
Diplomacy
The quick deals panel and the Negotiations panel allows you to try diplomatic arrangements by trading gold, food, arranged marriages.
You can also use diplomacy to make a wave of temporary peace with a neighboring faction, giving you some time to solve different problems or increase your troops.
Elimination of the Army
Having a large army does help you with conquering factions and winning wars but these armies require lots of gold and food to maintain.
You can eliminate some troops temporarily when you are not planning to go on a war, as this will help you in reducing the use of that gold. Later when you have enough treasury back, you can hire the units back again.
Espionage
In the previous Total War games, heroes or agents could not lead an army but only a general could. However, now anyone can lead the army.
You can also make anyone a spy to get information on what other factions are up to. These spies can also build their hidden network if they are recruited or they can also join their leader.
- Administrator spy can poison the garrison and also welcome you like the new conqueror.
- Court Noble spy can build up an undercover network and can lower the satisfaction of the officer.
- The general spy can poison all the surrounding armies and can detach the other retinues that send them back to their bases.
- The family will make the spy become a member of the faction. He can kill the Faction leader or the heir. If he manages to become the Faction Leader then he can even surrender the entire faction.
These are some of the tips on following which you are going to be able to maintain the commanderies under you with more ease and less rebellion and falling out of your city.
This is all we’ve in our Total War: Three Kingdoms Beginners Guide. If there is anything else that you would like to add, be sure to let us know!
