v3.2 Patch Preview
Several months ago I made it pretty clear that v3.0, and any necessary hotfixes, would be the last version(s) of Rise of Three Kingdoms. Essentially the mod would be considered complete and development was going to cease. However, there have been many things that I always wanted to implement but never had the time or resources to do so. The v3.1 Patch saw a bit of this, with campaign introduction videos, videos for becoming Emperor (usurpation or self-declare), a video for when Yuan Shu declares himself Emperor of Zhong, and a campaign victory video. There were other more minor things as well, but those were some of the more major improvements and additions I had been wanting to add for years, but had put on the back-burner for other projects. A minor improvement to be found in the upcoming v3.2 Patch, is a more-fleshed our Imperial Han faction - when controlled by the player. Ranks have been overhauled for faction character when starting an Imperial Han campaign and, in addition to that, Dong Cheng has finally been added. I don't know why it took me so long to add this important figure, but he is finally here!
The biggest changes introduced in the v3.2 Patch is actually the reintroduction of Regional Recruitment. Essentially China-proper is divided into 6 regions: Hebei in the northeast, Yong-Liang in the northwest, Ba-Shu in the southwest, Jingzhou occupying the south-central areas, Jiangdong in the southeast, and Zhongyuan covering central and eastern China. In each region you can recruit troops that are labelled as being from that region, with each region offering specific bonuses for specific unit types. Hebei gives bonuses to horse-archers, Xiliang to cavalry, Zhongyuan to crossbows, Ba-Shu to halberds, Jingzhou to archers, and Jiangdong to swordsmen. The previous incarnation of Regional Recruitment failed in two ways - first, it was implemented poorly, with the major flaw being that you could not re-train one region's troops when in a different region (ie: could not retrain Hebei troops when in Zhongyuan). And second, outside of stat differences due to regional specialization, there was absolutely zero distinction between units of the same type. Now, I'm happy to report that both of these issues have been rectified. While you can only recruit the matching regional troop type in a specific region (Jingzhou troops in the Jingzhou region), units of other regions can be retrained in any other region (except outside of China-proper unless you have built specific "assimilation" buildings). So now you can actually retrain and push your offensive forward, unlike with the previous installment of Regional Recruitment. On top of that each region now offers unique helmets. There are two variations for each regional helmet, with all Heavy units and 2nd-tier armor upgrade (silver shield) Light units displaying their regional helmets. All regional troops will also have different unit cards, as it would be an utter irritant having to distinguish between units of different regions if they have the same unit cards (and trying to merge units only to find out they are from different regions). Below is an example of how units will now look on the battlefield, with Yong-Liang Heavy Cavalry and (tier 2 upgraded) Light Ba-Shu Swordsmen. While the v3.2 Patch is not yet available to the public, due to testing, it shall be available soon. So keep an eye out!