Improvements to the game?

[samuraixkan]

3K has the best AI, just watch LegendofTotalWar review, the higher the battle difficulty, the smarter the AI becomes

on Warhammer the highest difficulty didn't change their decisions, 3K did

[LestaT]

Counties and cities given actual names instead of Commendary name+resource.
I’m sure that the Heroic Victory of Yunnan Livestock farm or the Battle for Kuaiji lumberyard or the Battle of Jiaozhi Rice Farm are very immersive and memorable. Battle of Marathon? No! Battle of Hella fishing port! Battle of Cannae? Do you mean the Battle of Italia Vineyard? Siege of Carthage? Nope, it’s the siege of Africa city silly!

Thankfully, pfm suggests the names to be easily modable.

Yeah. The name does seems funny and uninspiring. Shoukd have something alone the line of Battle of Huluo Pass etc. Instead of naming the lumberyard etc, maybe better just name the type of field like Battle of Jiaozi Plain if it's flat or Battle of Yunnan Hill is the battlefield map is hilly.

[Jsteele14]

I would like some notification of battles happening around me and the result. At least when in my foeld of vision. Right now one army walks into another and then walks away. No real idea what happened.

I would also like a Civilization like approach where if you have had contact with the faction, you are notified when a city has been taken or loss.

I feel up to date for when a faction declares war but have no idea how it is going.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham]

Fixing the Campaign and battle multiplayer lobbies/servers would be a jolly splendid idea indeed!

[Liu Kang]

A few things I kinda wanna see changed that might be controversial:


-I know Romance mode is meant to show off the generals in the time period who were spoken off as though they were gods (one of which later deified) but I would love to see a mode that mixes a little of Records and Romance since Romance, at least in my opinion, is what really sets this game apart from previous TW entries. That being said it does feel ridiculous to watch Cao Cao rout an entire army when you can throw 600 spears his way. Give the generals a small bodyguard unit of approximately 10 soldiers (varying according to unit size settings), make them all banner troops, during the duel they could even circle around the two generals and form a dueling zone where the horses face outwards with their backs to the dueling generals. The generals themselves would be weaker as a result and you would no longer see these generals taking on entire units all on their own. You could even have truly unique generals like Zhang Fei without any bodyguards as his quirk maybe (since in the books he holds a bridge all on his own and terrifies anyone from coming near him during the Battle of Changban). You could then use these bodyguard units like you would the ancilliaries and slot in new more powerful variants, maybe the followers could also be present in battles if they are combat oriented followers as more powerful bodyguards such as the Guard (the +2 Instinct crappy one).

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-Though this game attempts to heavily emphasize characters very few FEEL different to play with. Some legendaries swap out one or two of the three central skills (the ones with the chinese characters as icons) but apart from that a sentinel is almost exactly the same as any other sentinel with the main difference usually being a stat change dependent on their title. This is, in my opinion, disappointing. I would love to see more variation and an extension of this system, yes its very RPG like which is off-putting to some, but if it is there it may as well be done right. What really is off-putting for me is that the title a character holds, unless legendary, RARELY plays an important role in defining the characteristics of a character. A few can do some unique things like characters with the Guerrila title can perform the Organise Guerrila (or something along those lines) assignment which causes attrition for any enemy army in that commandery, and some titles grant bonuses to Spying, but the vast majority grant an effect that requires the character be an Heir/Ruler/Prime Minister. How likely are you utilise someone who is not a legendary (like properly legendary, not +100 in an attribute legendary) in the Prime Minister role anyway?

Personally I'd like to see some Title related skills thrown in to each skillset, and maybe see the skill sets expanded further, make it diamond shaped to essentially include 6 more skills with two above and below, and then 1 skill at the extreme top and bottom. If it was completely up to me the Title of the character would define their starting skill, which would always position itself in the centre, give each class the two side skills as the base class skills, and then (if a diamond is formed) the very top and bottom would be Title skills. You could really play around with the Titles to create unique characters that feel distinguished.

Rogues for example could start with a skill that grants them a dedicated Bow item slot, giving you archer-generals (they need to nerf archer generals btw, ers kill your generals like the preview towers did), and then have their two other obtainable skills be a Hidden Archer buff and a Spying buff of some sort.

Guerrilas could start with a 'When Commanding an army in friendly territory/administrating a commander, enemy armies in the same commandery gain +5% attrition; gain the Organise Guerrila's Assignment' as their start skill and then have a skill where they gain a Peasant Bands in addition to their retinues when fighting a battle in your own territory, and a skill that grants them a buff to their ambushing ability.

To truly reap the benefits of a title you have to hit level 4 just to grab a second Title skill since you need to spend your first point going up from the middle, then go one to the left, then up, then diagonally up to the Title skill, so you have a real opportunity cost involved. At the moment I feel like I always try to grab all three skills with the Chinese characters (the main class skills) unless I am sure I am not going to use those commanders for combat and only for admin stuff, IE the opportunity costs are usually meh.

They could expand this further and make Legendary more meaningful. At the moment my understanding is that Legendary characters simply gain resilience buffs making it harder for them to die and more likely to take on an injury. They could instead make it so that Legendary characters gain buffed variants of the different unique skills (in the case of my suggestion it would be the three Title-related skills and the two Class-related skills that are shown as chinese characters in the current game). Though I would raise the requirement from 100 to 120~ or 80~ in two attributes if this is the case to ensure you don't end up with a quickly OP roster. Legendary buffed skills for example could see that Bow Item Slot buffed with +100% ammo and +50 Range for the Rogue.

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-Legendary characters, since I am on this I might as well say that I hate how a 'Legendary' character is anyone with 100+ in any attribute. Historically legendary characters should have their own title to show them off further, maybe 'Historical Legend' could be used in it's place? It is also disappointing to see some characters who played critical roles in the time frame this game is set in not be given unique visuals. I understand that chances are a lot more will be added with the 'Chapter DLCs' they are working on but there are some early influential people like Guo Jia or Xu You who probably should've started as unique, since I assume those characters probably won't be so important in future DLCs (IE I doubt they'll get the make up treatment). It's also sad to see characters like Xu You treated like plain generics with the boring 'Academic' title. Since we are on the topic of generics, there needs to be more variety in how they look, I really hope CA add some more portrait variations to help distinguish the generics further. Basically the game needs more flavour in characters. Don't get me wrong though, some are done really well.

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-Personality traits are annoying as hell. They change too frequently and your once beloved lord can, in some playthroughs, end up being hated by everyone. Personally I'd like to see Personality Traits set to what they are from the get go, with only critical events potentially adding/removing traits. IE, make them significantly less frequent but still possible. Maybe I'm doing something causing the characters to take on these traits, but half the time they occur when nothing is happening in peace time so it feels random.

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-Paradox styled missions from Europa Universalis for some events key events in history should be implemented. Just because you are Liu Bei should not mean that you get Zhuge Liang and Zhao Yun, if I play Ma Teng appropriately it should be possible for Ma Teng to take them on instead, after all, these games are meant to give you the ability to alter history (otherwise, and sorry for the spoilers, Sima Yi's descendents should always win), furthermore some of these events are triggering without any recognisable prerequisite being completed. I would much rather see a 'Mission List' you can take on, in which you complete a certain number of requirements, press a button and cause the event to occur. These missions should be inherently tough to complete, a goal AI aims to complete and certain factions should have buffs in completing some missions. IE Liu Bei should have a much easier time obtaining Zhao Yun or Zhuge Liang when compared to everyone else, enough so that if you ran an AI only campaign (can you do this?), Liu Bei should frequently get them. For characters who are already in another faction like Zhao Yun, the event should result in some sort of diplomatic exchange, so if I want Zhao Yun and I click that button, Gongsun Zan might need 10 diplo points (I dunno what the diplomacy meter is referred to as) to give him up. The faction giving up a character should also get a temporary faction wide buff in exchange. In a sense it'd be like Wonder races from Civ, whoever completes it first reaps the benefits. Alternatively the mission lists could be faction specific, maybe it could be used for a Records vs Romance distinction?

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-Something needs to be done to expand the interactions between characters. Maybe a Master of Writing can be hired to allow for character-level diplomacy, where you can insult specific characters to lure armies they command towards you, or open up discussions to potentially hire them. I'm finding it really hard to obtain opportunities to gain access to some of the generals who should join me at some point. Xu Huang for Cao Cao is a great example, I've beaten him in a couple of duels and defeated his army a couple of times but can't catch him, he just gets the injured status and his army disappears. I also can't seem to send spies to the Han itself (can spying be used to pull characters to your court? I don't know, I'm not comfortable with the spying system just yet) to try to lure him to becoming one of my generals. Any sort of character-specific diplomacy should be tough to utilise as it'd otherwise be abusable and you'd get players essentially playing Three Kingdoms Pokemon, but it also needs to be a little easier than it currently is (if it is easy, it needs to be made more self explanatory).

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-Some buildings feel rubbish. Especially public order buildings (looking at you grain storage!). It would be great to see them rework quite a few buildings but also implement more unique end game buildings that make some of these buildings chains more worthwhile. Give them more unique buffs and potentially consider giving them faction wide buffs similar to the school. For example make it so the military infrastructure buildings not only grant a garrison for the city it is located in, but give the T5 buildings garrison units supplied to adjacent commanderies and estates, or empower the strategic fortress' military supply debuff to affect adjacent allied commanderies too, making it really tough for enemies to maneuver into your territory if you place the fortress well enough (do not allow stacking for any of these to ensure it can't be abused). Allow the end of the Military Forge buildings to grant a non-stackable armour/damage buffs for certain unit types, or maybe the ability to commission them to create an item to give to your generals. Gain storages could eventually be used to give a discount to all infantry upkeep, etc. etc. I'm not great on ideas, but they certainly need to be more attractive to build.

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-UI needs to be more intuitive. Being in the Court screen and being able to see their in-depth details, instead forcing you to close it and go into your characters tab on the campaign map screen is dumb.

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-Plus a bunch of already mentioned things in this thread. The forced march problem is indeed frustrating, as are the overpowered arrow towers, and the weirdly named regions.

Would like to say I've not really enjoyed a TW game in a very long time, so whilst I criticize some things, I don't think I hate anything, and love a lot.

EDIT: Thats so much longer than I expected, sorry. Don't really have a TLDR.

[^Gr8^Xander]

While most of the rest of the game is great, I think the generic battlefields still ruin the battles experience.
Here's what I'd propose, I'd love to hear others' opinion on this idea:


When an army in normal stance is attacked and chooses to fight, the army may then choose where to fight between three types of battlefields. For example: a chokepoint map, a hill/mountain map and an open field map.
This will resemble the real life strategy of cunning commanders picking a spot to stand their ground on a favorable position.

Examples:
- If your army is outnumbered, you can choose to fight a chokepoint map to make the enemy numbers less relevant (for example the way Suetonius defeated Boudica despite being overwelmingly outnumbered);
- If your army has missile superiority or if the enemy has cavalry superiority, you can choose to fight on a hill/mountain map and take the high ground (for example the way the Romans won the Battle of the Cilician Gates);
- If your army has overwelming numbers or cavalry superiority, you can choose to fight a large open field battle where your cavalry has room to manoeuvre (for example Battle of Cannae).

Retreating armies may not choose where to fight (a map is selected randomly). Ambushes are unchanged.


Along with this I'd also really like to have the generic open field battle maps have more terrain features such as cliffs or big hills that turn battles into a large amount of smaller skirmishes rather than two armies in single line formation clashing. It would make the battles much more interesting.

[La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham]

Some interesting ideas there sir,


I dont much care for the "arcadey" looking character portraits /pictures.....

Dong Zhuo reminds me of a silent movie villain, in colour

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

But I am just nitpicking really!

[Liu Kang]

^I definitely agree with you. I feel like they took a look at Dynasty Warriors when they designed Dong Zhuo. The artwork used for him in the intro clips, where you see a slighly large man with that red hat on a horse (the waterpainting? art) looks much better.

[La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham]

Like I said in another thread, players really need to voice their opinion on what need to be improved, C.A.do check this thread, so voice your concerns here or on the official forums guys and gals!

[makanyane]

For graphics, I'm getting used to the slightly cartoonish portrayal of the generals. But the characters in Champions (green), and Sentinels (grey/purple) really need more differentiation, they all seem to be turning up with the same helmet/headgear that hides their hair, ears, and forehead; that's not helping with trying to work out who is who, even amongst my own generals

[BreadBuax]

The generic portrait for vanguard is good, the generic portrait for champion is sooo bad. Their pose and expression make them look like complete creeps/weirdos(hunched to the sides) wth. They should have more poses in general, less weird and awkward pose to be sure.

[makanyane]

The view of the folder for the 'wood' characters shows what the problem is


all the character schemes are based on the same sort of mix and match of face into uniform, which is fair enough, but because that position is so extreme and the amount of face showing so limited, that one really doesn't work well!

[Spitfire -WONDERBOLT!]

How about... IDK, a reload animation for the mangonel?

[youngfool]

Romance mode is cool and all, but I think it would be better if generals still have bodyguards. The bodyguards would stay back when their generals engages in a duel. They can be an individual unit detached when dueling. or they could be fighting each other. If the general is losing or fleeing, the bodyguards could rush to protect their master.
I also think the rank/title/promotion system is a huge mess atm. Firstly, generals gets a title upon recruitment at random. You can get some strategies with unnecessarily high titles. The rank system is costly with no real benefits other than increase satisfaction despite their cool sounding titles. I feel this needs a rework.
I also agree with others regarding nerfing towers, OP sentinels.

[perablenta]

My proposition of an improvement is more about adding a huge feature missing from TW games since Shogun 2. I am talking about the Avatar conquest mode.

This is my idea of how it would work in Three Kingdoms:

The new three general system would obviously be the basis of this. As a player would join the Avatar multiplayer in Three Kingdoms, he would be greeted with a screen in which he would chose his first general, and his appearance. After this the player would chose the colors and banner livery(logo) of his army as well as the starting province on the map. Each player could also join up with a clan of players, which are a group on Steam, and play in the overall clan battle for control of China’s provinces. A victory in a single month( or for example 60 days) for the top three clans on their Avatar conquest, with the maximum of 10 clans per instance, would give that clan, and every player member, a new unique color or unit livery, as well as clan tokens, to use to upgrade veteran units with the most expensive upgrades. Of course, there would be a inactivity limit, which would mean players joining wining clans, just to get clan tokens, would not work unless, they have fought for that clan, a certain number of battles, and only wining would increase the number of clan tokens received, beyond the default number.

Depending on the depth the developers from Creative Assembly would go, generals could level and gain flat stat boosts and/or unlock more powerful skills and abilities that affect themselves, enemy generals or the army units in their or enemies army. At the start players would command only a single general, and only small armies. About 3,000 gold worth of general and army units. Depending on the part of the map the player starts, he would have access to a unique unit, from the units the chosen general can command. So, not only would the choice of the general create a unique starting mix of units, but also the starting province would further customize the starting unlocked units. After conquering a certain percentage of provinces, each player would have to play a siege battle, in which he could be the defender or attacker, and if he wins the battle, he unlocks the second general and the next size of battles. For players who don’t like playing siege battles, there could be a fixed number of battles, that have to be played, to unlock the second general. Or an even more complex system could be implemented with additional story elements. Once a player has unlocked his second general, he can chose one, and then have the option of continuing to play small battles, with a single general, or medium battles, round 7000 gold, with two generals. Same process would unlock the third general, and 11,000 gold battles.

Along with unlocking generals, players would be winning battles and conquering provinces, which would unlock new unit types, special units of already unlocked unit types, retainers, general armors and weapons. Retainers would give buff and debuffs to units and generals, while armors and weapons could be just cosmetic items, or not and have actual stat boosting defects. Units would earn veteran status just like in Shogun 2, and this would unlock their more advanced abilities and powers. There could also be advanced versions of those units, which would cost more, but would have better arms and armor. This customization could be limited by general type. For example, a strategists would allowed for more infantry unit abilities, like a shield wall, while a duelist would unlock more options for cavalry units, like the wedge formation.

Players would, of course, be able to change their generals, once they unlock their third general, but it would require them to level them up. The new generals would receive less XP in large battles, but more in small battles, because total XP earned in a battle would be divided between generals. This would give experienced players incentive to play small battles, with lower level generals, and give new players, both a larger pool of players to play against, as well as populate that pool with more experienced players, that new players can learn from. Low level generals would also be limited on how many veteran and upgraded units they can bring with them into battle, which would level the playing field for new and experienced players. Leaving a general unused for a large number of battles, sitting in your generals pool, would have that general lose his edge and drop in level. A single level drop each 50 battles of concurrent inactivity, for example, with larger pools of unlocked generals having smaller penalties, as they could just train which each other in their down time. If all generals are unlocked then non would lose their levels.

Like in Shogun 2 Avatar multiplayer, in Three Kingdoms, units could also achieve veteran status, if they get enough XP in a single battle. Player would have a fixed number of veteran units in the army camp, and each unit would have its name, could be painted separately of the armies color pattern and leveled up. Higher level units would then be able to be upgrade, for example higher melee attack rating, that would increase the cost of that unit, by a fixed amount. Veteran unit damaged in a battle would be replenished, just like in Shogun 2 if rested for a single battle. Or, simple version of units could be upgrade into new, better, stronger, units which have new abilities and powers as they reach a certain veteran level. There could even been mini unit development trees.

As Shogun 2’s leaderboards data has shown player do have an interest in multiplayer aspect of Total War games, especially when that multiplayer is engaging on many levels, allows for customization, different play styles, and joining other players in clans, to battle for supremacy over provinces. TW Three Kingdoms, with its new system of three generals, gives Creative Assembly a fantastic opportunity to bring back a fan favorite multiplayer mode to millions of players, both old and new, with a new twist, completely new setting and fresh gameplay. This would keep player entertained for months and probably years to come, as Shogun 2 experience shows, and allow Creative Assembly to expand its fan base with a both easy to learn and a hard to master, mix of unit and generals, and a multiplayer strategy game experience which is totally unique in all of gaming.

[BreadBuax]

Whatever they do with non Han cultures, I hope they don’t overdo it to point that they overshadow the original factions, DLC factions has a tendency to be absurdly overloaded, it is still the Three Kingdoms after all.

Speaking of which:
CA’s edgy OC is focused on sacking and extracting tributes, it’s quite similar to a nomadic horde faction. It would be quite neat if it can be converted into a Xiongnu horde faction under Youfuluo(who actually exsists at the start of the game).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chizhi_Shizhu_Hou

[Spitfire -WONDERBOLT!]

who's the OC


A artillery reload ainim would be nice.

[JackDionne]

The thing I would like to see is ranked battles for Records mode.

[La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham]

The thing I would like to see is ranked battles for Records mode.

Another good idea!

[Toho]

First off this game is a lot of fun. I really applaud CA for their work but playing as Zheng Jiang, Dong Zhou and some others I kind of noticed somethings that I think would go a long way in improving this game.
Honestly I had ZERO clue about Three Kingdoms, its characters or its story until this game... having that said.

1) We need MORE 2D Art.
We need so much more. Especially for secondary characters.
I am not sure if mods could really take care of this but there are so many characters that seem to just appear as generic nobodies.
Like this great evil tyrant Dong Zhou dies within 10 turns but he is then replaced by his brother who looks like the other 500 random generals. Why?

In some other games covering this period this is supposedly Dong Min

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There are other characters like Zheng Jiangs warrior sister Lu Zheng.
There was this character I heard about while playing another faction that appears for Dong Zhou called Diaochan.

Well you can imagine my surprise she looks like your average strategist female character in a blue coat. Exactly like Lu Zheng.
Come on!

It is bad enough we have a whole "Romance" campaign centered on all these cool looking characters and have them die off by old age but even the semi interesting ones are also generic looking?
It is like the more you player the less interesting the cast of heroes you interact with gets smaller and smaller until there is no one left.

2) Lots of tuning for different factions is needed.
I can really comment about Zheng Jiang who I wanted to play as this roaming bandit horde with her base in the mountains. A bandit that demanded Tribute or else!
Well good luck with those tributes! I literally had to become the super power of China after 150 turns to finally play my faction right.
There was very little "banditry" in my Bandit Queen faction.

I wish either CA or modders fix these issues because it really takes the fun out of the campaign when you are forced to play a faction they falsely advertised to you.

So what do you think this game needs right now?