Nanman DLC announced.

[zoner16]

There has always been a certain amount of fiction/legend/myth in these games. All that really changed was how much and how central it was.

What concerns me isn't the presence, but the reliance. Easter eggs, hypotheticals, and other stuff based on questionable or downright fictious sources haven't ruined the games previously. In most cases they're either ignorable or modded around. However, now it seems that the games have to constantly justify themselves on some kind of never-before-seen content and stick it front and center in case people miss it.

At a certain point, CA is going to run out of eras with fantastical pop-history presence, at which point, what then? Invent something? I doubt that will work. The historical/fantasy hybrid approach hasn't generated much enthusiasm, even from the people who enjoy the games that have it. Most reviews about Troy seem to ignore the myth units or consider them a disappointment outside of memes. Even Romance mode in 3K is more about enjoying the characters rather than the mysticism or magic, with people seemingly happy so long as they can act out their favorite scenes from the Yanyi.

At the end of the day, tigers, elephants, and a medieval Chinese flamethrower in a new years float will not appease those who are here only for fantasy appeal. There's already a few complaining that "there aren't enough new units" because "humans don't count, they're the same skeleton." This DLC (and 3K in general) is getting by because of the appeal of the Yanyi, which itself is something of a unique case, and Troy had to resort to a sales gimmick. The fantasy appeal is going to be swallowed into the WH3 singularity when that launches, and that'll be around for quite a while. Chasing that crowd is a doomed proposition from a business standpoint, so CA is going to have to pull out something that can sell to the fanbase that isn't lawfully wedded to the Warhammer series, or else it won't have an audience.

[geala]

Do these DLCs actually sell ? The few TW players I know in real life ignore them completely. So do I.

...

Partly yes, at least in my case. Sometimes they are decisive. I only bought Attila:TW (with all DLCs) after the Sands Cultures DLC released because I liked the setting and it gave me a faction I actually liked to play.

And I shortly considered buying Three Kingdoms, despite a total lack of interest in China stuff, when I saw the Nanman DLC. I like their setting and unit design and can live with the fantasy elements. But some watching of 3K battles changed my mind. The amount of bodies flying through the air from a spear thrust, among other nonsense even a fantasy design does not justify, killed my enthusiasm immediately. What a crap. It is such an animation/battle mechanics decline since Attila, 3K looks a bit like Warhammer 1 (which I sadly bought). So the DLC could not help.

Generally, the main problem for me as longtime TW player is, main game or DLC, there is just nothing that new and better to justify buying new stuff and suffer through it's new candy-colored fantasy flair. For example, although I like the Bronze Age and have an Epic account I will not download Troy (which is neither Bronze Age nor Iliad btw) even as free game. Too much waste of time.

[PikeStance]

There has always been a certain amount of fiction/legend/myth in these games. All that really changed was how much and how central it was. .

I disagree. This is the excuse that people tend to give. CA has been accused of over generalizing, but that is not fiction. CA has been accused of inaccurate historical aspects and they "guess" or made hard choices based on available sources, but that is not fiction. TW was never about portraying the entirety of history through the depicted era. It was about set up being historical. Once you start playing, you are playing alternate history. There isn't really a such thing as a hybrid fictional historical title. if there is any fictional element, then it is fictional. Again, guess work based on available sources is not fiction. Generalization is not fiction.

Personally, I think CA got tired of the "not historical" complaints and so it was easy for them to rationalize doing fiction, because they could always say, it isn't meant to be historical and mean it. The problem is what you outlined. You can never make everyone happy. Historical, and it is never historical enough, fictional and it is never fictional enough. Developers cannot escape criticism. You can only learnt o manage it. Some are much better than others.

[Anna_Gein]

I think CA just lacks vision.

All these debates about fiction and mythical reality behind the myths are marketing BS and a total waste of time.

Truth being told, among the half dozen TW players I know in real life, not a single one talked to me about fantasy as their main motivation to play TW. Quite the contrary. At best people who are unfamiliar with the era depicted will fail to realize how ridiculous some of the units are. I am myself completely incapable to say if Three Kingdoms units are relatively accurate or if they are as ridiculous as Attila BS units or RTW New Kingdom Egyptians.

Imo this is just a an artificial debate created by fanboys who could not stand constructive criticism to their favorite IP. Now CA makes it one of its main marketing point because their recent release are so anecdotal. I suppose it is easier to talk about it rather than explain how the games are (not) getting better with each release.

The references to variety and diversity are definitely something that the fanbase has been complaining about for a while. It's hard to shake the feeling that you're playing the same battles with different costumes in each campaign. Eight Princes was partly skewered on that complaint (as was Thrones), and I think it's something that's stuck with the developers as a mantra: "Make sure every content drop is different!"

It does make sense. With Total War DLC, you're usually not asking for new systems within the base campaign like Paradox. You'll get those with the free patch. You're asking people to pay to get another campaign entirely, rather than just replay on of the ones they already have. There has to be something of significantly unique and desirable enough to justify a purchase.

One of the Youtubers, I think Many A True Nerd, referenced Rome: Total War's unique and out there units as a big reason that game is still so fun, and I have a hard time disagreeing. I don't think my younger self would've bother playing Germania if it hadn't been for the fact that I thought the berserker-spin looked cool, and I barely cared that Egypt was out of date because I loved their chariots. In Warhammer, one of the big motivations for me to keep playing a campaign I'm already dominating is to unlock the endgame monsters/constructs/characters and have fun watching them go to work.

I don't necessarily think that the fanbase is demanding fantasy in everything (well, there are some that are), but I do worry that the amount of variation and spectacle that is being demanded is going to keep compelling CA to make detrimental concessions in everything they do out of fear of being perceived as "too much like the other thing." I'm reminded of the Rome 2 debacle that was intrinsically related to the push for "cinematic" experiences, with an absurd amount of choreography and post processing effects that had a horrible impact on gameplay and performance. This doesn't really feel any different, but the sacrifice here is historical grounding and balance.

Once they run out of well known legendary literary traditions to draw on (there aren't that many), what do they do next? Even Warhammer content creators want a Medieval 3, but that's not exactly backed by a fantastical epic that can be used as a sourcebook. Is there enough "spectacle" in medieval europe to drive sales, or is it now too mundane to exist on its own merits?

The thing with Three Kingdoms is that it is not just a feeling of playing the same faction with a different costume color : you are literally playing the same faction indeed.

Settings like Three Kingdoms and Shogun will always have to deal with their relative lack of variety. The devs can not avoid it entirely. But they can work with it. In Shogun 2 there was a lot of smart small designs which helped to make it a better experience. Each faction had artificial bonus on one specific unit category, you had a clear and coherent technology trees which gave buff and finally you could unlock a legendary bonus if you were the first to unlock one of the highest tier technology. Sure it was not Rome 2 TW but the devs did some work about it without going full retarded as they are seemingly doing with Three Kingdoms.

Secondly I think we are missing the point by talking about variety alone. The feeling of accomplishment you refer to when you unlock high tier buildings/units/characters can exist in about every time of game. And it is something deeply lacking in recent TW games even as older one had a lot of it.

In Empire Total War I was happy when I unlocked a new military technology which then allowed me to build an improve war academy and then recruit some fancy line infantry. Mind you those were just line infantry with a slightly different look than the 1st tier I could recruit from turn 1 and marginally better stats. But I was happy to have something new. If TW Center is of any indication, I was not the only one to find satisfaction in this sort of small accomplishment : units mods which added 10s and 100s of new units with slightly different look were among the favorites mods for Empire TW. People love to replace "Line Infantry" with a "Swiss Line Infantry" and "14th Prussian Line Infantry Regiment".

Likewise in RTW I am happy when I build new buildings in my settlements, regardless if they actually improve my factions or not. Apparently a lot of people like new buildings too : more buildings were among the most common new features in total conversion mods like EB or RTR. Likewise the mods usually added a tons of unique non construable buildings to represent specific locations : Athens's Acropolis, Alexandria port, etc. Frequently those had only immersion value. But players small rewards that do not fundamentally change their gameplay experience. Just like RPG players who dream about hundreds of unlockable weapons and armor even if they will actually only use 4/5 in their playthrough.

Imo this is why Warhammer 2 is so enjoyable compare to others recent TW games. In Warhammer 2 you can build most of your buildings in your capital city and be happy that your city develop further and further. As you progress you conquer more settlements which allow you to unlock unique buildings. More than their gameplay advantage, it is just satisfying to find and developed them. It makes you feel you have conquered not just an other settlement but a specific and valuable place.

Because Warhammer is in a fantasy setting, most of these unique buildings revolves around dragons and magicians. However it would be easy to convert it to an historical setting. For example when you conquer Carthage as the vandals in Attila, you would then gain access to "Carthage naval port" instead of just another port. Likewise it would be easy to find dozens if not thousands of specific location in a game with the early modern era as a setting.

The fact that CA does not do any of that bu prefer to focus on tigers and increasingly locked gameplay makes me think CA lead designers have no visions and no ideas why anyone would play their game.
I mean come on, in Three Kingdoms you can barely build 5 buildings in any settlements and you can not even recruit all of the game units in one army. WTF !


Edit :

The price of the DLCs is so disproportionaly high, in comparison to their production cost, that they are probably guaranteed to generate a net gain, even if they fail commercially and don't match SEGA's expectations. From the Linked In profile of Stelios Avramidis, we know that the blood pack for Warhammer and the Wood Elves made respectively over 200% and 100% of net profit.

I asked precisely if CA was actually selling that much of their product. Not if their net profit with content was interesting or not.

At the end of the day, a 700% net profit from an incredibly small investment will still earn less money than a 100% net profit from a massive investment selling millions of copies of a AAA game.

TW used to be the biggest strategy game IP behind civilizations. Today a lot of indie developers seems to hold far larger market share. More people play the beta of Bannerlord, an incomplete game with outdated graphics, than Three Kingdoms. Likewise more than double people play Hearts of Iron IV than Three Kingdoms, despite the former being a table game with no tactical battles. And as incredibly as it might sounds, far more people play Football Manager 2020, a complex game of sheets and data with very basics graphics, than all TW titles combined.

Net profit values might look on LinkedIN but to put too much value on them is to miss the forest for the trees imo. With its potential TW should compete with the highest video games IP like AC or Battlefield. Instead it is eclipsed by obscure indie IPs.

[zoner16]

I definitely agree that the lack of things to achieve is a big problem with 3K. Something that most long strategy games have on offer is some kind of intermittent goals for the player to accomplish that offer some kind of unique reward. This has been something that Total War has been sorely lacking for a while. Either the goals are bland or the rewards are.

One of the big appeals of Warhammer and mods like DEI is building up the armies that I want and then screwing around with them. I still find a lot of 3K's design choices incredibly baffling, but none is more infuriating than the class system and all its recruitment restrictions. CA wanted the characters to be important, but they did so by gimping other aspects of the game rather than making the character progression inherently rewarding. The most fun thing you can do with character progression is get your characters gold items, because that actually feels like an accomplishment, either because you defeated someone important to get it, or you won a smith lottery. Most of the skills can be gotten in whatever order, and traits don't level up.

In 3K, you just become a duke when you have enough prestige, just filling up a mana bar as it were. Comparatively, becoming a duke in Crusader Kings is something you plan out, meet specific requirements for, sometimes even fight for. You even get to plan what title you want (within restrictions), rather than having it assigned to you. The arbitrary "get 100 settlements" victory conditions are finally gone from the overall Total War campaign, but they're still infesting the mid-level gameplay.

The reason people liked going for the horse pasture run in the north was because it felt like an accomplishment. Getting nearly free cavalry by chaining together the three horse pastures took work, wasn't something you did all the time, and had a fun reward. There's just too few of those kinds of goals though. Owning an ancient capital doesn't feel any different than any other city, there's only one unique building in the game, and there's no provincial titles to unlock. The unit unlocks in the tech tree tend to be useless or redundant except for the final ones in each branch, which take too long to get to. The only thing that I can feels like a real accomplishment is building an imperial doomstack in late game and cruising around with it, but the battles get repetitive really quickly.

The thing that keeps me coming back, other than being a period fanboy, is that the campaign is dynamic enough that I tend to want to see what happens next. There's enough diplomatic and espionage tools to make me want to continue just to see what kind of effect I can have on the world, what vassals I can make, what civil wars I can cause, what characters I can end up with, what the AI will do when I do so, etc. I'm fairly certain the appeal to me is heavily dependent on my own knowledge of the period and recognizing all the characters who get into weird situations. The organic chaos requires context, and I'm not sure if someone who didn't recognize all the people and places would ever get the same enjoyment.

TW used to be the biggest strategy game IP behind civilizations. Today a lot of indie developers seems to hold far larger market share. More people play the beta of Bannerlord, an incomplete game with outdated graphics, than Three Kingdoms. Likewise more than double people play Hearts of Iron IV than Three Kingdoms, despite the former being a table game with no tactical battles. And as incredibly as it might sounds, far more people play Football Manager 2020, a complex game of sheets and data with very basics graphics, than all TW titles combined.

Net profit values might look on LinkedIN but to put too much value on them is to miss the forest for the trees imo. With its potential TW should compete with the highest video games IP like AC or Battlefield. Instead it is eclipsed by obscure indie IPs.

This is a bit much. Neither Hearts of Iron nor Football Manager are "obscure indie IPs" and Bannerlord was one of the most anticipated releases in PC gaming due to its almost entirely unique appeal and a deluge of memes. Despite some more mainstream success, the strategy market is still a relative niche, and competing with open world adventure games and first person shooters is a pipe dream at best. The appeal of directing thousands of soldiers around a battlefield is going to depend heavily on one's familiarity with military strategy and the appeal of the setting. Hearts of Iron is absurdly popular, far more so than any of Paradox's other titles (much to the chagrin of some of its fanbase, who hated HOI:IV for a while), because people love WWII. Likewise, football is the world's most popular organized pastime, so a competent simulated fantasy league was guaranteed to sell gangbusters.

[Noble Lancer]

I tend to find that these discussions surrounding fantasy/historical content to be non existent in non-English speaking channels. AFAIK the Vietnamese/Chinese/Korean reception to the Namman DLC has been exceedingly positive, and the majority of people in these geographical regions know of the period through the lore, and not actual historical sources. There is a reason that CA abandoned record mode, for billions of people out there the period is only known for its larger than life figures rather than any sophisticated discussions about historical intricacies (forums are never littered by arguments about Coolus/Montefortino helmets but rather why Cao Pi/ Sun Quan/ Jiang Wei/ etc aren't unique characters yet). Gamey aside, 3K does what is expected of it exceptionally well for its key audience, and I can't see that being a bad thing!

[PikeStance]

Chinese students at least prefer fantasy or FPS type games. Of the few that play TW or Paradox none play 3K. HoI4 is the most popular non FPS that they play.

[zoner16]

Honestly, one of the biggest markets 3K has right now is Korea. Every steam, there's a bunch of Koreans asking for a Korea expansion. Lots of Korean streamers as well.

There's a sizable TW:3K audience in Taiwan, given the amount of views that the Chinese language streams get as well. Mainland China is harder to parse due to the content restrictions, but there's certainly a good amount of discussion on Tieba.

Gamey aside, 3K does what is expected of it exceptionally well for its key audience, and I can't see that being a bad thing!

That's kind of the thing isn't it. Everyone and their brother in East Asia (and part of SEA) grows up with the Romance. Its part of school curriculums, its littered across every media type, people discuss it casually. To a certain extent, most people play games to live some kind of personal wish fulfillment, and with 3K, the vast majority of expectations are going to be acting out the Romance and the various what-ifs it creates.

I've definitely seen a certain amount of people on Chinese forums complaining about anachronistic weapons, geographical mistakes, and ahistorical systems, but the only thing that's really universal is people wanting their favorite characters portrayed.

And of course, with the Nanman, the SEA community went wild because they were portrayed as "cool" rather than just punching bags for the Han. There really isn't a push for historical accuracy there either, because people more wanted a faction they could take pride and identify with. Real historical study into the period is vastly overshadowed by its cultural presence.

I don't disparage any of that, and I understand the desire to fulfill expectations. The frustrating thing for me is that I don't think it needed to go quite as far into the fantastical side, and could've done much better on being historical without sacrificing the connection to the Romance. What the game is right now is a grab bag of various Chinese military tropes and cultural references with very little consistency in setting. You have bronze age swords being wielded alongside Song era exploding arrows and dubious historical fanfiction like Zheng Jiang. The shotgun approach is disconcerting because it's unnecessary and doesn't add to either the Romance or Records campaigns. Most 3K media tries to have some kind of consistency in inspiration, but this game is all over the place.

[PikeStance]

When you create a game based on fiction; there are no rules.
Historical/ fiction aside, the problem with 3k is its simple game play and character micromanaging. I literally conquered all just doing, let's try this. So called synergy is nonexistent. The "trinkets" makes diplomacy too easy. The key as always, make money and food.

[zoner16]

There are rules in fiction. Try putting in a beardless Guan Yu, see how well that goes over with the target audience. The rules are often different, but fiction relies on a grounding in some sort of consistency in order for it to have emotional engagement. With a setting as widely interpreted as the 3K one though, there's so many levels of grounding to choose from, and it feels like CA just put them all into a blender.

I'm not sure what you mean by "synergy" but I can agree that the character management doesn't scale well as the campaign goes on. The first half of a campaign, you have pretty heavy investment in a few characters you have to keep an eye on, because hiring people is expensive, and good generals are rare. By late game though, there's way too much going on, you have to constantly be clicking on people you can't remember, and hiring people is just another thing on the shopping list.

I don't think the game is itself simple, but there are way too many shortcuts. Ancillaries are too overvalued by default, you'll stack too many bonuses to basically everything without much planning, and basic units are too efficient to make army composition rewarding. There's a lot of options, but the good ones are too obvious. These are all things I've been trying to mod, but aside from playing on legendary campaign difficulty, knowing the ins and outs of Total War makes it hard to challenge myself, though the variation between campaigns keeps me coming back.

[PikeStance]

There are rules in fiction. Try putting in a beardless Guan Yu, see how well that goes over with the target audience. The rules are often different, but fiction relies on a grounding in some sort of consistency in order for it to have emotional engagement. With a setting as widely interpreted as the 3K one though, there's so many levels of grounding to choose from, and it feels like CA just put them all into a blender.

Thus the reason why Fiction is far more easier to pick and choose and still be justified. In historical games, generalization is financially expedient, but is a firestorm in the making.

I'm not sure what you mean by "synergy" but I can agree that the character management doesn't scale well as the campaign goes on. The first half of a campaign, you have pretty heavy investment in a few characters you have to keep an eye on, because hiring people is expensive, and good generals are rare. By late game though, there's way too much going on, you have to constantly be clicking on people you can't remember, and hiring people is just another thing on the shopping list.

I don't think the game is itself simple, but there are way too many shortcuts. Ancillaries are too overvalued by default, you'll stack too many bonuses to basically everything without much planning, and basic units are too efficient to make army composition rewarding. There's a lot of options, but the good ones are too obvious. These are all things I've been trying to mod, but aside from playing on legendary campaign difficulty, knowing the ins and outs of Total War makes it hard to challenge myself, though the variation between campaigns keeps me coming back.

They discussed throughout the build up to release how you have build based on synergy of your characters and "empire." However, I completely ignored it. I had plenty of money. With my armies, I just made pretty colors.

[Daruwind]

Do these DLCs actually sell ? The few TW players I know in real life ignore them completely. So do I.

Broadly speaking, the total war franchise is agonizing as far as my little personal circles goes. Witout putting the commercial success since R2, it feels like something has definitively broken down with TW whenever I ask to real life friends what they think about the latest TW game. And to make it clear, I am not asking history nerds (I happen to be that person among my friends). Rather I am asking people who don't are familiar with history and don't overly care about it.

Warhammer was a fun game and the favorite release since a long long time. This had less to do with fantasy & dragons but more to do with the fact that the original and some factions in Warhammer 2 are a no non-sense experience. There is a little bit of campaign management. Then some battles. That is pretty much all what you can ask in a TW. In comparison Attila, ToB, Three Kingdoms and Troy are full of BS and non-sense features which punish the player.

Also CA release way too much content lately. Imo they are burning their fanbase just like Ubisoft did with AC before they made a small pause between Syndicate and Origins.

Maybe you should stick head outside your bubble.

DLCs are selling like nothing else. Originally Wh2 had plans just for 4 first DLCs mirroring Wh1 (TKs, Curse VC, plus 2 Wh2/Wh2 LPs....count FLCs as well as after this batch all core races got 2core+1 LP+1FLC character), later adding another batch of 3 (again all Wh2 races got 1 LP character but we see Wh2/Wh1 cross game LP) and now basically adding 1-2 more LP concerning Wh2/Wh1 DLC factions...can you see the shift as CA is taking steps more and more into previously no-go zones? Just compare it to how long period of time was between Wh1/2. Because CA deemed more content not so profitable...

At the same time. Wh1, Wh2 success. Wh3 is on best to beat them both. 3K initial success like nothing. Troy is success because Epic is paying bills no matter what kind of deal they have with CA. See even if CA got paid just 500K copies with 1/4 of money for each additional claimed copy, with 7,5 millions that´s like 2,25 millions sold at full price. That is money success like nothing else especially for Saga game. Basically all DLCs for next year are already covered....

Imo CA slowed down the content pace for each particular games. But it is running more concurrent projects. Nobody is expecting you to buy everything (like do dumb crazy people like myself ) Look at fans of only Wh or 3K. Whining that their game content pace is pretty low..

And about DLCs, I can provide simple fact. ToB sold very poorly. Got no DLCs. Compare it with other "selling" titles and how much DLCs they are getting. CA definitely won´t produce DLCs just to lose money...;-)

Once they run out of well known legendary literary traditions to draw on (there aren't that many), what do they do next? Even Warhammer content creators want a Medieval 3, but that's not exactly backed by a fantastical epic that can be used as a sourcebook. Is there enough "spectacle" in medieval europe to drive sales, or is it now too mundane to exist on its own merits?

Sure it can be done even without fantasy. Medieval 3, from Alba to Mongolia, Mekka and Rus. Heavy knights, English Longbowmen and Mongolian horse Archers. Surely we need flaming arrows and fiery trebuchets and some bordeling stuff but can be done. To provide simple example...Crusader Kings III. And lately Bannerlords II. There is a lot potential in medieval setting...

At a certain point, CA is going to run out of eras with fantastical pop-history presence, at which point, what then? Invent something? I doubt that will work. The historical/fantasy hybrid approach hasn't generated much enthusiasm, even from the people who enjoy the games that have it.

2021 - Wh3
2022 - probably 3K Character based title
2023 - Saga on Wh3/3K
2024 - probably next next Tent-pole game...Med 3, Tolkien?
2025 Saga, character base title........

CA don´t have problem for next five years. And after that we will probably see change justifying doing another Rome. Bigger question is, if CA will make trully new engine or keep evolving current one. I don´t think new engine would heal all problems overnight but sooner or later such leap will be neccessary...

Personally, I think CA got tired of the "not historical" complaints and so it was easy for them to rationalize doing fiction, because they could always say, it isn't meant to be historical and mean it. The problem is what you outlined. You can never make everyone happy. Historical, and it is never historical enough, fictional and it is never fictional enough. Developers cannot escape criticism. You can only learnt o manage it. Some are much better than others.

I bet my hat that fictional fantasy guys are way way more aggressive about any possible mistake in their lore. Definitely that is my impression from Wh fandom. And Tolkien´s guys, they are maybe liking tea like proper gentlemen but will charge you as orcs with torches and pitchforks over slightest mistake...

I think CA just lacks vision.

All these debates about fiction and mythical reality behind the myths are marketing BS and a total waste of time.

There were very nice interview with CA guys about how refreshing the Wh development is. Like they can play wiht toys, enjoy them, especially skaven..I think it is not about vision. It is about changing genre from time to time. Doing TW after TW can drain you...

I asked precisely if CA was actually selling that much of their product. Not if their net profit with content was interesting or not.

At the end of the day, a 700% net profit from an incredibly small investment will still earn less money than a 100% net profit from a massive investment selling millions of copies of a AAA game.

TW used to be the biggest strategy game IP behind civilizations. Today a lot of indie developers seems to hold far larger market share. More people play the beta of Bannerlord, an incomplete game with outdated graphics, than Three Kingdoms. Likewise more than double people play Hearts of Iron IV than Three Kingdoms, despite the former being a table game with no tactical battles. And as incredibly as it might sounds, far more people play Football Manager 2020, a complex game of sheets and data with very basics graphics, than all TW titles combined.

Net profit values might look on LinkedIN but to put too much value on them is to miss the forest for the trees imo. With its potential TW should compete with the highest video games IP like AC or Battlefield. Instead it is eclipsed by obscure indie IPs.

Very right. There were some general analysis how in these days consoles, base games are often on edge of being really profitable and the real income is coming from. And about numbers, Wh1/2,3K,Troy now...all pretty big successes. Like TW as genre is growing not sure why you think it is declining or failing. There is just more and more players so naturally more titles can find their core audience in big numbers. Or you want more casual more generic game for yet bigger audince? That seems like going against what you want from TW....to be more like in older days, right?

[PikeStance]

Yoi are talking established lore. Some historical fantasy do not always fill in the gaps, so a best guess must be made. This different than using the wrong shield type for "x" faction. Fictional accounts often do not have such details. Obviously, they go counter to the narrative they would face the same level of criticism as a historical title would. This isn't where CA receive the bulk of the criticism. it is in the details that they cannot possibly do due to financial constraints and deadlines.

Anyway, I have always said, CA makes games to the lowest common denominator. The detail oriented fan must resort to modding/ mods if they want their style of "realism."

It is too bad they did ToB, the could have done King Arthur. wait, they can do a DLC LOL

[Huberto]

Here's a review:

'The Furious Wild' Makes 'Total War: Three Kingdoms' a Little Too Goofy'
But I don't want to be a tiger king?

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pky4en/furious-wild-total-war-three-kingdoms-tigers

[Welsh Dragon]

Here's a review:

'The Furious Wild' Makes 'Total War: Three Kingdoms' a Little Too Goofy'
But I don't want to be a tiger king?

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pky4en/furious-wild-total-war-three-kingdoms-tigers

Seems like people keep focusing on the tigers, but I don't really think it's that big a stretch given that training big cats is a real thing, as is the use of animals such as attack dogs and elephants in warfare throughout history.

Don't get me wrong, Three Kingdoms goes a bit too fantastical in a "historical" title for my tastes and some of the other Nanban features like flaming weapons seem straight out of fantasy. I just don't think trained big cats is really such an issue.

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

[Seether]

Training one specific type of animal for a specific task isn’t the same as training any type of animal for that same task (ie: dogs and foxes are similar, yet foxes cannot be house-broken like dogs). Has anyone in history ever trained tigers to fight in battle? If not, then it is a big deal (particularly for Records mode).

[zoner16]

Big cats can't fully suppress their predatory instincts. While it would be possible to train them to a certain standard, to the point where they can form a connection with their handler, they're still prone to attacking them.

Cheetahs were trained by the Egyptians as something of a cross between pet and hunting companion. Ocelots are apparently tamable too. Both are noted for their mild temperment though. Tigers are comparatively aggressive and territorial.

At best, a trained tiger might be convinced to not attack its handler long enough to be loosed on the enemy. There probably would not be a very good way of getting it back afterwards.


More importantly for this game is that tigers are overpowered as all hell right now. Like, routing Imperial Sword Guards from the front overpowered. I didn't even engage the handlers.

[PikeStance]

The most popular mod for this would be any mod that removes them completely.

[Irishmafia2020]

I will buy this DLC eventually - but will I ever play it? I barely played Shogun 2, as having nearly every faction be a clone was boring in spite of the solid gameplay. Also, in Shogun 2 the armies ran at each other in full speed like an army of samurai Usain Bolts. I hated that, and it was the most immersion breaking part of the game. In 3K the characters and factions seem too much alike, and I wonder If I will ever give this game a proper play through. I loved Warhammer 2, Rome 2, and the Charlemagne DLC for Attila as well as the older games, but I have to accept that I just don't enjoy certain total war games enough to play them. I must have 2000 or more hours into Rome 1 and 2 and another 600 in Empire, but these new games have become hit and miss for me, and I don't really know why anymore. Empire had clone units, but I really felt like I could roleplay that game. Three kingdoms is DESIGNED for me to roleplay, but I can't seem to awaken my hunger for the game. I would think that I just have a western history bias, but thrones of Britannia didn't scratch my itch either.

Also - Tigers... they seem like the biggest gimmick in historical total war. It is as if the Persians had been given the ridiculous armored war rhinos from the movie 300. I usually enjoy the weird niche barely historical fantasy units (rocket launcher elephants anyone?) but the idea of an entire military unit of tigers is just too much, even though this faction seems like one of the most interesting in three kingdoms. In the end Total War games have become a gamble - I may play one for years and hundreds of hours, or I may lay out $100 dollars on the game and DLC and barely scratch the surface. It used to be that this was one brand that I could guarantee I would maximize my entertainment value from, and now I wonder if I am really the consumer CA wants anymore. Getting old sucks I guess...

[Huberto]

The most popular mod for this would be any mod that removes them completely.

I have had this exact same thought and was looking to post it somewhere...beat me to it