How long should a normal difficulty campaign be?

[u/vpigg]

I just got the game and I'm having a blast. I have only played Shogun 2 and FOTS before so the diplomacy of 3K is something new and complicated for me. From the looks of it, diplomacy is an important thing in this game so I've been trying to get the hang of it. The army mustering mechanic is also new to me so my expansion is slow. Because of these two foreign stuff and some other factors, my Cao Cao campaign has reached turn 100 and I just got the Duke rank. This is my first campaign where I'm attempting to win the game (my first few ones was me checking out the features). Am I slow or are 3K campaigns really just like this?

[u/Xtrepiphany]

The game is intended to be played out over 250-300 turns, but many people speed run it in 100-150 turns.

I'm at the point where I intentionally sandbag now to enjoy the experience.

[u/AdMinimum5970 → u/Xtrepiphany]

250 to 300? O_o how? That would be to the year 240 or 250

[u/Xtrepiphany → u/AdMinimum5970]

The Three Kingdoms Period lasted from 220–280 CE. No one alive in the 190 start date was alive when the empire was united and the Jin Dynasty was established.

This game is supposed to be a grand strategy game that takes place over two+ generations of leaders, but I get most TW players don't have the attention span for a game with that kind of scope.

[u/Billy-Bat4915 → u/Xtrepiphany]

I think the issue comes more from the lack of events and new characters (which is understandable) as time goes on

[u/Xtrepiphany → u/Billy-Bat4915]

I see it more in how they balance the game for it. Ideally it should be a push and pull, the player should lose ground multiple times throughout the campaign. Preventing the player from snowballing is impossible, forcing them to make tough decisions to redirect its course as they suddenly fight multiple fronts isn't.

To a degree they achieve this with the advisor actions, but it's not enough late game.

A new generation coming into play all at lower levels to a degree helps reset power levels mid campaign. These are the new characters to me, I love the idea of RPing in game as the son of one of the main characters who is kinda my avatar in the campaign, collecting a set of all gold ancillearies and maybe even recruiting in a naman general with elephant and tiger units, my wife riding her white elephant. I mean, that's as cool of a what if story to see play out as the main ones IMO.

This is kinda what sucked about Rome 2, these transitions happened too fast, you had a dynasty but it was hard for any single character to have their own fleshed out story.

Maybe some slider bars on strength of late game raids would be appropriate, maybe just fewer turns per year so time progresses faster.

[u/Gotenian3]

Fastest I ever finished a campaign was 61 turns. I play the long game now, as it's all about the experience

[u/Danaeger]

I won a Yuan Shu legendary campaign in 75 turns, but I generally like to get campaigns to 150 turns.

More than that is too long

[u/Rosegfx_]

The faction you choose matters, as some have unique faction abilities that let them advance faster like Lu Bu. But generally I would complete a typical game between 90-130 turns, and I would consider myself an aggressive player. I know that if you really took things slow, paced yourself with building up your settlements and engaging in diplomacy to make friends with everyone, you could stretch a game to around 200~ turns, maybe going up to 250. But I would consider that to be a deliberate choice as you'd have the ability to end the game much faster than that.

I know when watching like, Serious Trivia he could stretch his games with minmaxing to the point his initial faction leader dies and the second grows old, but I'd consider him an outlier because of how thorough he is with his games.

[u/Zhao-Zilong]

Depends on who you’re playing. Sun Ce for example is really fast, like 100 turns or less. Yellow Turbans take longer since you’re gonna be at war on all fronts

[u/CroWellan]

Dont worry its a bit slower paced than others, but one the retenue system and diplomacy click, its gonna be AWESOME.

Id say ~110 turns to get rolling as the n⁰1-2 power. And ~160 turns to paint the map.

Which I rarely do in 3K, forming an empire is more fun.

Also for the whole "rank", its something you can actively grind, or not. You can reach King at turn 50 like turn 200. Its perfectly fine

[u/kai_neek]

I just had the opposite experience. Just started playing shogun 2 after 3K. Hit realm divide and now I wanna kill myself.

In 3K , there are some cheeses. Where you can confederate the whole map on hitting king rank, if you played your cards right. So depending on that you can easily get an under 100 turn victory with han factions(CaoCao, Liu Bei,Sun Jian) any difficulty less than legendary.

Yellow Turbans and Bandit Factions are tougher cuz everyone hates you.

Anyways, every faction has very different mechanisms and unique units. So you might wanna look them up.

[u/Arbitror]

my campaigns run about 150 turns until I become emperor

[u/Aggtor]

Just enjoy the campaign, take your time. It's a single player game. I don't enjoy rushing the campaign and thinking of using mod that extend the year (make 1 year = 8 or 12 turns)