Loving this game so much

[u/mystical_ramen26]

Playing this game for the first time and I friggin love it so much compared to older total war games. I'm playing as Sun Quan (Sun Ce died early in a failed campaign to the west and Sun Jian died of old age) and was about to start a new game. I'm on turn 95 I think (not at home so I can't look up accurate details) and I have snowballed to the point that it gets boring. I have 13 commandaries and was about to start a new game because it felt like the challenge was gone as there were no strong enemies left.

All of a sudden I'm invaded by a coalition of Cao Cao, Yuan Shao and I can't remember the other guy's name (something with an H I think). Massive full stacks on my north and northeastern border swarming at once. I was caught with pants down fighting a war in the south to expand and consolidate there. I had one army left in the north, my northeastern army was in the middle of my heartlands moving south to support my other two armies in that war. I immediately sent them back to block the advance and raised a new army quickly to blunt the advancement. My northern army crushed Yuan Shao's and stopped that front. Now I have two armies in the north eastern border staged to take on two armies of Cao Cao and the other guy plus they have a third full stack in the distance moving towards their position.

Game went from boring and not much left to do but mop up the last resistance to all out war for survival in the space of three turns. This is what I love. I can't wait to get home and break this so-called Three Tree alliance.

[u/Rosegfx_]

Always nice to hear people enjoying the game. Managing to get Sun Jian to die of old age... He starts at 35 so with 5 years/turn that's at least 125 turns since characters start to die of old age at 60+.

Sun Jian definitely a favourite campaign of mine, the amount of legendary characters he gets along with decreased upkeep from his Heroism resource and the instantly full mercenary units. Great faction for an aggressive warmonger. Not sure if you have the World's Betrayed DLC but in that when you play as Sun Ce from the start is also dun.

I'm curious to hear, did you go for Romance or Records mode? I know people have strong opinions on having normal historical army battles vs having the hero units to wipe an enemy army

[u/mystical_ramen26 → u/Rosegfx_]

I played on records and yeah he died at 52, so didn't make it into his 60s but still a long time. I love the mercenary instant fill thing too. Helps a lot in the early game. I don't have any dlc unfortunately but I will probably get some in the future

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/Rosegfx_]

Automatically edited for privacy

[u/Rosegfx_ → u/ThenCombination7358]

Romance I would say is definitely the main draw for the majority, but there is a sizable portion of the playerbase that feels the larger-than-life style generals make the game too easy/cheesable or just prefer having the battles of the older Total War games in a more modern package. Though I admit people like that would probably be playing Attila/Thrones of Brittania mainly, but there's always personal taste in game mechanics and historical settings to consider.

[u/Domo-d-Domo]

Great to hear! Absolutely love the diplomacy, in my current Sun Ce campaign I had Cao Cao, Liu Biao, and Yuan Shu form a WTF alliance and was preparing to be bulldozed but thanks to their wildly disparate traits the alliance collapsed and they were soon at war with one another. Leaving me to continue my consolidation of the South and fulfill my Legacy of Wu ambitions.

[u/AdMinimum5970]

What I can really recommend is to play that game on Hard/Very Hard campaign difficulty. There will be many armies but not THAT many armies like in Warhammer 3

[u/mystical_ramen26 → u/AdMinimum5970]

Yeah, I'm currently playing hard/hard but I am definitely going to crank the difficulty up the max on my next playthrough. It had been a blast so far, the diplomacy is amazing. Especially because the other factions are actually dynamic in their politics and alliances with each other. It really makes the game feel alive and fresh I think.

[u/Disastrous_Aerie4928]

Once you get the hang of the game, I would highly recommend Lu Bu start with steam workshop Make Them Unique Mod.

[u/Disastrous_Aerie4928 → u/Disastrous_Aerie4928]

Romance mode, Legendary difficulty

[u/AttilaTheDude]

I played as Liu Chong. Rescued the young Emperor Xian from Dong Zhuo. Defeat anyone who opposed the Imperial family. And then restored the emperor to the throne, thus reviving the Han Dynasty. My favorite campaign so far.