May 17, 2019
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS - CA_James
To round out the Yellow Turban trio, let us introduce you to the Master of the Land, Gong Du: https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war:-three-kingdoms-warlord-legends-gong-du/
Share: 
Let me just say this: I am an absolute sucker for a big idea. A grand philosophy, or some big unifying theory of everything, that seeps under the skin and wraps around the bones of a game to tie it all together. Everything refers back to something else and informs it, all the dangling threads of design brought tidily back in line. Bliss. I love it. Very neat, very satisfying, very, very difficult to pull off.
Total War: Three Kingdoms is absolutely swimming in big ideas - plural - to its detriment and its strength, which is probably inevitable given the deeply, intrinsically philosophical era in which it's set. Three Kingdoms China starts with the fall of the Han Dynasty, around the late 100s to early 200s CE, and predictably it's a time of fractured alliances and political upheaval - so far so Total War. But it's also a time of mystery, and mythology, and romance, all intertwined with other capital-letter ideas like Confucianism and Wu Xing and Guanxi to make a big, slightly headache-inducing but vastly ambitious soup of design.
The one at the heart of it, though, is that trade-off, between a commitment to accuracy and the romanticised telling of the story that people are more likely to know. Creative Assembly has beaten the drum of Records-versus-Romance half to death by now but, if you weren't already aware, they're essentially two accounts of the period that can be reduced down to two books, Records of the Three Kingdoms and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the developer has - correctly - relied heavily on both.
My eldest son died horribly at the Battle of Yangzhou in 198 CE. Cao Ang led a small retinue in General Xiahou Yuan s army. Xiahou s army was the best I had: disciplined troops, carefully selected and commanded by heroes. At Yangzhou they were mauled by a massive army of peasant rebels led by the Yellow Turban He Yi. My defeated army escaped, but He Yi challenged Cao Ang to a duel and personally killed my son. Though my son was not a great commander or, obviously, duelist, his death is a tragedy for my whole faction. Cao Ang commanded a third of the defeated army, and without a substitute general his retinue will disband. The only candidate has no military experience and has never left court: Lady Bian, the boy’s mother. She assumes command in tragic, desperate circumstances; in 201 CE she will march back to Yangzhou to duel the rebel who killed her son and become my greatest general.
Total War: Three Kingdoms is a historical strategy game set during China’s Three Kingdoms period. The campaign is divided into two layers: players build towns, recruit soldiers, declare war and move armies across a map of China each turn. When two opposing armies fight, players command units in real time. You’re a warlord in a shattered kingdom, and every campaign begins with the same instruction: China must be united.
Three Kingdoms is the best historical strategy game in a very long series, and certainly the most dramatic and personal.
WARNING: If you’re reading this, there is a very strong chance you’re looking at news on your favourite game. Please, it’s imperative you click on to discover crucial information.
