Total War: Three Kingdom's heroes are super-charged warriors capable of dispatching whole units without breaking a sweat. They're pretty awesome. Next week, they'll properly get to show off their skills in the free Dynasty mode. It's a horde mode where three heroes somehow have to survive a battle against an infinite army. 

The horde might have the numbers, but the heroes have their legendary special abilities, which may have saved your skin a few times in the campaign, as well as their superhuman strength. It's very reassuring to see a hero wading into battle, knowing that soon all those pesky soldiers will be tossed up into the air by a whirlwind of destruction. 

As you kill enemies, stronger reinforcements will appear, and you'll need to deal with enemy generals every third wave. Your heroes will get stronger, too, earning points that can be spent on new skills. 

If the endless waves aren't challenging enough for you, you can always bump up the unit size slider and fight mega-units comprised of 960 warriors. Normal units have 80. While Three Kingdoms is the best optimised of all the Total Wars, you'll probably need a beefy PC to push that slider all the way. 

Essentially, it's Total War: Dynasty Warriors, but it also sounds a lot like Dawn of War 2's Last Stand mode, which was released as a standalone game and also featured a trio of heroes fighting an endless horde of enemies. Relic and Creative Assembly are both Sega studios, so maybe there's some cross-pollination going on. 

Dynasty mode is due out on August 8. 

This interview was conducted in April earlier this year and originally published in PC Gamer UK issue 331. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US.

Leif Walter is in a relaxed state as I speak to him ahead of his appearance on stage to talk Total War: Three Kingdoms at EGX Rezzed in London. A fan of Total War since before he joined Creative Assembly, he now talks enthusiastically about the series and his work on it. During our conversation, he answers questions about how Creative Assembly decided on ancient China as a setting, how the era manifests in Three Kingdoms’ design, and what the future might hold for the Total War series.

PC Gamer: This is probably the first Total War to explore a new era or timeline since Attila, with the exception of Warhammer. What is it about exploring new eras, new timelines, in the series that excites the development team? 

Leif Walter: Well, for a Total War game, you always look for turbulent and interesting periods of history where there’s conflict and drama, maybe an interesting development at a cultural level. And when we first got in touch with the Three Kingdoms period, we realised very quickly that, basically, it was the perfect Total War setting. A lot of charismatic characters and leaders with relationships between each other and backstabbing and this kind of drama. Massive armies marching against each other. It’s basically the perfect Total War setting. You know, there’s the massive Han dynasty, the Han empire, which is basically the equivalent of the Roman Empire. And this big empire, crumbling, suffering from internal corruption, engulfed in this big civil war. It was the perfect setting.

For the most part, it’s Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones actually happened? 

Yeah, basically! I mean, like I said, there’s sort of fake gods and fake armies marching against each other. But mostly there’s cool, personal stories between characters and personal feuds, maybe sometimes irrational friendships or irrational rivalries. That would inform gameplay decisions and the directions for the gameplay design. It’s pretty clear we need these personal relationships to have an impact on your campaign.

How do you decide on the balance between the story and the game systems? How do you bring those two things together? 

It’s an interesting balance to strike. We always have the three big pillars between historical accuracy, authenticity, fun, and then of course some interesting gameplay that we want to bring in. And yeah, sometimes we have to make those sacrifices to increase the fun of both. I would say with Three Kingdoms, there’s the benefit of having two big sources that allow different factors to that problem. There’s Records of the Three Kingdoms for the pure historical period, and then the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel which delivered all this personal drama. So we have these two big sources we could draw from.

You mentioned it in part in the first question, but what’s the creative process like in determining what is the right era or timeline to bring to a Total War game? Describe that for me.

I mean obviously we all have sort of an idea of certain historical periods. There’s loads of cultural knowledge of certain things like the medieval era, there’s knights, and in ancient Japan, samurai. And so the story of the Three Kingdoms is a bit of an almost surprise find because it’s not very well known in the west. It has a huge cultural legacy in the east, in China and Japan.

But in the West, it’s not very well known, so it was almost like getting sudden inspirations from, say, movies and then you learn more about that period, and then you try to match the historical context with possible gameplay mechanics and how they tie together.

And then sometimes you’ll be running through a situation where you feel like certain settings might be cool, but then you learn more about it, and you realise maybe there’s not enough cultural richness, not really enough battles, these kinds of things. The Three Kingdoms has both. Like I said, the perfect match.

You mentioned how in the West, it’s not as well-known as, say, in China and Japan. So how do you go making that sort of story easy for players to understand, who don’t really know that background? Or who just aren’t as historically savvy and so don’t know the story?

There are two big things about this. First of all, I think from my personal experience, Total War games—or any historical game for that matter—are a great vehicle to get players more interested in that kind of time period, so you deliver nice appetisers and then they start to learn a bit more about that period, then they go away from the game and get a history book out. I think this process, that’s where Total War games can be really cool. A piece of entertainment that’s educational.

Secondly, Total War is a sandbox game, so for us it’s always important to not necessarily tell the story in a narrative, it doesn’t have to play out exactly like the Three Kingdoms novel for example.

But what we wanted was to create an environment where players almost create their own Three Kingdoms story. And that’s so important. I know Ma Chao ended up being in Liu Bei’s army—being one of his generals—but it’s more about creating gameplay systems that allow players to forge their own story and so focus not so much on delivering that detail, but more about enabling players to tell their own stories.

So how accessible have you made the game for newcomers, or for maybe those like me, who have had very light experience with the series? I think I’ve played only an hour or an hour and a half of Shogun 2. So how do you make that accessible for newer players or old players with little experience with the series?

That’s one big pillar for us was the concept of gating, so that... Total War is a complex tactics game—there’s no way around it—there’s always going to be that complexity and that’s what players are interested in. But what we wanted to achieve was that the game starts off with less systems involved, less things to be aware of, less things to run towards.

So to start off, it’s very straightforward, you build armies and take territories. But as you go and you learn more about the game, the game gets increasingly harder, more challenging and more complex.

You just don’t want to overburden the player from the start?

Exactly, because what’s most important for our fans, we wanted to create a rich Total War experience that has a lot of deep mechanics in it. So we didn’t want to make it, you know, over-accessible and streamline it too much, but have this journey through the game where you start off not overburdened with thousands of things to manage and then you learn more about the game as you go.

Can you talk about the inclusion of the Romance Mode, because it changes the dynamics of the game and has a different tempo to Records mode. With Records, it’s more strategic, but with Romance, everything feels more fast-paced, with a higher tempo, etc. Was that daunting at all to explore, settling on the difference in style and pace between the two modes?

First of all, like I said, we have these two big sources for the game, so it was pretty obvious from the beginning that we want these two perspectives. And like I said, especially in battle, we tell you the difference between [Records], where it’s all about how you position your troops and the manoeuvres you perform, and Romance, where you almost have an additional tactical layer on top.

[In Romance], you have your army interactions, and then your heroes and how they interact with the enemy heroes. So it’s a cool interesting additional layer and sort of fits the over-arching mechanics of battles to keep the tempo a bit up because you want a fast pace to move the heroes to another area, trigger an ability, leave an impact there, then move somewhere else. So you have a faster interaction with the game.

The Total War series has visited so many eras and timelines, from Shogun to Rome and even Warhammer. And it feels like each setting brings a different size and scope, especially with the launch of the Total War Saga series. What is it about the series that makes it so consistent, even as the setting changes? What is it that keeps it fresh for players?

Like I said, Total War games are a very evocative sandbox for a historical environment. Especially for me, I was a Total War player before I joined Creative Assembly.

And for me, it was always to play the same pattern where I had this narrative in my head. I started with Rome: Total War and there you have your generals with their trades, and you tie everything together with a backstory about your generals, and it’s all embedded in this historical context. So it’s almost like watching, like you said earlier, Game of Thrones, or a historical series like the Rome HBO series, and I think it’s just a very nice journey for players. That’s what they appreciate, and then the different settings deliver a different flavour.

Quality wise, of course, CA are passionate developers who want to deliver high quality content, and we always try to be better next project, learn from our mistakes and try to make the best historical game possible.

What can CA do in the future to keep that consistency going for the series for the next five, ten, twenty years? Assuming we can all look forward to that sort of vision in the future...

I mean, Total War, that’s large battles, and historical settings and environments, and trying to achieve it in this game. That’s the formula... Now there are many more exciting historical periods to explore, we also listen to what our fans are asking for in some of the titles. So yeah, there’s a lot of amazing content to explore, and mechanic wise, I think we’ll always push the Total War formula and make it more engaging and tell even grander stories to players, enable them to tell their own stories. There’s exciting stuff to look forward to.

This week, Total War community manager Michael "Wheels" Whelan ended his final stream and last day at Creative Assembly with a message for a YouTuber. "Arch Warhammer is a dickhead," he said. "Goodbye."

Creative Assembly released a statement on Twitter today apologising for Whelan's comment, saying it was not up the developer's professional or personal standards. "We apologise for any hurt or harm caused," it concluded.   

Arch Warhammer is a strategy YouTuber who also appears to go off on tangents about 'SJWs' ruining games and censorship in Total War. In his own video—which inaccurately portrays Whelan's insult as an official Creative Assembly statement—Arch Warhammer claims that he "triggered" Creative Assembly by criticising their curation of Total War mods. 

Creative Assembly removes mods that are designed to "provoke, intimidate, or antagonise other groups, reference other IP, or create content of a sexual nature." The last one has upset modders wanting to sex-up Three Kingdoms and turn female warlords into waifus. Some players, like Arch Warhammer, reckon that's censorship. 

While lamenting Whelan's lack of professionalism, Arch Warhammer's video partner calls him a "shill" trying to impress girls by "virtue signalling". Ah yes, the language of professionals.

I reached out to Sega and Creative Assembly but they had nothing to add to the statement.

We're still playing Total War: Three Kingdoms, the first huge historical Total War game since 2013's Rome 2. Between 220–280 AD modern-day China was split into—yep—a tripartite division of territories, and the era produced many legendary battles, generals and, indirectly, videogames about killing 500 warriors in one go. 

Total War: Three Kingdoms is no Dynasty Warriors game, despite its Romance mode blending history with Chinese mythology. But what if you want Three Kingdoms to be more like a Dynasty Warriors game? Or more like the traditional Total War games of the past? How about harder, because you've already conquered China a dozen times, or easier, because your generals keep dying of old age?

A few months in, we've now seen a wealth of massive rebalance mods for Three Kingdoms, nice cosmetic overhauls for armies, and more specific mods that target specific aspects of the game. We've tested a ton of them, and these are the ones we recommend. 

All Factions Playable, New Major Factions

Download link

This mod very simply makes every faction on the map playable in both the main campaign and the Eight Princes DLC campaign, more than tripling the number of playable warlords. The author didn’t stop there, though. They’ve also released a submod that seeks to make every faction more like the major factions, with unique features and noteworthy characters.

The factions that have been upgraded to “Majors” in the submod include Zhang Lu, Tao Qian, Liu Yu, Gao Gan, Shi Xie, Liu Yan, Han Sui, Huang Zu, the Han Empire, Liu Yao, Zhang Yang, Gongsun Du, Lu Bu, Gan Ning, and Yan Baihu.

Respec Character Skills when they join you

Download link

Have you ever eagerly recruited a legendary warrior like Xiahou Dun, only to find that his previous lord put his stat points in all the wrong places? This mod gives all generals a free respec when you recruit them to undo the errors of the past.

It’s a very lightweight mod and can even be used on a campaign in progress that started without it. No more lamenting that your best frontline vanguard has a bunch of wasted points in governing.

Division of Empire

Download link

In vanilla Three Kingdoms, the Han Empire sticks around as a punching bag for everyone else and can eventually be vassalized by a claimant to the throne. This can lead to some really weird borders and politics, though. With this mod activated, all of the remaining Han governors will become independent minor factions on Turn 8, creating a much more fragmented playing field.

This will bring new diplomatic opportunities, but also challenges. It also makes some tweaks to the AI, such as encouraging them to become aggressive earlier in the game. Overall, things feel more hectic, dangerous, and unpredictable than vanilla. It’s a nice breath of fresh air if you’ve gotten used to the same old song and dance.

New Faction: Goguryeo (Korea) 

Most of the action of the Three Kingdoms period takes place in China. But what if their Korean neighbors had seen the chaos as an opportunity to take the throne for themselves? This mod adds the contemporary Korean kingdom of Goguryeo as a playable faction under Gonammu "The Earth Lord" and his loyal generals, Goyeon-u "The Fire Lord" and Eulpaso "The Water Lord."

The Koreans get reduced infantry upkeep as well as lots of bonuses related to cavalry, eight unique generals, and five new unique units including powerful Gaemamusa Horse Archers. The mod does not add the Korean Peninsula to the map, but rather has Gonammu spawn on its extreme northern edge, near Gongsun San. The faction is rated "Very Hard."

10 Turns Per Year 

Download link

Really, you couldn’t devise a more fitting title for this mod. By default it takes five turns to progress through a year in Total War: Three Kingdoms, and this mod doubles it. Slowing the game down to this degree means you can max out more of your upgrade tree, while seasons now last two turns each.

No Death By Old Age

Download link

The best Total War: Three Kingdoms mods have the power to grant infinite life. While it may sound like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, No Death By Old Age is a pretty self-explanatory mod which still allows characters to be killed but ensures they have a zero percent chance to die of old age. The exception is Tao Qian, for important narrative reasons.

If you use a mod that alters the passing of time like 10 Turns Per Year (above) this is one way to circumvent any weird aging issues you might run into.

Captains for All Units

Download link

One thing Three Kingdoms is missing that previous Total War games have had: Some representation of the lower-level officers in your army. There’s always that one guy at the front of a unit with a different hat or something to show he’s important, right? While heroes are the focus of Three Kingdoms, the modding scene hasn’t forgotten about Special Hat Guy.

Captains for All Units adds a Special Hat Guy (or some equivalent stand-out soldier) to every unit. His name may be lost to the pages of history, but we will never forget his courage, his fashion sense, and his minor increase to hitpoints. Note that while this is a mostly cosmetic mod, you will have to start a new campaign to see it take effect.

Better Faces 

Download link

Three Kingdoms is already a pretty good looking game, but if you zoom in on some of your generals in battle, you may have been a little bit let down. The Better Faces mod aims to make characters’ 3D models better match their hand-painted portraits on the campaign map and loading screens so they don’t seem like they just rolled out of bed and headed to battle without even checking their makeup.

Among other things, the overhaul removes eye bags and wrinkles, reduces the yellowness of certain skin tones, and cleans up wild stubble so your favorite Late Han rock stars can charge the enemy center looking as beautiful as they deserve. This will affect all generals, but special attention has been given to some of the major players like Lu Bu, Zhang Fe, and Yuan Shao.

Make Them Unique 

Download link

If you’re a big Three Kingdoms/Dynasty Warriors fan, you might have been disappointed to find that some of your favorite characters were represented with generic models, portraits, and items in Total War. Make Them Unique seeks to correct this by adding new art and unique gear for some of the better-known second-tier generals.

Among the characters currently receiving a flavor upgrade are Dong Peishan, Dong Min, Diaochan, Li Ru, Hua Lanli, Yan Liang, Wen Chou, Xun Yu, Lady Bian, Lady Wu, Lu Zheng, and Yijian Liting. This especially gives some needed love to Dong Zhuo’s faction and several of the important women of the period. And it’s compatible with Better Faces (above).

Vanilla Units Overhaul

Download link

The previous mods will help you get your generals looking their best, but what about the rank-and-file? Lots of Three Kingdoms’ regiments can look like dozens of clones of the same guy, which can be easy to overlook when your heroes are making sparks fly. But especially in the more historical Records mode, it can start feeling a bit bland.

Vanilla Units Overhaul seeks to improve this by adding more variations to every unit, including over 25 new faces. Militias will carry a wider range of armor and weapons since they’re, well, militia. The author looked to the movie Red Cliff, famously depicting one of the most dramatic battles of the period, for a lot of the visual look while still trying to maintain their “original feel and historical authenticity.”

SFO: Three Dragons

Download link

SFO stands for Steel Faith Overhaul, which you may know as one of the best mods for Total War: Warhammer. “Reworked Battles” is the tagline for this huge total overhaul, but that barely scratches the surface. One of the biggest changes is that it will take longer for normal units to become fatigued, but the penalties for being fatigued are harsher. This leads to battles that take longer to reach a tipping point, but are more decisive once they do.

In addition, winning a character battle will no longer have such a severe impact on unit morale. It will hurt the losing side, but it’s less likely to send them fleeing for the hills, so it doesn’t feel as much like duels are the only part of the battle that matters. These are just two out of hundreds of changes to combat, art, animations, enemy AI, and more that seeks to make Three Kingdoms a whole new game.

Radious Total War Mod

Download link

Radious is another full overhaul mod whose name should ring a bell with players of past Total Wars. This massive mod makes changes to just about every part of the campaign and battle system, while trying to respect the history and literature sources in Records and Romance modes, respectively. It’s so big, you’ll have to download the Steam version in two parts!

Every unit has rebalanced stats, the campaign AI has been completely reworked, and efforts have been made to make each major faction even more interesting and unique than they are in vanilla. They’ve also added over 70 new unique units and reworked the economy, family, and political systems. Similar to SFO, this is basically giving you a whole new game to play with.

Heroes Join Your Faction

Download link

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is full of auspicious meetings between famous warriors, often with one pledging loyalty to another. While Total War models some of these events, other times it just drops their subjects into the recruitable character pool without fanfare. This mod seeks to bring more famous encounters from the novel into your campaign.

Currently, they’ve added Huang Zhong joining Liu Bei, Yue Jin joining Cao Cao, Xu Huan joining Cao Cao, Zhang Liao joining Cao Cao, and Taishi Ci joining Sun Ce. It also increases the proc rate for existing vanilla events that involve Dian Wei, Gan Ning, Pang Tong, Xu Chu, Zhou Yu, Xu Shu, Zhuge Liang, Sima Yi, and Zhao Yun so that they should occur every playthrough instead of having a small chance of not firing at all.

Beneath a Red Sky: A Battle Overhaul

Download link

Beneath A Red Sky is a collection of mods from the creators the Total War: Attila overhaul mod, Ancient Empires, and this battle overhaul mod is the gem of the bunch. Focusing on rebalancing units and emphasising realism, it greatly increases fatigue and the chances of units routing, which means fewer outright casualties on the battlefield. It also reworks missile weapons (read: bows) and enhances terrain effects.

Recruited Unique Character Can Use Their Special Units 

Download link

Is it even a mod if neither the words ‘immersive’ or ‘overhaul’ appear somewhere in the title? Modder Alex Zhao breaks convention with this simple fix, which allows most unique characters to recruit special units that would otherwise be locked to only their faction. You do need to unlock each character’s unique skill when you level them up to be able to access them, though. It’s proving a popular addition, with over 30k subscribers already.

Hooveric Reskin 

Download link

So far our best Total War: Three Kingdoms mods list has included some deep, game-changing add-ons, but this one’s a purely visual mod that increases variety between individual soldiers within a unit. Flags and banners enjoy a bit more variation, along with unit clothing. There’s also a bit of light colour regrading going on in here. As modder hooveric succinctly puts it: More varieties for many units, improved textures, adjusted colors.

Dynasty Warriors Officers

Download link

With some degree of inevitability, this mod available on the Total War Nexus brings Total War: Three Kingdoms a bit closer to Dynasty Warriors series, despite Creative Assembly stating just after the release of the modding tools that they’ll be moderating DW content. Nevertheless, this mod enhances the roster with famous heroes in Dynasty Warriors, marriages, relationships based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and more.

The Eight Princes are on their way to Total War: Three Kingdoms, and they're not coming to play Parcheesi. The upcoming chapter pack will touch off a new campaign set 100 years after the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period, with a new generation of eager youngbloods fighting for the future of the Jin dynasty.

Each of the new princes "adheres to the five core character classes of the base game," but have their own unique campaign mechanics and playstyles. Sima Yong, for instance, focuses on defense and infrastructure, and has an increased chance for Man Of The Hour events triggering after battles thanks to his talent for identifying capable underlings, while Sima Wei is an aggressive expansionist whose unique Fury resource enhances his military capabilities, but can only be generated through military victories.

Princes will advance through different faction ranks than those of Three Kingdoms warlords, from minor prince to Imperial prince, while the alignment system, built around Wealth, Spirit, Might, and Mind, will grant different bonuses and also confront players with "events and dilemmas" based on the paths they pursue. It will also "inform" your options when it comes time to choose your grandest path: To preserve the emperor and rule as his regent, or seize the throne for yourself.

And instead of the support of the people, the eight princes must win the favor of the nobility in order to achieve their goals. Because of that, "public order" will be known as "noble support" in the Eight Princes chapter pack, and just like in the real world, the needs of the rich and powerful are a little different from the rest of us.

"The sources of positive and negative noble support throughout your infrastructure are thematically very different to public order, as the aristocracy’s needs and desires are different to those of the people. Maintaining stability through noble support will depend on different building choices to the Three Kingdoms period," Creative Assembly explained. "Likewise, unlike public order in the base game, growing commandery populations do not have a negative impact on noble support."

Total War: Three Kingdoms – Eight Princes is set to come out on August 8 and can be pre-purchased on Steam for 10 percent off its regular price of $9/£7/€9.

The next patch for Total War: Three Kingdoms will update the game to version 1.1.1, and it's available now in beta form. The patch addresses issues that have cropped up since launch, and adds in a few nice quality-of-life features fans have been asking for. 

Headlining the new features are the ability to view any faction's family tree. Creative Assembly has added new UI elements in the family tree tab that will let you examine your allies' and rivals' lineages, which could definitely come in handy when arranging marriages or managing spies. The exception to this is the Yellow Turbans, who don't have family trees.

In Three Kingdoms, you've got to keep your court happy, and with the next patch, that will become even more important. Your satisfaction level will have faction-wide impacts—having a high overall satisfaction level will mean less corruption and more supplies, while low satisfaction means you'll have slower XP gain, fewer military supplies, and more corruption.

With the patch, you'll also be able to arrange marriages for any member of your court, rather than only family members.

Creative Assembly has also addressed a raft of bugs and exploits. For instance, you won't be able to "exploit the marriage system for income," or buy certain territories and then immediately flip them for a profit. 

To opt in to the patch beta, right click on the Total War: Three Kingdoms entry in your Steam library and click Properties. Then click the Betas tab and select Update_beta from the drop-down menu.

If a fix you're waiting on hasn't been addressed yet, don't worry: Chances are good that modders have you covered.