Total War: General discussion.

So, my latest campaign in Medieval Kingdoms 1212 AD has been...rather interesting. I started a campaign as France, and within 5 turns, a chain reaction kicked off by England declaring war on me started off a chain of reactions that included Flanders (Screw you, Flanders) being brought into it, among many, many others. But that's not the fun part. By deliberately building the right buildings to get it to that point, I was able to reach the population percentage to convert to another religion. So, I converted to Judaism.

• And then it got hard.
• Predictably, and realistically, public order has cratered, half of Europe hates my guts and is out to wipe France from the face of the earth, and I'm being pressed hard. I am starting to build synagogues and other public order things to get it to stabilize a bit.
• To sum it up, it's Thunderdome in Europe, it's complete chaos, and I'm loving it.
• For a full list of the factions I'm at war with: England, Wales, Aragon, Castille, Genoa, Pisa, Milan,( Fuck Milan), Portugal, Holy Roman Empire, Lorraine, Austria, Upstalsboom League. I did manage to knock Flanders out of the game. Ironically, I am getting in good with a couple of the Islamic factions, but basically all Western Europe hates me. Not in contact with Scotland yet, but hopefully they'll like me for beating up on the English.
• So far, challenging but fun.

Wish I could help you, but I haven't played Three Kingdoms enough and I don't have a super good grip on the mechanics and gameplay nuances of each leader.

1. Yes.

2. No, besieging a territory is calling dibs on it until you end the siege. Factions not at war with each other who are also mutually at war with another enemy can aid each other in attacks against the enemy, but only the initiating besieger will get the territory on success.

3. Attitude refers to an AI faction's current opinion on another faction, potentially yours too. Higher numbers means they'll be more likely to accept deals that are more beneficial to the other faction, while lower numbers probably means they'll just declare war on them once they get a chance (and then hate them more as they war with them) and will make it very difficult/time-consuming to get to get to good relations with them again, or even just peace out. Remember that the enemy of my enemy is my friend though, and sometimes you might find someone who declared war on you some years ago actually likes you now because you were kicking the ass of someone else they hated.

4. I've never actually worked it out myself, but I suspect it does on account of how giving factions more money will raise the counter and definitely make them like you faster. That being said, unless you really want a faction to love you, I'd still stick with trying to squeeze every cent out of your diplomatic deals.

5. There's a YouTuber I'd suggest for his videos on ultra-minmaxing your commanderies. For a basic rundown though, the safe thing is to go for plain income buildings in most cases (from state workshops, tax collectors, and inns), sticking with improved food gain on the commanderies that are good for it (the food of which can be traded with other factions for money and good relations), and being cognizant of corruption reduction buildings as you head toward the Emperor rank and get craploads of territory (and thus, corruption). All % bonuses apply to the entire commandery, so of course a commandery with plenty of docks by the water or blue resources is prime for commerce bonuses.

6. Mousing over a commandery's public order should tell you what's causing the final sum, like characters or building within it reducing it, events penalizing it or armies raiding it. Forcefully taking a region causes a huge public order penalty for one turn and another huge penalty that gradually goes away unless more territory changing hands within it occurs again. These penalties will basically ensure a rebellion will happen if someone takes a region from the commandery every turn back to back...but honestly, public order really isn't a huge deal. If I recall correctly (I don't think it's been changed, but I haven't watched closely), a single general with a single full retinue of militia can easily be built to murderlate/manually battle a rebel army that will take ages to fully muster a worthless rabble that will virtually have no chance against you which you can then recall after the rebels are wiped out, so getting buildings that give more money at the cost of public order are still easily worth it.

7. I'd definitely encourage peaceing out whenever you can with how long replenishing can take unless you really want some vital resources and territory. Basically killing off all of a faction's armies will make them highly inclined to giving you money for peace (money that you can then use to upgrade your buildings to help solve your income troubles), and even taking the faction's territory can still take a lot of time and troops replenishing if the territory's basic defences are decent. If your income is getting strained from all of the armies you raised while at war with three factions, taking peace out of your enemies' hides whenever you can is something you should do.

8. I haven't actually played Cao Cao yet to...but I will say that if you end up finding Cao Cao's too difficult for you, Sun Jian is actually the game's true easy mode.

Edited by VutherA on Feb 25th 2020 at 4:28:55 AM

Oh, does 1212 AD have a campaign mode now?

I didn't know that either, but yep it does.

By Christ, a 57-faction list of choices.

Hm, maybe a reason to pick up Attila again.

You can't just show me something amazing like that without warning. It's going to give me a heart attack.

So many factions. For a completionist like me, this is the best thing ever.

I was actually looking forward to the campaign for the mod coming out. Finally an opportunity to play Sicily again.

Then I loaded it up and remembered that Sicily is ruled by the Hohenstaufens at that point in histry.

Bloody Jerries

Fun fact, it's because of the Hohenstauffen that the Kingdom of Sicily would eventually go to the crown of Aragon and thus be the root cause of the Italian Wars of the Early Modern Period between Spain and France.

@Vuther A:

Yep, figured a bunch of the stuff out. Looks like buildings apply their -construction cost bonuses across the entire commandery.

My three front war is really just against Yuan Shao and his vassal that's in my corner of the map. It's just that he also has two armies. It seems to be wrapping up, though; he offered me 8000 to be at peace with him, which I accepted, and then I killed his army and executed his ass. I expect mop up operations for the next couple of turns.

Just vassalized Liu Bei who for some reason was willing to pay me >1200/turn for the honor of...getting defended if Yuan Shu attacks him or something? Maybe it's because the vassal in question (someone down Zhang Chao's chain family tree) attacked his capital, idk. Alternately, he wants to take a crack at Lady Wu and that's why he's marching his armies across my lands. This also caused Yuan Shu to leave the coalition between him and Liu, which is also perfectly fine, because anything that causes him to share a border with Lady Wu is great for me.

I'm hoping for a future where, being that he's sandwiched between me and Liu Bei, I can convince him to proxy war against Liu, forcing me to invade and take his lands.

I think I figured out the public order thing, there's commanderies that have grown too large because I upgraded their outer settlements too much without increasing the city tier. That, and Cao Pi carries a -2 public order as my heir, the little shit. As for general with a full retinue, do you mean one general with 6 units, or one general with one full-strength unit?

(Come to think of it, when people say "stack", do they mean "units" or "general plus retinue" or "army"?)

A stack means an army. In 3K, that means all the commanders and their retinues in the same army group.

Relatedly, a doomstack is an entire army formed with elite troops, making it extremely difficult to defeat in conventional combat.

Edited by Resileafs on Feb 25th 2020 at 6:58:41 AM

Yeah, "stack" on its own is going to mean an army with as many units in it as it can have. If someone means an army with less than that, they'll add a number beforehand.

A full retinue in Three Kingdoms parlance refers to a general with the 6 other units he/she can get at a maximum. Those units within their maximum of 6 are within their retinue.

Edited by VutherA on Feb 26th 2020 at 3:33:08 PM

You generally want to use full stacks whenever possible, as it is difficult to keep your flanks secure when outnumbered.

x9 Fun fact, I've logged more hours on that mod so far than I have on vanilla Attila by a considerable margin.

• x8 And to think the mod is still in development. Wonderful as it is now, it's going to blow all other TW mods out of the water when it's finished. Hell, by then it might need its own trope page. I think there'll be more playable factions down the road too. I think I recall reading somewhere that they were working on a Papal States roster.

Edited by MattC on Feb 25th 2020 at 8:53:29 AM

I imagine that this is mod will be the Europa Barbaricorum for a possible Medieval III.

CA might as well just hire them and buy that mod to make it Medieval 3.

Edited by Resileafs on Feb 25th 2020 at 10:37:19 AM

Would be a great move. The faction and unit diversity they've come up with over five years of work is simply jaw-dropping and I can't really see CA doing the same thing in-house.

Because doing mods for fun and doing actual games on a deadline with a budget are two entirely different things?

Edited by theLibrarian on Feb 25th 2020 at 9:50:26 AM

I was just saying that all the work they put into it is enough to make a whole official game.

Edited by Resileafs on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:31:04 PM

If CA is smart and learns from the competition (*glaring at you Blizzard*), they will contact them to help them work on the future Medieval III, giving revenue and credit where is due.

Naaaaaaah, they'll just do the real alpha move and instead just make a spiritual "successor" Med III game while CA hasn't announced Med III yet.

Guaranteed "-Dev Team- does what others CAn't" YouTube comment.

Now give us more Troy news CA

Edited by VutherA on Feb 25th 2020 at 1:27:17 PM

I've auto-crowned myself as Emperor from taking one of Kong Rong's cities.

How does campaign map movement after battles work? Spent quite a few turns chasing down Zhuge Liang's army as he attempted to save Kong Rong, he keeps escaping far from reach after fighting my dudes or besieging my settlements, does the AI just have extra movement after battles, or is it just that usually my battles tend to occur at the end of my own movement and so I never encounter situations where I move afterwards?

Also, river battle delegate is...finicky. The two times I've encountered them it was always pyrrhic victory, and the "retreat" option seems to not really be worth it as they're just able to catch up next time anyways. Is the normal play here just to have multiple armies close to each other all the time along a river?

Autoresolving the river fight did result in capturing Zhuge Liang, who I immediately executed.

Retreating from battle after being attacked is a magical place where logic and rules don't apply. Fates willing, you'll go over rivers, running by mountains, and head straight into enemy armies clearly in view depending on the time of day and the current placement of the celestial bodies.

They just go somewhere in some direction away from the location they were attacked, regardless of sense and campaign movement points. Crazy stuff can happen.

It is definitely normal to fail to catch enemies after you attack them and run out of movement though. Unless there's an unlikely huge disparity in campaign movement points maximum in favour of the attacker, that's just going to keep happening. The only way to deal with that is to bring up another army that doesn't spend all of its movement trying to attack it but instead try to hopefully overtake it in a turn or two in the future, or ambush and hope they'll blunder into it (not unlikely).

Delegating's basically always going to worse than playing through it in most cases aside from totally, utterly outnumbering the enemy and perhaps siege-attacking a full garrison with mostly cavalry and no artillery/flaming arrows.

In general, fighting a river battle is usually in your favour. The enemy will be unable to flank your positions due to the bridge, and if you tilt your frontline line so its left has stepped back a bit instead of being parallel to the mouth of the bridge, then keeping a few key flanking units in reserve to hit the enemy's right side after the the meatgrinder goes on for a while is a safe tactic.

So, my specific situation is that Zhuge Liang is running around in my territory. On his turn, he fought a battle at one of my settlements, and I think he chose the sack option (not sure, mainly because I seemed to have retained ownership of that settlement), and then ran off. On a side note, do I not get the option to wait out the siege if the AI is attacking my settlements? 3 Kingdoms also doesn't give the option of fighting a normal battle when on rivers, and the movement range seems to make it so that retreating is kinda pointless.

This also seems to mean that the historical Cao Cao strategy at Red Cliffs/Chibi actually is the best thing to do in this game if you anticipate navigating by river, stacking a crapton of boats next to each other so they're in reinforcement range.

Also, when you're at the Emperor stage, where's the Prime Minister slot? Seems to have disappeared.