Question about playing a Free Officer

[Min]

I have not tried out this type of gameplay where I start out all by myself with a custom made officer and wonder the map doing what ever I want.

My question is this: If I were to start off during the Yellow turban rebelion will the game make it so that the Historical events continue on through all the way to the end without my intervention? Basically do the time periods evolve into each other?

[Vin362]

Historical events will happen if these conditions are met you have them on, force trend is set to follow history and you do nothing that could interfere with an event meaning if the officer you are playing as is not required to be part of a force then the event will still play.

[Min]

So as a custom officers starting from yellow turban, the world will slowly change to Dong Zou then to Worlord era all by itself? The yellow turbans will be wiped out and replaced?

[heinous won]

Yes ideally it will end up with the final Chu Shi Biao event, as long as nothing interferes.

[Calcrist]

Short answer: No. The game will try, but it will still require you to intervene in some way for it to succesfully trigger several events. Left to its own devices, the game will eventually break the chain of events in one way or another. So no, the game does not ensure a historical sequence of events no matter how you set it.


Long answer: In my experience, it can actually be very difficult to make events trigger historically, even if you put the settings in a way that should encourge a historical development of the game (Like low AI aggression or force historical trend). This is especially true if you are planning to play from the Yellow Turban Scenario, simply because it takes more time for all the events to trigger and that means more things can (and probably will) go wrong. Here are some things Ive observed in my own playthroughs:

1- Your officer being in a force can be highly disruptive to historical events: Basically, the AI of a force when your character is in it is completly different from its regular AI, and it can be difficult or near impossible to make the force behave in a way that allows historical events to trigger if you are in the force. Its less disruptive if your officer remains unaffiliated for the whole game (as a patriot or a trader character), but even then youll encounter some kind of problem eventually.

2- Events can have weird or obscure conditions which arent protected by the game: Heres an example. After Lu Bu is eliminated, an event triggers where Cao Cao destroys Liu Bei's force. Liu Bei joins Yuan Shao, Zhang Fei goes independent and Guan Yu joins Cao Cao. Eventually, the Battle of Baima event triggers which later reforms Liu Bei's force at Runan. If Runan is not independent at this point, the event breaks and basically Liu Bei stays in Yuan Shaos force and Guan Yu in Cao Caos, which then doesnt allow the events in which Yuan Shaos force is defeated by Cao Cao to trigger and thus breaks the historical trend. If you are in any force that is nearby Runan, its almost impossible to stop your Ruler from eventually taking it over and breaking the chain of events. Similarily, at this point someone almost always discovers Lu Meng at Runan and tries to hire him. In almost all my playthroughs, Lu Meng will not join Sun Quans force unless he was there already at the start of the scenario. He almost always joins Cao Cao in my games where he starts as an independant officer, which will eventally break the God of War surrounded events further down the line.

3- It can take a looooong time for events to trigger: Lets assume that in our previous example, you manage to let Liu Bei reform his force in Runan and you watch all the events of Yuan Shaos downfall. All of these events can take less than a year to happen, but the next set of events (where Liu Bei abandons Runan and moves further south) can take about 2 years to start happening. You basically need Liu Bei to survive 2 years against a hostile Cao Cao, when one side only has Runan and the other already has a sizeable chunk of China and still has some S and A tier officers which can more than compete with Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun. Its extremly hard to do this without somehow manipulating the diplomacy mechanics or straight up using the in-game editor.

[Min]

Thank you for that in depth explination. I understand now. Currently I am a ruler who started with Runan therefore the event where Liu Bei will never happen now because the city is already occupied? Also your right about Lu Meng, he started off as an officer of mine now Cao Cao has hired him.

I basically wanted to know if I were to be totaly independent and not take over cities or work for anyone, wonder if the warlords scenario will start from the yellow turbans. Or will the Yellow turbans get enough power to end up lasting for ever

Also can I change my faction colour as a free officer setting up as ruler?

[Calcrist]

To answer your first question, if its already after 200 AD in your game and the event hasnt triggered, then the chain is probably broken. If its before 200 AD, Im assuming that if Runan goes back to being neutral the events should trigger properly.

For the second question, that will probably work. In my experience, as long as you are independant and dont influence the factions (investing or liberating cities, for example), that scenario should play out properly up to the Anti Dong Zhuo coalition events, with events after that kinda being a toss up (usually depends how much Dong Zhuo expands at that point).

For the last question, I think you can only choose your color if you create a faction at the start of the game. If you start a faction during the game, the game chooses the color in order. Your only other option may be Van editor.

[heinous won]

Just to throw in my two cents. In my experience, the two really big pain in the butt events are basically Liu Bei restarting his force in Runan, and that Chibi string. I could never get Chibi to fully play out, and could never figure out the condition issue that needed to be fixed. Taking Xuchang will also mess up Cao Cao's string pretty early.

Conversely, I have never really seen the YT event go wrong, they are basically guaranteed to lose.

[Vin362]

In my experience there appears to be a cutoff point of Guandu where as early as the Anti-Dong Zhuo scenario the player as Cao Cao or Yuan Shao can set up the map as to trigger the battle of Guandu, now this depends on what you as the player does and the A.I does as certain actions can result in breaking the event chain.

[Calcrist]

Originally posted by heinous won:

Just to throw in my two cents. In my experience, the two really big pain in the butt events are basically Liu Bei restarting his force in Runan, and that Chibi string. I could never get Chibi to fully play out, and could never figure out the condition issue that needed to be fixed. Taking Xuchang will also mess up Cao Cao's string pretty early.

Conversely, I have never really seen the YT event go wrong, they are basically guaranteed to lose.

As far as Chibi and Runan, there appear to be other conditions that can be tricky to mantain under certain circumstances. One of the really obscure conditions that I suspect, but havent quite been able to confirm, is that certain officers may be required for the event, such as Bian Xi (Theyre the officers Guan Yu kills when leaving Cao Cao to join Liu Bei again). Since some of them are kind of low tier officers, they can die in combat and break the event that way. I noticed this because in one playthrough, the event never triggered and I started that game in the Yellow Turban scenario as a Han officer and know for a fact I killed a lot of Yellow Turban officers (Bian Xi among them). The next time I tried, I started in the Anti Dong Zhuo Coalition scenario and didnt get involved in any fighting, so the event triggered fine.

Chibi also has the problem of a bunch of officers, both minor and major, are important for the events and may be causing it to fail. One game, I started the Three Visits chain, and then spent several months without events triggering. I eventually found the problem when I got attacked by a Wu army being led by....Zhuge Liang. Still not quite sure how that happened.

In a couple of my games, if Im an officer in the Yellow Turbans, Zhang Jiao will usually expand more aggressively, sometimes so much that he can start to overwhelm He Jin with sheer numbers. Its a combination of He Jin being pretty bad at fighting the Yellow Turbans until Sun Jian and Liu Bei start to be more active (which takes a couple of years) and Zhang Jiao having conquered a bunch of cities unopposed, which also allowed them to get some pretty good officers that shouldnt be in the Yellow Turbans, like Xu Huang (they consistently voted to expand during force councils). I didnt play through the whole scenario, because I started it planning on the Yellow Turbans losing, but I bailed from that scenario and restarted my game when it was 191 AD and the Yellow Turbans were far from losing.

Maybe its a rare for this kind of thing to happen, but in 5 games where Ive started as a Yellow Turban, 2 have played out in such a way that the Yellow Turbans had a good possibility of winning.