The Yuan Shao "bug" explained

[VoiD]

So, I've been seeing this discussion popping up everyday with a lot of guesswork from everyone so I thought I should just make this thread.

From what I can tell it's not an actual bug, though it could be a mistake in the code, what really seems to happen is that the diplomatic modifier bonuses are not properly balanced, and this isn't an issue new to TW Three Kingdoms, it's an old mechanic in action and you can see for yourself, in your own game if you look into the diplomacy window.

The Mechanic:
When you attack someone else's enemy they will like you more, the worse you treat their soldiers, the more you abuse, pillage and destroy their settlements, the more they will like you, but the opposite is also true, if you make peace with people they like, make deals, or send gifts, they will like you more for it as well.

For instance in Total War Attila if you declare war on Western Rome, as any nation, and pillage/execute their soldiers every time, eventually everyone on the map will start loving you, and if you keep directing your massive alliance towards new foes before Rome is dead, so that they will still like you for doing nasty things to their enemies, you can pretty much keep it up until you run out of outside threads and people start wanting to kill each other again.

The issue:
The modifiers seem to be overtuned, so what happens is:

Nation A likes Nation B
Nation C makes a deal with Nation B
Nation A likes that Nation C made a deal with Nation B
Nation B likes Nation C because of their deal
Nation A offers a deal to Nation C because their improved relations with Nation B
Nation B likes that Nation A and Nation C now have deals, so they like they more, so they make more deals.
Nation A now likes Nation B a lot more.
Nation C had deals with Nation B so Nation A starts to like Nation C even more.
Nation C has a closer relation to Nation A, so they like the fact that Nation A has a deal with Nation B even more.

And so on, and so forth, in short, the more they like each other, the more they snowball into liking each other, and since every nation has one other friend somewhere, they start raising everyone else's relations for having deals with their friends, so they become friends of their friends, so they like their friends even more for having deals with the friends of their friends, and in turn they end up liking the friends of their friends even more for having deals with their friends.
This just keeps going and going and going for ever, eventually getting over +300 relations for having deals with nations they like (and rising), you can see it for yourself in the diplomacy screen, eventually one big guy asks another to become a vassal, and since it's yet another deal, everyone else will like the big guy more for vassalizing their friends, so they ask another, and everyone else gets more relations, so they ask another, and another, and another, and another, until everyone is their vassals.

The Difference:
Because of the Setting, nations in 3k are more willing to become vassals, and it's not something only defeated nations do, so once they get a vassal, they are much more stable than they would be if they were just allies, so it's harder for them to break up even with internal intrigue.

The thing is: This has nothing to do with Yuan Shao, he's just in a position where he is more likely to get the ball rolling, but even if he was removed from the game the issue would still persist, someone else eventually takes his place, in my game as Zheng Jiang I wasn't doing much diplomatically, so people didn't like me, plus there is the Infamy issue, but I joined Yuan Shao's alliance, since he made a deal with someone other people did not like, everyone disliked Yuan Shao more, so nobody was willing to become his vassal, in my game he never got any vassals.

In another game as He Yi Yuan Shao declared war on me early and got beaten pretty badly, I took out all of his armies and pillaged some of his settlements for money, since he was taking too long to get the vassal ball rolling, Dong Ming (yes) did it instead, and now he's in the proccess of vassalizing the rest of China instead.

Both games on Legendary, antoher player even mentioned in his game he was the one who got the ball rolling, and ended up vassalizing the rest of China, when he got enough prestige to create the 3 kingdoms his 2 biggest vassals declared independence, he beat them with the rest of the swarm and easily won the game.

The bad news is that no mod that nerfs no characters will solve the issue, the good news is that even though it's not very well balanced, if you know what's going on you can tell who's going to snowball, when, and you might be able to do something ahead of time and prepare properly, in my current game, even though Liu Biao vassalize the biggest kingdoms and is a massive empire, I still had deals and tributes being sent to the major players, Sun Ce, Cao Cao and Liu Bei, so even though I was at war with their liege, they never joined the war, actually Cao Cao was just a coalition ally, so eventually he broke free and now we're together.

Hope it helps.

[StevoTheOutlaw]

Agree completely with this analysis.

People just think it is Yuan Shao specific because he can vassalize straight away.

I have had Liu Bei, Sun Jian and Cao Cao be the big vassal master.

One way to avert it is have your own power bloc, so there are two or more coalitions/alliances on bad terms.

The game is clearly designed to have multiple alliances fighting one another. Have faith they will get the balance right, and I hope they dont just need Yuan Shao because it wont solve it.

[ACS36]

This doesn't help at all. It doesn't matter if your have a positive score with the AI factions. They'll still turn on you or be manipulated into turning on you by other AI factions.

The only thing diplomacy is good for is extorting gold from the AI with food, items, and trade agreements. Trying to be friendly and have allies doesn't work majority of the time. The only ones that might join you are far away from you, or tiny factions. Every major faction on your border is going to be attacking you within the first 50 turns of the game. Happens every time. The AI will vassilize one another or form alliances and start attacking you within the first few minutes of the game. There is nothing you can do to stop this outside of being lucky.

I've yet to be able to get another faction to like me that can help me in a meaningful way. IT's always some tiny faction far away who can't really provide any benefit to the invasion of my lands.

[StevoTheOutlaw]

Weird, been playing every day since release and in 90% of my legendary campaigns I have had allies and vassals.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by OutlawGamer:

Weird, been playing every day since release and in 90% of my legendary campaigns I have had allies and vassals.

Same, also on legendary, specially weird considering players can and habe been in position to do exactly what the AI is doing, like this guy: https://steamcommunity.com/app/779340/discussions/0/1651045226237526369/

None of this "just happens", it's out of balance, but it's working as it's currently intended and the game gives you all the info, telling you what could happen before it happens.

[Nero]

There is no bug. He's big and wealthy so he gets a vassal or two and that makes him bigger and gives him more money so he gains another vassal or two.

They then go to war together and they like that. Sometimes they make a vassal out of their beaten opponents.

[Lightmgl]

It really does feel something like this.

In my game I took out Yuan Shao early before he Vassalized too many people, but he was best friends with everyone. I got lucky and captured him and decided to execute his ass to stop any vassalization. As a result of how modifiers work all of his friends (who was pretty much the entire north) hates me for it pretty much forever.

They declare war on me and we fight which in turn causes their friends in other places to hate me, snowballing into pretty much the entire map hating me just because I executed Yuan Shao and he was popular.

Now 80 turns later things are pretty stable that all of the smaller powers are finally wiped off the map.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Lightmgl:

It really does feel something like this.

In my game I took out Yuan Shao early before he Vassalized too many people, but he was best friends with everyone. I got lucky and captured him and decided to execute his ass to stop any vassalization. As a result of how modifiers work all of his friends (who was pretty much the entire north) hates me for it pretty much forever.

They declare war on me and we fight which in turn causes their friends in other places to hate me, snowballing into pretty much the entire map hating me just because I executed Yuan Shao and he was popular.

Now 80 turns later things are pretty stable that all of the smaller powers are finally wiped off the map.

I could be wrong but, giving some sort of cap, or soft cap to the system instead of just lowering the amount might be one way to solve it, the map just has too many factions, so having over 20 of them having bonuses on every other one of them for having treaties with each one of them, with an ever increasing score might be hard to balance.

Maybe if the "friendly relations to my friend" as a whole was capped at a certain number, no matter how many friends there are? Not sure, just guessing.

[Nocturnalx36]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by Lightmgl:

It really does feel something like this.

In my game I took out Yuan Shao early before he Vassalized too many people, but he was best friends with everyone. I got lucky and captured him and decided to execute his ass to stop any vassalization. As a result of how modifiers work all of his friends (who was pretty much the entire north) hates me for it pretty much forever.

They declare war on me and we fight which in turn causes their friends in other places to hate me, snowballing into pretty much the entire map hating me just because I executed Yuan Shao and he was popular.

Now 80 turns later things are pretty stable that all of the smaller powers are finally wiped off the map.

I could be wrong but, giving some sort of cap, or soft cap to the system instead of just lowering the amount might be one way to solve it, the map just has too many factions, so having over 20 of them having bonuses on every other one of them for having treaties with each one of them, with an ever increasing score might be hard to balance.

Maybe if the "friendly relations to my friend" as a whole was capped at a certain number, no matter how many friends there are? Not sure, just guessing.

Almost positive it was capped like this in Shogun. Not that it mattered, as everyone declared on you when you hit legendary anyway

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Nocturnalx36:

Originally posted by VoiD:

I could be wrong but, giving some sort of cap, or soft cap to the system instead of just lowering the amount might be one way to solve it, the map just has too many factions, so having over 20 of them having bonuses on every other one of them for having treaties with each one of them, with an ever increasing score might be hard to balance.

Maybe if the "friendly relations to my friend" as a whole was capped at a certain number, no matter how many friends there are? Not sure, just guessing.

Almost positive it was capped like this in Shogun. Not that it mattered, as everyone declared on you when you hit legendary anyway

That's one thing I'd like to see gone from TW games, the random endgame crysis, I'd prefer a game balanced in a way to give you a harder challenge, naturally, during the gameplay.

For instance: If they nerf the randomness of this system by capping these values so that nobody gets +300 relations with every faction in the map they could give a Threat modifier to nations instead, so they'd naturally team up against larger, stronger neighbors, and since the player tends to get very large, very quickly, these vassal swarms could still happen naturally towards the endgame.

Though it still needs some kind of mechanic tied to the Three Kingdoms, so that it really becomes a 3 way war instead of another Shogun 2 Realm Divide.

[Metadragon]

Its best to be a part of the power blob. As long as it leaves you with enough enemies to reasonably explain. Playing as Gongsun Zan I killed Yuan Shao and Zhang Yan and took all the territory in the mountains to the west and everything north of the northernmost big river. I am friends or in coalition with Kong Rong, Liu Bei and Dong Min who was ousted by Yuan Shu. The major enemies are around Luo Yang and Cao Cao in the plains south. Since I have like 3-4 times the territory of any of my coalition members I am turtling while they battle it out and building up my economy and im close to King even though most except Yuan Shu who took Chang An are only Marquis level. I am slowly overtaking them so that I can Vassalize or Ally->Confederating them.

Anyway story aside the only way to beat Yuan Shao is to cheese or kill him early. Or lower difficulty

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Metadragon:

Its best to be a part of the power blob. As long as it leaves you with enough enemies to reasonably explain. Playing as Gongsun Zan I killed Yuan Shao and Zhang Yan and took all the territory in the mountains to the west and everything north of the northernmost big river. I am friends or in coalition with Kong Rong, Liu Bei and Dong Min who was ousted by Yuan Shu. The major enemies are around Luo Yang and Cao Cao in the plains south. Since I have like 3-4 times the territory of any of my coalition members I am turtling while they battle it out and building up my economy and im close to King even though most except Yuan Shu who took Chang An are only Marquis level. I am slowly overtaking them so that I can Vassalize or Ally->Confederating them.

Anyway story aside the only way to beat Yuan Shao is to cheese or kill him early. Or lower difficulty

That's also something I don't quite get and it's not exclusive to just 3K, some people just refuse to lower the difficulty and, at the same time, use lots of mods that do just that, what's the point?

Like the classic mods to remove all of the bonuses for the AI on legendary, also known as not playing on legendary.

[Metadragon]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by Metadragon:

Its best to be a part of the power blob. As long as it leaves you with enough enemies to reasonably explain. Playing as Gongsun Zan I killed Yuan Shao and Zhang Yan and took all the territory in the mountains to the west and everything north of the northernmost big river. I am friends or in coalition with Kong Rong, Liu Bei and Dong Min who was ousted by Yuan Shu. The major enemies are around Luo Yang and Cao Cao in the plains south. Since I have like 3-4 times the territory of any of my coalition members I am turtling while they battle it out and building up my economy and im close to King even though most except Yuan Shu who took Chang An are only Marquis level. I am slowly overtaking them so that I can Vassalize or Ally->Confederating them.

Anyway story aside the only way to beat Yuan Shao is to cheese or kill him early. Or lower difficulty

That's also something I don't quite get and it's not exclusive to just 3K, some people just refuse to lower the difficulty and, at the same time, use lots of mods that do just that, what's the point?

Like the classic mods to remove all of the bonuses for the AI on legendary, also known as not playing on legendary.

People hold themselves to surprisingly high standards. Its a point of pride especially by long time fans

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Metadragon:

Originally posted by VoiD:

That's also something I don't quite get and it's not exclusive to just 3K, some people just refuse to lower the difficulty and, at the same time, use lots of mods that do just that, what's the point?

Like the classic mods to remove all of the bonuses for the AI on legendary, also known as not playing on legendary.

People hold themselves to surprisingly high standards. Its a point of pride especially by long time fans

Yeah, just seems weird to me, I mean it took me a while to l2p Total War, it was back in Shogun 2 when I decided to try and play at max difficulty, and I just couldn't, I got beaten over and over again, for days, even tried watching some videos and asking on the forums until I got the hang of it and let go of my pacifist style, becoming extremely aggressive and even over-expanding when I t wasn't that good of an idea just because I could/the AI let me.

Then I started losing again when TW Attila came out, different game, quite a lot harder, specially as I don't really like or use cav much, and it's great in that game, took me a long time to adapt, many tries, eventually I did.

Now I'm at a point where I'm not really great, but I'm used to the game, and the AI decision-making, even in newer games like this one I went straight for Zheng Jiang on Legendary and I managed to survive knowing half of the mechanics, it's half-satisfying and half-depressing knowing there isn't something higher than Legendary to achieve, but it's definitivelly doable.

I don't know, just looking back, I don't think I should or would have liked to pretend I could beat the highest dif in name while I lowered the actual difficulty of the game, even mods rub me the wrong way, I'm very reluctant to try them out as they feel like I might be cheating the game, even though many of them don't really make the game harder, sometimes it's just different.

PS: Hate how so many good modders from the past just removed all of the arrow and bullet trails giving us no options to add them back in, really really hate that.

[Salty Nobody]

@VoiD

Excellent OP analysis, thank you.

Ever since Rome 2 released the first thing I do in my new Total War game is find the hardest looking faction I can and learn the game in Legendary with it. I rarely use game changing mods, it kind of feels like cheating...

In this game I am reveling in the difficulty. Almost 80 hours in and I still have yet to complete a campaign. I'm 70ish hours through my third attempt at Legendary Zheng Jiang and its down to just me vs the larger and stronger Kingdom of Shu Han with their two imperial seats and faltering allies in a great and glorious meatgrinder running the entire length of China. Best Total War experience I have ever had, and when I finally win this I will remember it for years to come.

By the way they did add something higher than Legendary, they brought back the This is Total War achievement. Add that on to VH and suffer the fruits of hubris!

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Tactician:

@VoiD

Excellent OP analysis, thank you.

Ever since Rome 2 released the first thing I do in my new Total War game is find the hardest looking faction I can and learn the game in Legendary with it. I rarely use game changing mods, it kind of feels like cheating...

In this game I am reveling in the difficulty. Almost 80 hours in and I still have yet to complete a campaign. I'm 70ish hours through my third attempt at Legendary Zheng Jiang and its down to just me vs the larger and stronger Kingdom of Shu Han with their two imperial seats and faltering allies in a great and glorious meatgrinder running the entire length of China. Best Total War experience I have ever had, and when I finally win this I will remember it for years to come.

By the way they did add something higher than Legendary, they brought back the This is Total War achievement. Add that on to VH and suffer the fruits of hubris!

TBH I never actually tried that achievement in fear of not declaring war on some faction by accident one single turn, would be pretty devastating to find out, after a long gampaing, that you did not get it because you didn't declare war on Mr Lu Gong who owns a single province the turn you met him =/