Does the Three Kingdoms Campaign actually follow the story historically?

[DorkSparce]

I just got the game and started off doing Wei first but surprised to see you start after Luoyang rather than starting with Yellow Turban ( though that's just me following the linear story telling approach of Dynasty Warriors ).

How does the story work in a TW game where you're allowed more freedom? I just got to Tao Qiao killing Cao Song and gave me the option to follow the story and exact vengeance or fix relations ( I had agreed to a non-aggressive treaty with him two turns before hand ) but chose to follow the story.

Does this mean I can potentially miss out on the opportunity to do historical battles Cao Cao participated in? Am I going to have to meet a specific number of unit requirements and officers in order to try to follow the story?

[Fried Noodles]

Total War Three Kingdoms is a sandbox experience.
The game attempts to be as close to the Romance as possible right at the start of the campaigns with all the characters where they should be the division of commanderies in places where they'd make sense (though taking game balance into account as well) but all bets are off as soon as you hit 'End Turn' on Turn 1.

There are many events that pop up during the course of the game which tend to fire off at around the appropriate date: Sima Yi joining Cao Cao, Xu Shu and then Zhuge Liang (and Pang Tong) joining Liu Bei, etc. But the AI and the player has the freedom to take any faction in any direction of their choosing.

There will be no 'official' dispute over Xu or Jing Provinces. Liu Bei can confederate Tao Qian's land and Liu Biao's land through scripted events following the latter characters' deaths.

Major battles do exist as 'Historical Story Battles' (or whatever they're called forget the name -- They're battles that you can play whenever you want and are independent from the campaign).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7zuJIJYInU


The DLCs Mandate of Heaven and A World Betrayed offer new starting dates to jump into the campaign with. Each faction has different starting circumstances depending on the date.

Mandate of Heaven starts you off in the Winter of 182, before the death of the emperor and the division of the empire into independent warlords. You get to face off against the Yellow Turban Rebellion (and the Zhang brothers) at their height.
Again, the game will roughly set the historical (Romance) setting at the beginning of Turn 1, but just about anything can happen in the following turns. Depending on the AI or player's performance, the Rebellion can even drag on into the late 190s, well beyond when it should have ended.

A World Betrayed starts you off in 194, shortly after Tao Qian's death. Liu Bei owns all of Xu province and is enjoying a brief truce with Cao Cao while he returns to deal with Lu Bu. Sun Ce starts off in this campaign as a vassal/servant of Yuan Shu and has events leading towards breaking away and founding the state of Wu.

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Every campaign you play will play out a little differently. It won't be like reading the story at all. Sometimes Xu Chu will leave Cao Cao and go join Kong Rong.

Sometimes Dong Zhuo won't be betrayed by Lu Bu and will go on to live long enough to die of old age, never losing control of the Emperor.

Sometimes Cao Cao's faction will be destroyed before the end of 192. There will be no Wei.

[RiceMan]

you need mods to make the events and what not. This mod is pretty good at bringing Dynasty warriors but you lose option of playing with MTU Mods.
You either play with MTU mods, which works well with vanilla mods
or this mod, Wukingdaissance that has more unique characters from Dynasty Warriors
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1843445119 this mod requires about 6 mods to use

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1812159400 this is the MTU(Make Them Unique) mod that doesn't require much mods.

[Fried Noodles]

... Personally, I feel that both Wu Kingdaissance and Make Them Unique are dumpster-fire mods.
They were quite nice in the past when they were simpler. Having lots of new unique portraits is very nice. But both mods monkey around with the balance of the game way too much.
They add a bunch of bogus events and there are legendary/gold ancillaries all over the place.
Character skills are tweaked. Faction balance is a joke.

And there's always something that's broken. And the more fluff they shovel on top of this mod, the more things tend to break.

MTU used to offer an 'Illustrations Only' version of their mod. They deleted it.
I like the artwork, but it's not worth putting up with all the rest of the nonsense they force into the game.

[DorkSparce]

Originally posted by Fried Noodles:

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Mmm I see. This is basically Total War's version of the Empires Series for Dynasty Warriors then.