Recent reviews by AgentGB

Its a good DLC, I have faith that CA will eventually get round to whittling out the bugs, but in a game this huge in content, i'd imagine stuff will get broke indirectly and missed. Hopefully in time they'll assign a team to go through this and prune out the bugs and hopefully deliver the same service to historical fans that fantasy fans have received.

Faction Played: Allies
Game Won: On Turn 16 (18.6Hrs to beat/1st play-through)
Difficulty: Normal

Would I Recommend:

- If you've ever wanted to experience a good world war one game and know what to expect from the conflict set in the western front, then this is a good game, probably the only WW1 RTS game that i know off that tries to be true to the setting & capture the essence of this conflict. You've got to take into consideration that most developers won't touch this conflict due the nature of it & general sentiment being that it would not make for good gameplay. To me, the devs took a risk and i think they've managed to make a decent little game here. Despite being WW1 there is alot of headroom for tactics & strategies, that will spice up further as you unlock more tech. Although to properly see the mid-end game techs you'll most likely need to play this on the harder difficulty because it is quite easy, atleast with my first play-through. Beat it in 16 turns, but purposely did this to cripple the ai before it could research and properly take advantage of such techs.

Tactics & strategies i employed:

- Strategic wise, i employed WW2 tactics of blitzkrieg, creating a breakthrough with concentrated attacks, avoiding any hex that had more than 3 stars & instead encircling/pocketing them which puts a nasty modifier on the ai stopping them from attacking & losing a star per turn automatically in any region surrounded. Get the "citizen support" tech in "intelligence" you'll thank me later. Basically wanna pocket the Germans along the coast by reaching Liege by the path of less resistance Star wise, then from Liege to Verdun, coming from both directions, create the 2nd pocket, which will win you the game. So longs you concentrate your attacks and win them well, the ai will be starved for gold, with citizen support, you can attack twice in a turn, and even exhaust the ai supplies in a region to the point they cannot even maintain their trenches.

- Tactic wise, i employed just infantry, artillery & bi-planes for air superiority without any special tech unlocks. Only put one point into trench techs since i planned on being aggressive and employing WW2 strats of manoeuvre.

- Basically for defence, you want 1 Hvy Art, 1 Light Art, and want to corner camp your HQ, wait to the enemy expend themselves, and with the last 5 min, turn down ceasefires and take back your flags. Use cheap forward trenches without communication trenches connected to them or each other to adsorb enemy artillery & protect your MG nest in the line behind with the better trenches. Reason you use cheap trenches at the front is that you can bomb the enemy out of them & with no communication trenches they have to cross open ground again to reach your main trenches.

- For Attack, you bring as much artillery to meet the problem, don't need to go overkill, but generally 5-6 Hvy Art, 1 Light Art. Supplies will not be an issue, since all corps carry atleast 190 free supplies, and for attacks you should have atleast 7 corps, which is 1600 supplies, more than enough. Make sure when you create a breakthrough, like with the blitkireg doctrine, that you have more corps ready to maintain the corridor so your lead stack can preform an encirclement. Hammer the the area you want to attack with heavy artillery, then storm their trenches with waves leap frogging each other while using the 1 light art to react to any MG nest or such along with Hvy Art nailing positions your about to take.

- Supplies are a non issue, given all units get a free amount, and only really next supply depots for undermanned regions you just plan on holding. If you were launching multiple attacks a turn then you may notice global supplies being affected. Trenches cost upkeep for your regions supplies, so don't spam them.
- Gold is the resource that is quite important, you'll realise why in time.

How can the game Improve:

- Its a good game, but perhaps instead of the Star System used for hexes, that they instead perhaps took a Close Combat Series approach, but with bigger maps, so instead of fighting the same battle twice or three times to take a map, you instead have a bigger map with multiple locations, that could take multiple 20 min battles to fully control the map, and the game instead remembers what parts of the map you've taken similar to Close Combat. So for example a 5 Star map, would just be a really big map instead of 5 sweeps required to take it. This way it would perhaps reduce some of the repetitiveness and instead give a sense of progression in the battles of back and forth. Only place this suggestion falls down, is that obviously with auto-resolve in mind, it will be trickier to determine was precise flags are won/lost on a map compare to the "star system". But if that was factored into the game mechanics as a whole for auto-resolve, so you could select which flags were priority for capture, to allow for a methodical taking of a battle map over a series of turns via auto-resolve for example.

- Another missed opportunity is that there isn't any versus campaign yet, from which i think this would have shined more imo, given the gameplay, techs, campaign map are crying out for it and almost feels like it was dropped last min.

Wishes:

- I hope the game continues to be improved and refined. If there DLC that improves the game as a whole and refines mechanics or introduces more content in terms of mechanics, maps etc or addressing what i mentioned above with battle maps, that could be interesting. But in all honestly, i'm quite happy to support a dev that taken a risky move to cover a WW1 game when general sentiment is usually that it cannot be done, and i think this as been done quite well, despite my criticism.

Epic!!

Got some really fun mechanics. Imperial Intrigue that could make things really interesting in a versus game. There now alot going on mechanic wise overall through Three Kingdoms, especially at the strategic campaign level does allow for so much more for the player to do, although if a novice, some of it can be easily ignored. Its a game now, that even experienced players may go back and continue to learn something new about the game to better hone their grand strategists mastery for those higher difficulty levels or better yet versus/co op campaign mode. That said, the list of buffs & stats may seem overwhelming, but i think some years down the line, Folk will greatly appreciate that they kept with this level of detail and depth. Some buffs may seem OP, but sure little balancing issues will be worked out before the end.

Cao Cao schemes do really make Cao Cao stand out now, and generally feel more Cao Cao ish. The fact that their are notifications/Icons relating to Cao Cao scheme tab on the campaign map is a god send.

I personally thought the Nanman DLC (Furious & Wild) brought that much needed injection of different cultures to help make the Han themselves pop a bit more. This DLC does alot for mechanics and the Han. that feel connected or interconnected in a way that relates to the Campaign map, Battle Map and Diplomacy plus better interaction with other factions.

Basically this really enhances the "Asymmetric warfare" aspect of the game in so many ways. Something that not really been done that much in Total War games previously, atleast not to this detail. So it really is now Total War in the amount of stuff you can do to affect other factions, and given its more interconnected, it feels that bit realistic/genuine. Abstract modifiers are still a thing obviously, but the way it now interconnects at the campaign, battle map and diplomacy level means pulling levers can have overspill effects, or conducting certain actions will directly affect other areas of the game.

Just imagine Napoleon or Empire with this level of detail.

Excellent Hack & Slash Game.

I really like this DLC, i didn't really expect the Nanmans to be so fun to play with. Its got a nice sense of escalation & Kingdom building. Its feels really well put together. Its a good blueprint for future titles/period that if tweaked about or combined with other mechanics can further enhance the Kingdom or other Goverment type of your realm. There alot of good base mechanics in three kingdoms, this is another one that as potential for future titles.

If Christopher Nolan/John Woo made a video game with a dose of Game of Thrones, 3k would be the Dark Knight/Red Cliff franchise. In that its gritty, relatively deep in its mechanics for a Total War game & every camera angle is potentially a money shot that looks straight outta of a movie sometimes.

Makes me think what a Empire/Napoleon/Medieval would look like now, especially if that amount of development time was given to the title. Or perhaps some other period like the Renaissance or Victorian period?

Pretty good, can get better if they build upon some of the mechanics or bring them to future TW games.

Still a great game, a real pity the devs went under

Great game,

A great game, even get to fight commies in it too.