#Total war three kingdoms units series#

For reference, the latest start date at this point was 194 CE. Historically, the Nanman didn’t play a major role during the era until 225 CE, where Zhuge Liang launched his campaign against the Nanman in Nanzhong. The reason for the low sales are all too familiar reasons odd timing, unbalanced gameplay, and an extreme amount of bugs.

Despite that however, Furious Wilds achieved extremely low sales, which was likely the main reason for Three Kingdoms’ end of support. The expansion promised a completely new culture pack, the Nanman, as well as a map expansion in the south-west. Furious Wilds on the other hand costed double, at $18.99. All of the other DLCs up till now were chapter packs, costing $9.99.

This was Creative Assembly’s first proper expansion pack of the game. Taking place in 184 CE, just before the grand campaign of 190, it focuses on the peasant uprising called the Yellow Turban Rebellion. The second piece of DLC was Mandate of Heaven, an expansion focusing on the events leading up to the fall of the Han Dynasty. In addition, with no unique portraits other than the eight princes, the campaign feels extraordinarily empty as armies of generic generals battle each other. The DLC also just lacked any interesting mechanics in both the campaign and battles, recycling many mechanics and assets from the grand campaign. Why was Creative Assembly’s first expansion completely unrelated to the Three Kingdoms era? Why were they focusing on this extremely obscure time period instead of further developing the grand campaign? At this point in development, major players of the era such as Cao Pi, the first Emperor of Wei, didn’t even have a unique portrait yet.Įight Princes was widely panned at release, helped in no small part by the shoddy Chinese translation of the expansion. Taking place a hundred years after the start of the campaign, Eight Princes involves a civil war between the titular eight princes of the Jin Dynasty fighting for control of China. The first piece of DLC for Three Kingdoms was Eight Princes, an extremely obscure time period completely unrelated to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. With Three Kingdoms though, it’s a different story. Total War: Shogun II has the Fall of the Samurai DLC which later became a Saga title, and Total War: Attila had Age of Charlemagne. Total War: Warhammer II has a plethora of amazing expansions ranging from Rise of the Tomb Kings to the Vampire Coasts.

#Total war three kingdoms units series#

Questionable DLCĭLC for the series has usually been on point. With the lack of support and communication for Three Kingdoms, perhaps it’s no surprise Creative Assembly decided to terminate support. These are just a few examples of the many, many unaddressed bugs that plagued the game for months.Ī large amount of posts were made on both the Total War subreddit and the Total War forums calling for Creative Assembly to fix the bugs to no avail. Another bug includes the “Iron General” title not unlocking properly, which has been a problem ever since the titles were introduced a year ago. This bug wouldn’t get fixed until the 1.7.1 patch, nearly a year after the release of Mandate of Heaven. How did this come to happen? What were those questionable DLC practices? Let’s take a trip through Creative Assembly’s vision of the most celebrated time period in Chinese history and see why Total War: Three Kingdoms failed.Īs an example, a bug in Mandate of Heaven involved Lü Bu potentially not joining Dong Zhuo due to an error in events. Worse yet, the game is arguably unfinished, with no piece of official content taking place during the actual titular formation of the Three Kingdoms.

All of this culminated in the game being abandoned, just two years after release. Infrequent patches that don’t address major bugs to extremely questionable DLC decisions, Creative Assembly made misstep after misstep in their support of the title. Unfortunately, that’s when Three Kingdoms began to die a slow and painful death. With a successful launch, it was up to Creative Assembly to keep the hype train running with their patches and DLCs. With the era the game takes place in being ripe with stories spanning nearly a century, all signs pointed towards Three Kingdoms being Creative Assembly’s historical masterpiece. Selling one million copies in just a week, Total War: Three Kingdoms was the fastest selling game in the series, surpassing even Total War: Warhammer II. Initial fan reception was positive, with many fans praising the overhauled diplomacy, roleplaying aspects, and characters.