Three Kingdoms: A World Betrayed

Sun Ce Faction design

Sun Ce was the leaders for the new factions in A World Betrayed.

Sun Ce’s story can be summed as a mixture of Rob Stark from Game Of Thrones and Alexander the Great in China. His father was mureded in an ambush and he used his fathers generals to carve out one of the Three Kingdoms that the period is known for. Sun Ce was capable and extremely reckless. However this recklessness got him killed and similar to Alexander, he was very young.

Sun Ce has three major components we wanted to bring across.

Reckless Aggresive: Sun Ce was aggresive, so we wanted to reward and encourge the player to play like this.
Character-centric: Sun Ce assembled a legendary court of characters. He was gifted at turning and making people following him.
Zero to hero: Sun Ce started with nothing. But he carved out a whole kingdom by the end of his life.

I first and formost wanted to push the player to play like Sun Ce. To do this, I gave his faction a ticking clock feature. Sun Ce’s faction has a Resource called “Reckless Luck”. The higher the resource is, the faster Sun Ce’s armies are. However this resource will allways tick down over time. If it ever runs out, then Sun Ce dies. The player can delay the decay and reduce the resource drain by completing recreating Sun Ce’s kingdom.

To create his kingdom the player must follow in Sun Ce’s footsteps. This means conquering certain regions in southeren China, recruiting and leveling up characters and enacting his revenge.

To further support Sun Ce’s faction and tie it closer to the character-centric / Zero-To-Hero aspect. I modified how his faction ministerial position works. In the game, any character more or less allways provided the same effect for the faction. For Sun Ce, the higher leveled the character was the stronger effect they provided.

Sun Ce Level / Mission Design

Sun Ce starts the game with a single army and 6 units and no teritory under his control. So the player is starting the game off scramping to conquer teritory and march southward. To help, Sun Ce starts off with a ton of Reckless Luck. But this will quickly drain away.

The player has a couple of varying paths, but if they want to keep Sun Ce alive are heavily encourged to capture teritory in Southeren China. After completing the first couple of objectives, the player have slowed or stopped the ticking clock and acquired an economic base. By completing the objectives, the player also earns unique characters to their court which will aid Sun Ce’s faction.

This gives them time and ability for the player to persue their own agenda. They can start the sandbox-experience now or face the climax of the story: Seeking revenge for the death of Sun Ce’s fathers. Which is done by killing and destroying the faction the murders faction. After this is complete, the player regains any lost Reckless luck and Sun Ce’s faction becomes unstopable.

In retrospec I would have liked to change the structure of the Mission Design. While the current structure grants the player more freedom after the initial part is complete, more could have been done to setup killing Sun Ce’s father murderer as the big conclusion to the game. In addition it’s also to easy to stop the ticking clock before it becomes a threat to the player. I would have liked to change the structure so the player first fully stops the ticking clock when they have enacted Sun Ce’s revenge, thereby allowing the ticking clock mechanic to be a persistant presure element throughout the Sun Ce’s campaign. This in turn would hopefully also have made completing Sun Ce’s revenge be greater aswell as the reward for it would be a big releive to the player.

Titles

One of the core pillars of Three Kingdoms was the characters. However theree was a recurring dissatisfaction problem. Most characters would over time become dissatisfied due to their ambition. The best way to solve this is to give them a seat in your goverment. But there is a very small set of seats available. In most cases the only thing the player could do was to grant them a higher ranking title, but this would only grant the character a temporary boost to satisfaction. The underlying problem wasn’t solved. In addition this allways carried a hefty price to do and significantly increased the characters upkeep. So it felt like a bad thing the player needed to do. In addition the titles were allways from a fixed hierarchical set. So you end up with 6 characters all being named “Master of War” or “Second-in-command”. While loyal characters would remain at “Clerk” level, cause there was no incentive to grant them a title.

I looked to the history of the period to fix this. A lot of Characters during the period and in the story would be rewarded with a very varied and diverse set of titles from their deeds or personalties. Like: “General Who Gives Tranquility To The North”, “Colonel that gives praise to the army”, “Iron General”, “Commander of the flying cavalry”, etc. Based on this i came up with a big set of titles, that could be unlocked by performing various deeds during the campaign. All of them would grant effects to whomever had the title. Some titles would be weaker and easier to earn, while the stronger and more expensive would be hearder to earn.

Titles didn’t cost anything to reward and they all had an upkeep cost. The more powerfull the title, the higher the upkeep. In addition I gave a lot of the powerfull titles an additional effect which reduced their ambition-dissatisfaction. Which ended up solving the dissatisfaction problem.

Bandit Rework

When the game was launched all the bandit factions in the game essentially played just all the other factions. So we completly overhauled all aspects of the factions. Thease are some of the elements I worked on.

Military Gameplay loop (Loot & Spoils): I designed the new mililtary core gameplay loop for the Bandit factions. Which was one of the most core change of the bandit rework. Since it changed the incentive structure for how the player should use their armies. Bandits armies aren’t to be marching armies that conquer all they see like normal armies. The player is meant to use their armies to raid and pillage their neirboring factions. This increases the amount of spoils the army carries around. When the army can’t carry more or replenishment is low. The army returns home, shares the spoils, which grants the faction signifantly higher income and rapidly replenishes the army. The army now empty of spoils to carry and a fully restored army can now go out to continue pillaging.

Research Tree (Bandit Network): The Bandit factions got a new Technology tree, which works a bit differently than the normal tech tree. In the game the player normally gets a new technology every 5 turns. But the bandit factions get new technology by learning from other criminal gangs around China. The bandit faction learns thease technologies faster, if they earn the teritory. I designed and balanced all the effects that the faction earn from each node from the Bandit Network.

Mercenary Contracts: Bandits got access to a special diplomacy action. They can become Mercenaries for another factions. When accepted (and usally for good payment) the bandit faction becomes an unoffical ally of their contract owner for ~20 turns and are finansially rewarded for attacking the target, that they’re employed to attack. I created the design for the feature and implimented it.

I had the pleasure of participating in the announcement stream for the game! See it below.

The game can be bought here:
TW: Three Kingdoms – A World Betrayed