The first big map and culture expansion for Three Kingdoms. I made faction with a unique military loop, refined the new factions technology tree, created events and setup the victory conditions.
Lady Zhurong
Lady Zhurong is the 2nd most important faction of the DLC (but arguably the most fun).
Besides having tigers and units with flame-maces at her command. She has the “Wild Fire” faction feature.
Every 7-8 turn on the campaign her faction gains the ability to activate “Wild Fire”. It grants all her armies an set of powerful bonuses and abilities for the next 5 turns. However while Wild Fire is active, she is unable to replenish her forces. When wild fire is deactivated, she losses her ability to conduct an offensive campaign. She receives a massive debuff to her armies but a buff to replenishment.
The player is allways in control of when to start Wild Fire. Which is useful since Wild Fire has different bonuses depending on the time of year it’s activated. But to avoid the issue of players not using their most powerful tool and constantly saving it. There is a small debuff that gets stronger over time if the player dosen’t use the feature. The player can allways deactivate Wild Fire ahead of time. This reducecs the military penalty time that follows.
Technology Tree
I worked on the special Nanman Tech tree unique for the Nanman factions. I modified some of the existing conditions to unlock some of the technologies, fixed the bugs with unlocking them, and modified the rewards for unlocking the research nodes.
The Nanman tech tree works differently in two main ways.
1) The player must perform certain deeds to unlock the ability to research certain technologies. Thease deeds involve constructing certain buildings, winning battles or confucting specific diplomacy deals with Nanman and Han Chinese factions.
2) There are divergent technologies where the player can only pick one of two options. Thease options are flavored around staying true to Nanman traditions or adapting Han Chinese methods. Based on how true the player has kept themselves to one path of thease choices, they gain access to a spatial technology at the of end of technology.
Camera Intros, Diplomacy, Events, Victory Conditions
There a lot of big and small components that make the new Nanman factions stand out. Which I helped bring to life.
Compared to the Han-Chinese factions, the Nanman start off with fewer diplomacy options. They have to research more treaties via their technology tree. To highlight that they fundementally aren’t on the best footing with the main Han-Chinese factions, interacting with them on a complex level is locked behind optional end-game technology. The player can choose to get those technologies or get permenant bonus to bring to the Han-Chinese factions. I setuped the diplomacy restrictions and their unlock conditions.
The Nanman factions have a different win condition to the game. Their win condition is essentially capture teritory and then survive the onslaught. As the Nanman conquer more factions they gain diplomacy debuff against all non-nanman factions, which by the end makes them very hostile to the player. They must forfill the following objectives:
- Occupy all 21 Nanman-type lands.
- Conquer and hold 50 settlements in total.
- When that’s done, you’ll have to hold out for 20 turns keeping all the teritory.
To create more flavour for the Nanman, we came up with a new set of genneric set of events for them including some specific events and dilemma unique to their factions. I was in charge of a lot of thease.
I was also in charge of all the flyover intros for the new factions. Which is work I have done for two other DLC’s aswell.
The game can be bought here:
Total War: Three Kingdoms – Furious Wild
