Posted: 4/22/2007 12:58 AM
Post subject: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
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Boco
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 1354
Location: Heather's imagination
Rot3K is a turn-based strategy wargame set in three kingdoms-period China (~180-280 AD). A bunch of warlords and their generals conquer cities and provinces, raise and train armies, make and break political alliances, etc., but eventually only one ruler remains to take all of China. The two good games in this series which are runnable are III and IV. III has faster gameplay, more aggressive AI, fewer things to manage (generals don't have special skills, there areno barbarian hordes etc) IV is the one I'm more familiar with, but it's slow and generally easier than III Both have a variety of scenarios with various political situations as starting conditions, but in either game, in any scenario, with any ruler, it's possible to unify China within about 10 years with proper play. So I was thinking of beginning planning and research for one of these games, and then running it. Here are the decisions that need to be made first, though: 1. Which game? I'm more familiar with IV but III would have faster and more entertaining gameplay. 2. Which difficulty setting? I think I'll default to hardest unless there's some reason it'd be mroe fun to steamroll incompetent opponents. 3. Which game mode (Historical or Fictional)? In Rot3K games, each general has a compatibility score, and the closer your leader's compatibility to a general, the more loyal and effective they are, and easier to recruit, bribe, etc. In Historic mode the compatibility values for every general are set, but in Fictional mode they're randomised. Good luck manipulation could let you steal away someone's cities by recruiting their governors, recruit every general with good stats, etc, because of the compatibility value, but that doesn't really seem fair. 4. Which scenario? I think starting as early as possible is the most interesting just because there are more warlords around, but I don't know if that's fastest. 5. Which ruler? This one, I think I'd have to research first. It should be possible to win quickly with any ruler, but choice of ruler determines pretty much every aspect of the game, so.. 6. Single-player or multi-player? In a multiplayer game (4 players in III, 8 players in IV) each "sub-player" could sacrifice generals and territory to the main player, letting the main ruler unify China with pretty much no opposition at all. But that's not really fair either. So, thoughts? Is this a bad choice of a series to attack? And what answers to those six questions?
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Posted: 4/22/2007 1:20 AM
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zidanax
Player (217)
Joined: 2/12/2006
Posts: 373
Location: Oregon
I've played a little of ROTK III and IV, and a whole bunch of VI and VII. They're fun to play, and you could probably make a TAS that would impress fans of the series through its technical quality, but I have to wonder if they'd be at all fun to watch for people who aren't familiar with the series. I always turned off watching other warlord's battles, because I found them to be terribly boring, which makes we wonder if people watching a TAS of one of these games would be bored by the battles. True, you could play the battles WAY better than the computer does, but it would still essentially look like a bunch of little sprites running around on a map with swords occasionally appearing between the sprites (for ROTK III, at least, IIRC), which always bored the snot out of me if I wasn't participating. Other than that, I'm guessing it would be lightning fast menu manipulation and some diplomacy. If you do end up making a TAS: I can't really give an informed opinion on which game to TAS, because like I said, I've played more of the later ROTKs. I generally play Historical mode, but if the sort of luck manipulation you mentioned would make the TAS more interesting, I'd go for that. I don't know about the earlier ROTK games, but in VI at least, you generally can beat the game faster in later scenarios. You can choose a warlord who already has a lot of territory and resources that way. But starting with a weak warlord may be interesting just to kick everybody's ass really quick in spite of the warlord's weakness. And yeah, multi-player would be REALLY cheap. If you did that, you could just pick a three kingdoms scenario, control all three of the kingdoms, and have two of them ally with the third (or is it submit? I can't remember).
Posted: 4/22/2007 1:43 AM
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Boco
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 1354
Location: Heather's imagination
zidanax wrote:
I always turned off watching other warlord's battles, because I found them to be terribly boring, which makes we wonder if people watching a TAS of one of these games would be bored by the battles. True, you could play the battles WAY better than the computer does, but it would still essentially look like a bunch of little sprites running around on a map with swords occasionally appearing between the sprites (for ROTK III, at least, IIRC), which always bored the snot out of me if I wasn't participating.
That kind of thing can be at least partially avoided by doing exploits like starving a city through unfair trades, manipulating enemy generals into accepting duels and then killing or capturing them, using plots with 100% success rate thanks to luck manipulation, etc. The battle scenes also go faster in III than IV mostly because every general with an Army rating of 70+ can do joint attacks.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Posted: 4/22/2007 1:56 AM
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zidanax
Player (217)
Joined: 2/12/2006
Posts: 373
Location: Oregon
Yeah, I wasn't thinking about the various alternatives for weakening/defeating the enemy. I generally didn't have as much success with things like plots, but since luck manipulation could be used, you could probably use such methods quite often. IMHO, you'd want to be careful to use as many methods of defeating/humilating the enemy as possible to keep things interesting.
Posted: 4/22/2007 3:09 PM
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Phil
Active player (411)
Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec
Personally, I would go with 4 but on Playstation. The music is better and loading time is much more faster on it than snes. I was tempted to do a strategy game like that, maybe Rise of the Phoenix since it's shorter, but I am afraid that people would get bored.
Posted: 4/22/2007 3:48 PM
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Nemo2342
Joined: 4/9/2006
Posts: 54
Location: Durham, NC
IV on the SNES has the soldier duplication bug. It's very cheap, but it's still something I would consider. I haven't played III, so I can't really comment on it. I am however in support of making this run, regardless of which version you use.
Posted: 4/22/2007 3:54 PM
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Boco
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 1354
Location: Heather's imagination
That's true, IV lets you get infinite soldiers. III can do it too but it takes a lot longer (assign an officer troops, fire him, reassign the troops, rehire him with higher Loyalty and the same number of troops) The sheer ease of troop duplication in IV might mean that choosing a leader with a lot of generals and then expanding in every direction every turn is the fastest way to go.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Posted: 4/22/2007 4:42 PM
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Phil
Active player (411)
Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec
Imo, using the multiplication glitch would make the game easier = not interesting. All you have to do is attack and move on. No plot, politic or anything else needed. Well, not 100% true depending of the scenario you play.
Posted: 4/22/2007 5:27 PM
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Nemo2342
Joined: 4/9/2006
Posts: 54
Location: Durham, NC
Phil wrote:
Imo, using the multiplication glitch would make the game easier = not interesting. All you have to do is attack and move on. No plot, politic or anything else needed. Well, not 100% true depending of the scenario you play.
It depends on how you use it. If used in moderation, say to skip having to train/draft alot, it would be fine. Using it to steamroll everyone in your path would be boring though. I guess a lot depends on how easy it is to manipulate plot successes. It might be fun to see someone go in with a handful of troops, then have an uncanny string of successful plots and win in the battle. In short, I guess what I'm saying is that there are enough options available that the run shouldn't become repetitive, and thus be overly boring to watch.