Geek Oasis - Issue 01 Unit 28 Afes D.-Task 2-Interactive PDF | Page 10

GAMING
A STRATEGY
MASTERPIECE
Historical Simulation Has
Never Been Better
E
very so often, a game comes
into my life that makes me feel
strange. I think this feeling might
be ... love. Total War: Three Kingdoms
is one of those games. It manages to
make me feel like a new man, specifi-
cally, a powerful Chinese warlord circa
200 AD.
I’m not being flippant. Three Kingdoms
succeeds in taking the basic formula of
historical-empire simulation and trans-
forming it into something magical.
This game feels less like a diverting
intellectual challenge and more like a
convincing role-playing fantasy. It has
crossed a mystical border, from color-
fully disguised statistical manipula-
tions, into a towering human drama.
It all comes down to how the game
presents a vast cast of characters, each
of whom has their own agenda. Unlike
many games of conquest and diploma-
cy, Three Kingdoms’ human-behavior
AI has the measure of man.
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When I do business with my rivals, they
behave convincingly; sometimes hon-
orable, sometimes venal, sometimes
dishonestly, but rarely nonsensically.
I feel like I’m negotiating with them,
rather than the usual puppetry and
mummery of diplomatic systems. Like-
wise, when I manage my underlings —
generals, administrators, spies, family
members — I feel like I’m getting to
know real people in all their variety.
I’m about 60 hours in so far, and I’ve yet
to see the facade crumble, yet to com-
prehend the whirring cogs behind those
smiling faces. This is a clever piece of
work.
CALCULATING NUMBERS
Before it came out, I thought I might
admire Three Kingdoms, but drooling
adoration is not the reaction I had an-
ticipated. This game is the latest in a
long line of interesting, flawed, occa-
sionally dull historical simulations of
superpower administration and war-
fare. While other Total War games have
focused on the Romans or the Sho-
gunate or Napoleon, Three Kingdoms
takes us to China, at the end of the Han
dynasty. An empire is fracturing. Its
constituent parts are in a state of cha-
otic intra-fighting.
Like its predecessors, Three King-
doms puts me in charge of a fiefdom,
from which my grand aspirations take
shape. I plot expansion and march my
armies into neighboring domains. We
engage in battle. If I win, my empire
grows and my rival’s diminishes. I use
my new possessions as taxation pools,
which fund more armies. I take care to
maintain a well-fed and well-behaved
populace. I build buildings and I learn
learnings, all of which yield me more
money, more food, and better soldiers.
These are the basics of all Total War
games. Their main attraction is an ev-
er-improving and always impressive
war engine, in which I manage a battle
in real time, pointing my squadrons of
horse, range, artillery, and infantry in
the right direction, while hoping that
my tactics are better than the ene-
my’s.There’s always been something
thrilling about these engagements and
Three Kingdoms is no exception. I like
to zoom high above the battlefield to
take the broader view, and then zoom
right into some copse, where a few
hundred soldiers are fighting hand-to-
hand at my direction. Battles are al-
ways mini-dramas in which I feel like
I’m in control, even as the calculating
numbers of hit points and buffs, crunch
their way through flesh and bone.
Three Kingdom’s battle simulations are
just fine. Their main diversion from
previous games is that heroes and gen-
erals play a greater role in the combat.
There are two modes of play (Romance
and Records), one in which generals are
godlike in their abilities, and the other
in which they are merely overpowered
fighters. This division is for those who
want to feel a Romance of the Three