Total War: Three Kingdoms Gets Major Patch Before Reign Of Blood DLC

The latest installment in the long running strategy series, Total War: Three Kingdoms, seems to have been a smash hit for Sega and developer Creative Assembly. The game is quite the reinvention for the franchise, and you can see our take on it here. Tomorrow, a new DLC is coming that promises a bloody time, Reign of Blood. Ahead of that, though, the game has gotten a big patch to address several issues.

The update, 1.1.0, is live now. Most of the updates aren’t going to be what many players will immediately notice, but it includes some fixes for crashes, tweaks to several AI systems, some balance reworking, and adjustments to some animation issues. You can see the whole list below, or read up on them at the game’s website.

Total War: Three Kingdoms is available now for PC. The first major DLC, Reign of Blood, will release on June 27th.

PATCH NOTES

Achievements

• Faction death no longer reports a campaign victory achievement
• Execute Captives achievement now triggers correctly
• An Ambush That’s Sure achievement now triggers correctly and will not be awarded if the battle is delegated
• The Party of Five achievement is now correctly awarded when a character switches faction to join yours
• If You Can’t Die, Surrender achievement now triggers correctly
• The One Arrow, Two Hawks achievement can now be gained in MP campaign

Animation

• Units should not now play their combat idle animation before withdrawing their weapon
• Strategists now draw their swords at the appropriate time

Balance

• Hidden Axes ammo reduced from 10 to 5
• Hitpoints increased by 20% for the following units:

• • Archery Masters
  • Onyx Dragons
  • Thunders of Jian’an
  • Defenders of Earth
  • Yi Marksmen

• Hitpoints increased by 10% for the following ranged units:

• • Heavy crossbowmen
  • Heavy repeating crossbowmen
  • Fury of Beihai
  • Mercenary archers
  • Yi archers
  • Men of the forest
  • Watchmen of the peace

• Changed mass of medium infantry from 100 to 110
• Cavalry in general, including characters, deal less collision damage
• Sentinels with certain relationships could achieve over 100% Melee Evasion. Relationship effects have been re-balanced to avoid this
• Zhang Fei and Zhang Yan’s armour no longer grants fatigue immunity to their entire retinues, only themselves
• Improved He Yi and Huang Shao’s background trait effects to be more in line with their specialities and gameplay focuses
• Siege vehicles now correctly suffer AP damage

Battle

• Units in Turtle formation now drag out correctly
• Defending units now have Fire at Will enabled by default
• Trebuchets now correctly damage rams
• Trebuchets cannot now be damaged by standard arrows
• Elemental Vigor ability now correctly times out and resets while the general is in combat

Battle AI

• AI-controlled characters should no longer go idle in front of arrow towers
• In settlement battles, the defending AI will now target vulnerable missile units over the player’s generals
• AI armies awaiting reinforcements should now no longer stand idle under ranged fire
• AI reinforcements in resource battles should now engage the player’s army more effectively
• Attacking AI armies in siege without battering rams will now more readily commit to scaling the walls as well as exploiting breaches
• Extreme unit-size AI units now act more decisively when assaulting walls
• AI armies defending small settlements should no longer sit idle in the settlement while the player is outside, forcing a draw
• Ranged generals should now use their bows correctly and not hold up their battle group
• AI Trebuchets will now use flaming shot against infantry
• Improved AI trebuchet firing behaviour
• Archers on walls react more decisively to threats and are less likely to break position, particularly at the battle outset
• Improved AI performance and pathfinding on the Nanhai Rice Paddy map
• AI cavalry should now act more decisively and are less likely to break off while charging
• AI units are now less likely to deploy on top of one another
• AI Cavalry are now less likely to charge spearmen
• Independent AI unit groups will now act more decisively and exploit settlement entry points when under threat from enemy defences
• AI armies now better coordinates with reinforcements in their choice of settlement entry points
• Improved coordination between multiple units in the same AI unit group
• AI decision-making improved over whether to assault gates by hand

Battle Art

• Reduced instances of camera clipping with barricades and deep water
• Season flags now work correctly in farms
• Various map scenery improvements
• Fixed an issue where some dropped unit banners were not animating
• Fog reduction in Red Cliffs historical battle intro

Battle UI

• When a battle is paused in cinematic mode, the pause icon no longer displays (makes for much better for screenshots!)
• The term Battle Statistics in the unit details panel has been changed to Unit Stats for consistency
• In the custom battle lobby, the scroll window now updates to display available units when switching between different generals

Campaign

• The emperor’s seat is now correctly moved when a capital is moved
• More animation variants will now trigger for delegated battles
• Harmony and Disharmony no longer affect characters who have not yet come of age
• AI Factions should now no longer declare emperorship as a result of the player moving their capital

Campaign Balance

• Lü Bu is now more expensive
• Babies are now more likely to be born from marriages
• Dong Zhuo’s Intimidation resource now decays more slowly
• Huang Shao and He Yi’s People in Power bonus are now applied correctly

Campaign Events

• When Gong Du annexes Wudu Town settlement in turn 1, the Dong Zhuo abdication event will no longer automatically trigger
• Dong Zhuo will no longer declare himself emperor as a result of Liu Bei capturing his first Yellow Turban settlement
• Gongsun Zan’s Battling the Qiang Tribes dilemma has now been corrected to Wuhuan Tribes

Campaign Map

• Clicking the zoom button on a dilemma involving a destroyed character or faction will no longer transition the camera to a blank, off-map area

Campaign UI

• UI can now be scaled up to 200% for 1440p (2k resolution)
• Improved map seams along the Yellow River near Luoyang
• Commandery food total now has a tooltip detailing breakdown and modifiers
• Character satisfaction icons now work correctly
• Various typos, border-boundary lines, tooltip display and UI panel issues fixed
• The recruitment button now works correctly when all units in an army are at full capacity
• Soldier count in replenishing armies now updates correctly
• Defeat screen now displays the load game option
• Grudges are now displayed on spy candidates
• In the records panel, character levels will now display correctly
• Short Campaign Victory videos will no longer be played twice in campaign multiplayer when a Shared Mandate deal is in place

Court

• High-ranking court positions for Yellow Turbans factions now correctly display their effect bundle bonuses
• Gongsun Zan’s Inspector positions no longer take up Administrator slots
• Dead characters are now greyed out in the records panel

Diplomacy

• AI factions are less inclined to accept vassalage if they’ve recently been liberated by a vassal master
• AI factions are less likely to vassalise additional factions if they already have a large number of vassals
• Improved display of positive and negative attitude breakdowns
• Yuan Shu’s Demand Subservience option now works correctly
• Deal evaluation numbers for voters are now displayed when AI factions request to join a coalition
• Tooltips no longer obscure the faction list
• Factions should no longer request military support against factions you are already at war with
• Rejecting a Join War offer no longer puts you into a state of war with the target belligerent
• The player can now no longer accept a diplomacy deal offered during the end-turn round and minimise the panel to keep the deal in a suspended state
• Ink animations for signing deals now trigger correctly
• AI now more reliably issues ultimatums against the player
• In an alliance war where your allies have been destroyed, it is now possible to negotiate peace with the enemy alliance
• Diplomatic threats now display treachery and attitude-change predictions
• A cancel button has been added for quick deal
• Removed the phrase “and allies” which sometimes showed erroneously for faction rejections where no allies were involved
• Players can no longer extort single payments in small amounts in return for nothing until the target faction’s treasury is empty
• When any type of vassalage is proposed, offers and demands of autonomy now work as intended
• The cancellation of treaties can now generate new diplomatic consequences or treaties where it is relevant to do so
• Food output has been added as a criteria for AI factions when they evaluate a region, removing a food gameplay exploit
• Transitioning a coalition to a military alliance shortly after forming the coalition no longer incurs treachery

Graphics

• Mid-distance trees now cast shadows correctly
• Attrition VFX now correctly adjust to face the camera
• Improved edge-blending between terrain and objects

Multiplayer

• Spectators can now no longer meddle with duels in MP matches. Hands off!
• Improved MP battle lobby filtering
• Opposing AI armies and generals now visible to host in MP battles
• Element filter added for character classis in custom and MP battles

Stability

• 24 individual crash scenarios have been found and fixed

Tutorialisation

• Fixed clash between Ma Teng and Gong Du starting positions, tutorials amended accordingly
• Loading a previous save now no longer breaks the tutorial

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