Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13 - Seven Gameplay Features that connects to the Story

Because RTK is mainly war torn period, the realism features are mainly from related to military and troops. I am not going into the “collect them all” or “add a friend” feature (aka relationship), levelling up your skills and slots for jobs.

So here are some other features which I feel that Koei has incorporated to make the game relative to history/story.

Or at least after I translated it, I hope you may have a better appreciation of KOEI’s war experience for the players. 

I may be wrong.

1. HISTORICAL Setting - Automated Storyline

One of the features that I love in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13 (RTK13) is the historical storyline that you can play in. I recommend new players to play at least once as it gives them a quick overview and summary of the important events that happened during these turbulent times.

In the past RTK series, the storyline stopped around the next scenario. Meaning if you started the Dong Zhuo Coalition scenario, the automated storyline normally ends after Lu Bu kills Dong Zhuo and either Liu Bei takes Xuzhou or Lu Bu at Xiao Pei.

This time the automated storyline can stretch all the way from Dong Zhuo Coalition to the 3 visits to the Sleeping Dragon, Battle of Chi Bi and if let alone, the conquering of 4 southern region of Jingzhou by Zhao Yun. Unfortunately by then I couldn't let Liu Bei get any stronger and decided to attack him thus ending the flow. 

2. TROOP REPLENISHMENT - No more recruitment orders

Gameplay

No longer can players recruit soldiers using orders. They have to depend on their prosperity, fealty and population of the city to provide those troops every season (3 months). That can range from 200 – 2000+ depending on the city.

Realism
If a city is being war torn over and over again, naturally the troop replenishment drops drastically. Thus even if you conquer it, you cannot immediately train another huge army to attack the next.

Cities like Yongchang will never hit 1000 because it is a “small” city. Loyang and Xuchang normally has 2000+ because they are a large city.  So even if you max out a small city, you will still have trouble with the troop replenishment.

3. Troop Management - “Surrender “of enemy troops

Gameplay

If you conquer a city that has remaining 50,000 troops, you will get all of them.  The enemy troops do not disappear or flee where in other RTK games you will need to recruit new troops again.

Realism

In the game, before the Battle of Chi Bi, Cao Cao boasted to Sun Quan, when he was asking Sun Quan for surrender, that he had 1 million troops (800,000 in Wikipedia) at his disposal. 

How did Cao Cao have1 million troops? After Cao Cao defeated the Yuan brothers, he absorbed Yuan’s troops into his army just like how he did for the Qingzhou army.

So in the game, when Cao Cao steamroll the north, all these remaining troops went under his banner and this is a correct depiction towards the story.

4. DEPLOY - Deploying of Troops and Officers

It seems KOEI wants the players to spread out their officers across the cities. And they have implemented some features like having a new Minister perk and limiting the number of slots for jobs.

This continues into deployment of troop. If you put 10 top officers in the frontline city, the maximum they can deploy is 10,000 each due to the troop limit of 100,000 per city.

If you were to spread them out, your troops now can march from your cities and gather at a place to attack the enemy. This is the same for the enemy too where they can launch their troops from multiple cities as reinforcements for a city you are attacking.

Realism

So what’s the benefit of leaving Guan Yu at Xiang Yang? By appointing him as a viceroy, you can use his Minister perk and Guan Yu can also appoint new Ministers with new perks (if any) for his district.

If you are Liu Bei at Yizhou, you can march all of Yizhou to hit Han Zhong or Chang An. Each governor is supposed to contribute their troops and without always “moving” the officers to the frontlines to deploy them.

5. DISPERSE - Dispersing Troops

Gameplay and Realism

Again this sounds logical that the troops are to go back to the city which they were deployed from.  No more transferring of troops to bolster your front lines. And of course you need to wait for them to “walk” home before redeploying them again.

6. MAP - Distance to Cities and Pre Fixed Roads

Gameplay

The distance between cities, other than being trying to be geographically correct, KOEI intentionally wants the players/troops to march a certain number of days before reaching the next city.

If you look at the waterways near Wu area, troops can practically jump across to the shore. Thus KOEI implemented the pre fixed roads.

Realism

An example which I will use is mid game before battle of Chi Bi, when Liu Bei resides in Jiangxia. If you notice the closest 3 cities in the map are Xiangyang, Xin Ye and Wan but the distance between Jiangxia and Xiangyang is very far.

If you choose to go against history and launch an attack on Xiangyang, you will find that the reinforcement troops from Cao Cao come very fast due to the short distance of the 3 cities.

But if you were to send reinforcements it would take “years” for them to reach. Ok I’m exaggerating. In fact you are not only attacking one city but 3 cities. Not forgetting that Jiangling is also sending out reinforcements.

The road to Xiangyang will be disrupted constantly by Cao Cao troops. Even though you have Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun in your army and they destroy the enemy army very quickly, Cao Cao constantly has reinforcements.

The battle to Xiangyang will take its toll and before you know it, you’re out of food.

That brings us to the next point.

7. REFORM - Supplying the Troops

Gameplay

Troops when entering or walking past a friendly city can either REFORM manually or automatically (from settings). They can replenish their food supply and SIEGE equipment and boats but they cannot change the number of troops due to the “home city” feature where they are from.

KOEI limits the food taken by the army to be 150 days. Thus if you are attacking Yue Sui from Yong Chang or Xiangyang from Jiangxia in the earlier example,  you have to make sure your battle end fast because of your food supply. This is just a small example.

In the later part of the game, you will face more difficulties in food supply.

As Liu Shan, when you have a whole force of 200,000 troops gathered from Yizhou, attacking Han Zhong from Zitong, you need to reallocate your food supplies to Zi Tong. Zi Tong has to be the last food supply city for your troops before heading out to Yang Ping Guan. Even by conquering Yang Ping Guan, you need another round of deployment to hold off the counter attack from Cao Pi as well another strong round of troops to send them to take Chang An.

Realism (best example)

Without going into details on the 5 Northern Expeditions by Zhuge Liang against Wei, the above example coincides with the later part of the history where Shu and Wu didn’t make big strides into Wei territory and they kinda stuck in their own region.

The deployment of troops combined with food supply and road distance makes it hard for the players to take Hanzhong especially with such a weak leader (Liu Shan), you cannot take control of the battle yourself and cannot use strategies to take the Main Base within the shortest time.

Conquering a region is fast and easy like Zhao Yun conquering southern Jing because of the city’s distance in the game. But attacking from one region to another, Shu to Jing to Wu has their challenges due to distance and food supply.

Summary

As a RTK fan who have read the fictional story by Luo Guanzhong, watched both the 1994 and 2010 version and countless Googling on even lesser-known officers, I sincerely feel more connected to this latest RTK rather than the rest.

The attacking strategies which I employ to use to capture bases and cities really prick my mind after failure. Defensively using 30,000 troops to defeat an army 3 times larger than mine with only mid-level officers against Wu was such a fulfilling experience. 

Probably attributed to poor AI but let’s keep it at it is.

I do hope what I've shared is really what the developers are trying to achieve and at least there is one person in the world appreciating it.