Game 471: Romance of the Three Kingdoms

 

A selection of screenshots of the PC-8801 version, which I won't be playing

 

My dad used to tell me tales of the far east at bed time, and taught me while feudal Japan did not tolerate misbehavior, there was just no surviving ancient China. There were, of course, famine, war, disease, and earthquakes, but the real threat was execution. Didn't make rice quota? Death. Soldiers mutinied? Death. Told an unfunny joke? Death. Didn't listen to the teacher in school? Death for you and your parents so they don't make any more rascals like you. That last one came up more than once.

Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, inspired by Guanzhong's massively successful novel about historical Chinese characters getting hacked into historical little pieces, was their true breakout title, and the earliest game to receive an official English localization, although not until 1989 at which point Genghis Khan and the second Nobunaga's Ambition had already been localized.

In a lot of ways, the first Nobunaga's Ambition feels like a prototype for Romance of the Three Kingdoms - all of the systems from that earlier title are intact here, but everything is more detailed, more complex, more balanced, and, well, there's just more of it. The map triples in size from 17 provinces to 59, a year consists of twelve turns instead of four, diplomacy and combat are greatly expanded on, and a major number of new systems concern the addition of employed generals who are needed to carry out your orders outside your home province.

The original version was on the PC-8801, now written in C instead of BASIC, and a PC-8801mkIISR version followed in early 1986 with the addition of FM music. Releases to other contemporary Japanese computers came next, and in 1989, English localized ports to the Amiga, PC, and NES. I've decided to play the Amiga version, as overall it seems the closest to the original.

 

There are several options to select before playing - first there is the starting year, which determines the number of empires and how consolidated China is at the game's start. I pick the earliest period, 189 AD, in which the Han dynasty is deteriorating and regional officials with their own armies begin fighting over the pieces. The latest period, 215 AD, has the majority of China belonging to the kingdoms of Wei, Wu, and Shu, and the goal to defeat your rivals and unify the kingdoms under your rule.

You can play with between 0 and up to 8 players (depending on the scenario) - zero if you want to just watch the computer play itself. The 189 scenario, with the most fragmented map, allows the full eight. 

If you say "Cow Cow" you're Rong, Kong. It's more like Çao Çao.

Next, you pick which of the eight masters to play as, and with those amazing stats, how could I not go with Cao Cao? The manual says that he is not available in the first scenario, but the manual is wrong about that. And this isn't the only thing the manual is wrong about.

The AI has two parameters - strength and personality. The former is an overall difficulty modifier that increases the enemy stats, just as in Nobunaga's Ambition. Personality can be "warlike" or "rational," and the manual advises that "rational" makes for a much more difficult game as they will not hesitate to attack when victory is assured. I'm not sure if that assessment is correct, but I select a strength of 5/10 and a rational personality.

Prior experience has shown me two things - war is costly, and the AI cheats. They will rally troops faster than what should be possible, they will turtle in their fortifications at a massive combat bonus unavailable to you, and they will spam fire attacks and caltrops with improbably high accuracy. My strategy for this real go bears that in mind.

January 189AD

First order of business - know the enemy, and know yourself! Half of that is easy; we have one moderately rich state #7 in the capital of Yanzhou, where summer flooding is a major risk. Our immediate neighbors are Dong Zhou, to the west, and Yuan Shao, to the north, but we're going to get acclimated to more neighbors very soon.

A quirk of ROT3K, somewhat reminiscent of the weird turn-wasting "order" mechanic in Kawanakajima, is that querying information outside of your own state counts as an action for that month. In some cases, even querying information inside your state counts as an action for that month. However, the game is perfectly happy to let you query all of the states on the map before your turn ends, so I do that.

Dong Zhou, with a combined 94,000 soldiers across four provinces, is by far my greatest threat, so I personally pay him a visit with a gift.

Gou Yu is being a worrywart. The messenger (me) will be fine.

 

This arrangement ensures a few months of peace while I pick territories around him, and in the future when I'm wealthier, I'll be able to pay off his growing animosity for cheap and at less risk to my pages so long as I don't let his contempt grow too much. However, accepting a bride is seen as a favor to me, not to him, and he may demand repayment some day in the form of one of my territories. If it comes to that, better that than having him take what he wants by force.

Next, I waste no time in having my generals expand and conquer the surrounding territory. Another quirk of ROT3K is that actions (such as moving) are centered around states, not generals, so if you are lucky with the randomized state order, you can move your generals pretty far in a single month.

May 189AD

 

Seven generals have taken seven states. I need more generals, and at this stage of the game the easiest way to recruit more is by scouting your territories for freelance leaders. Not every search is successful, and each state has a finite number of generals to be found, With Cao Cao's great charisma, I can usually persuade one each month with a personal visit. But they are freelance, and other masters can and do scoop them up right from my own territory.

Yuan Shao, being a distant second-greatest threat, also receives a bride of the Cao bloodline. 

July 189AD 

July is tax month, and by now most of the searches for new generals are unsuccessful. But I have ten in my employ and another five have been discovered, waiting to be recruited by someone. Hopefully me.

I still prioritize expansion, but also turn some of my attention toward developing provinces. Here, growth is a much slower process than in Nobunaga's Ambition. Cultivation and flood control are the main activities, and the manual advises investing no more than a few zhu per month, but this is bad advice; either put in just one, or put in everything you've got. There's a growth floor, so investing just one coin will always be beneficial, but you have to invest quite a bit more than that for a bigger benefit, and the better your state is, the more zhu it takes, so unless you have enough money to max out the region's value, you're better off doing the bare minimum and saving your cash.

Opportunities to develop, in my order of priority, are:

• Build a castle. The amount this takes is usually between 3,000z and 10,000z, and is randomly changed every turn. Each castle built improves your tax collections, so I always build one if I can afford it - and since the cost changes for every province every turn, I can usually afford one at some point during the year if I keep trying. And I'm going to need more money very soon.
• Buy rice. The merchants aren't always in town, but when they are, you can quickly fill up your stocks of rice on the cheap when prices are low. Prices fluctuate madly, though the number shown is misleading; a value of 83 means "83 units of rice per zhu" and hence you want to buy when the number is high. Just be sure to leave something in the coffers and stores for your soldiers, or you'll be sorry. Selling, sadly, is not as lucrative as you might wish, but you might profit a few thousand zhu in a year if you're lucky.
• Give to the peasants. Loyal peasants are more productive, and a maximal gift of 10,000 of the rice you took from them boosts loyalty nicely.
• Flood control. Floods aren't as devastating as you might think, but having them less often is a good thing, and with an intelligent governor in charge it doesn't take too long to get this close to zero.
• Cultivation. Slowly raises your land value unless you put in a lot of money. Peasant loyalty is a quicker way to get improved harvests, so this is only resorted to if I have nothing better to do.

Winter falls in October, and my expansion pauses for the season, as forced marches in the winter can be deadly.

 

January 190AD 

Spring starts, and my conquest of the path of least resistance continues.

July 190AD

Sun Jian, who controls region 41, commands seven generals and 9,900 soldiers. I have 22 generals and over 17,000 soldiers throughout my regions, so he doesn't really pose a direct threat, but might be a hindrance to my expansion into the south. I could spend a year training, arming, and mobilizing my troops to his doorstep to explain to him a little bit of arithmetic. Or I could just send him my last daughter and keep going. Guess which one I prefer.

With the funds generated from my newly conquered provinces and whatever castles I could build in a year, I also butter up the rest of my rivals, and give what I've got left to my less-loyal generals. You have a number of gift options for improving subordinate loyalty - gold, rice, books, horses, women, but why complicate things? Generals have their preferences - meatheads prefer women, eggheads prefer books, and warbros like horses, but everyone likes gold, and it makes the soldiers happy too. Generals of stronger moral fiber also tend to gripe when you traffic provincial girls along with the rape and plundering that goes with it, though brutish ones enjoy it.

I'm able to take a few more states before winter falls, which I spend building up my territories and continuing to recruit more generals. One defects in December, but I have plenty left.

January 191AD

Tao Qian, master of states #10 and #11, dies of illness and his favored general Mi Zhu takes over. Cao Ang also comes of age and serves me as a moderately strong but intensely loyal subordinate; he'll make a good governor, I think.

The aggressive expansion and recruitment continues, as I'm too broke to do anything else. This includes province #10, which Mi Zhu abandons in February.

 

July 191AD 

 

A few no-account generals left me, but I'd say I'm doing pretty well, albeit spread thin with each province allocated only the bare minimum of military force needed to control it - I have 29 generals distributed among 27 states, and soldiers allotted haphazardly. The recruitment of new generals is slowing down, too - I've probably found most of them in the territories I control. But now that taxes are in, I can easily pay my neighbors not to invade me, with cash to spare for my remaining generals.

Winter falls before I can reach state #23 with my free generals to complete my sweep of the white regions, and one disgruntled general leaves me, but I recruit another two.

The rest of the winter is spent building up the provinces. It seems a better use of my time than scrounging my territory for whatever freelance scoundrels are still lurking.

 

So far, I'm impressed with ROT3K's scope and attention to detail, and I can forgive some of the weirder gameplay mechanics, but I confess I'm not having a great deal of fun playing it. Perhaps this is partly my own fault for taking a safe approach, but the game does not reward reckless aggression, and slowly building up your territories isn't particularly exciting. Maybe other scenarios are more interesting, or maybe using a more challenging or "warlike" AI setting would have made things more fun, but I don't feel like starting over to find out.

To be continued!