Teased in the studio’s most recent development blog, Creative Assembly has now revealed Total War: Three Kingdoms Update 1.3.0; the major October update for the game. As promised, the update brings several new Legendary Characters to Three Kingdoms, as well as some major new campaign gameplay changes and general balancing.
Four New Legendary Characters Coming to Total War: Three Kingdoms
Of course, the headline feature of Total War: Three Kingdoms Update 1.3.0 is the addition of four new Legendary Characters. These four were technically already in the game, but were simply generic generals. Now, they will have their own unique artwork and presumably unique armour items to go along with them. These four are Huang Gai, Guo Jia, Jia Xu, and Pang Tong. Huang Gai is an important character for Sun Ce who starts the game in his army, but has had generic art until now. Meanwhile, Pang Tong was recruitable by Liu Bei via an event, but was also a generic character.
Guo Jia and Jia Xu have both gotten special recruitment events as part of the update, in order to help players get them. Interestingly, their events aren’t specific to any faction. Jia Xu’s event may trigger so long as your faction’s prestige is much higher than his faction’s. Meanwhile, Guo Jia’s event has a chance to trigger if you have the generic character Xun Yu in your court. Xun Yu has, until now, been an early-game opponent for Zheng Jiang. However, the update moves him into Han Fu’s faction. He also starts with Guo Jia as an acquaintance, and with a liking for Cao Cao’s faction, giving Cao Cao plenty of opportunity to recruit him and thereby get Guo Jia.
Total War: Three Kingdoms Update 1.3.0
Update 1.3.0 itself contains some major gameplay mechanics and changes beyond the new characters, as well as plenty of bug-fixes. These span both campaign and multiplayer; check the patch notes here for specific details on each bug fix and so forth. The first major gameplay shift is a rework for army Commanders. Each army has a single character who is assigned as its Commander, but this role hasn’t actually meant much until now.
Commanders now will have a wide variety of benefits. Firstly, they have access to extra units in their recruitment pool, including Sabre Infantry, Ji Infantry, Spear Guards, Archers and Crossbowmen. They can also now apply formations, and they gain the benefits of the Encourage ability, with a boosted morale bonus, meaning that it’s more effective than the same ability on other units.
The second major gameplay change is a balancing of heroes vs. units. The most important part of this is that infantry in a shield wall will now cause characters who charge into them to dismount. In fact, they’ll be forced to stay dismounted for the rest of the battle. Additionally, missile units are now more accurate against characters, with a reduction to hero missile deflect.