This article expands on one of the games featured in Novel Not New’s opening segment. If you’d like to hear the episode, it can be found here.
As a lifelong fan of Dynasty Warriors and a relatively recent fan of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (we have a whole podcast about it), I’ve always stayed far away from Koei Tecmo’s long-running turn-based strategy game of the same name. When I’m on a virtual battlefield, throwing hundreds of guys in the air as a guitar wails in the background, I’m in my element. As soon as you take that battlefield away and replace it with a large map, I’m gone. I can barely make it past my own front door without a GPS: how could I lead an entire nation, keeping the populace happy while playing war games against a tactician like Kongming?
Still, playing the recent demo for Dynasty Warriors: Origins relit my passion for all things related to the 14th century Chinese epic novel, and I found myself looking for fresh ways to experience it. And with the recently released Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake, Koei Tecmo had quite a compelling pitch: yes, you could still rule a nation, but playing a viceroy, governor or even a rank-and-file officer were all on the table, too. Reasoning that having less to do might make this venerable series easier to approach, I hopped right in and took control of Zhou Yu, a governor under Sun Ce with a near-perfect intelligence stat. He was less than a ruler but more than a grunt, seemingly capable of making significant moves without the fate of Eastern Wu resting on his shoulders.
Well, I got my wish: Sun Ce took care of ruling the kingdom, while I could build up my own city and pursue my own interests. At the time, I didn’t realize that I’d traded one obligation for another, and letting someone else lead inevitably meant I could only work within the confines of my office. What first seemed like freedom turned into a chain around my ankle, preventing me from joining the pivotal battles that the very game was based on.
My career as governor started off on the right foot. I was situated in Chaisang, the western end of Eastern Wu, well within spitting distance of his hated enemy Liu Biao. During my quarterly parliament sessions, I’d gather intel on my next-door neighbors, poking their defenses and occasionally attempting to demoralize their citizens. I was pretty good at it, too! After a year, most of Liu Biao’s citizens were revolting in his cities, making it nearly impossible to move soldiers between his territories. I also had my men weaken their defensive walls with repeated hit-and-run attacks. Was I playing like a bastard? Yes. But my bastard tactics got results damn it.
There was just one problem: poke a bear too many times, and it’ll do its best to bite off your arm. I had more than enough soldiers to defend Chaisang, but any time I checked the projected losses in the event of a battle, I realized that a single military action could bankrupt the entire city. My advisors kept warning me that conflict was now inevitable, and all I could do was nod with a pained expression, hoping that my markets and farmland could improve quickly enough to prevent war from bankrupting us.
At this very moment, Sun Ce surprised me and made the first move. He took on one of Liu Biao’s territories, requesting my immediate assistance. I got to play the selfless hero, coming to my sworn brother’s aid in his time of need without breaking the bank! We trounced the enemy governor, and a good time was had by all.
A few months later, he called for aid once again, but finished mopping up his latest opponents before I could even get there. Then he stopped reaching out to me entirely. Uh oh.
Can you anger an AI ally? More importantly, how do you know when it’s angry, and when it’s simply preoccupied with other things? It’s not like you can ask a computer how it’s feeling, or what you could do to make things right. All I had was an intuition…no, an assumption that I wasn’t fast enough for Sun Ce’s liking, and he was giving me the cold shoulder because I couldn’t make it to the battle in time. Because of that assumption, I desperately looked for a way to make things right when it hit me: what would say “I’m sorry” better than bending fate itself to save his life?
For those who haven’t read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sun Ce once had a fit of anger so severe that he literally died mad. (Of course, there were extenuating circumstances that made it possible to die mad, but you’ll have to read the book to learn more!) I saved him from this fate by befriending a wandering hermit through debate and gifts, then bringing said hermit to Sun Ce, insisting that he should not, under any circumstances, throw that fit and go out like a total chump. After the hermit worked his magic and completely healed him, the southlands still had their ruler, and I had a new spring in my step. If I’d somehow fallen out of Sun Ce’s favor, surely this would be enough to get on his good side again!
It still wasn’t enough. I grit my teeth, worked my own side of the map, and effectively wiped Liu Biao off the map for good. At this point, I felt like a needy child, waving my arms and doing handstands in the hopes that Sun Ce would look my way. With my nearest enemy gone, all the action was happening to the north. Cao Cao was sweeping up territory like nobody’s business. Guan Yu, briefly a guest of Cao Cao’s, took his sweet time making his way back to Liu Bei and Zhang Fei’s side, leading to his brothers’ unexpected deaths. The Loyal and Righteous God of War now found himself working as a general for Cao Cao on a permanent basis. I wanted to butt heads with him myself—prove that I was still a worthy hero of this age.
Alas, I was a mere governor. I had a city to manage: unless the big man called upon me, I couldn’t just travel north through the rest of his lands and fight Cao Cao, abandoning my duties for a whiff of glory. Still, I did what I could. I sent over 10,000 soldiers to the northern front every three months, while sowing doubt between Cao Cao’s generals with my spies. I turned my own district into a goddamn powerhouse, marrying a brilliant woman who became my most trusted advisor. Thieves, corrupt officials and the like were locked up, while I helped poor farmers avoid the wrath of greedy merchants. Trade was booming. The people were content in my corner of the world, their happiness levels nearly through the roof. I was the best governor in the land, and an instrumental figure to the war effort in my own right.
At last, Sun Ce took notice of my accomplishments and appointed me as his viceroy. Finally, my dedicated work paid off! I looked at the map to examine my new territories…and froze. Even though I now had complete access to four cities at once, they were all in the lower left corner. I was only one city closer to the frontlines, completely out of reach of Cao Cao and the war.
On some level, I understood Sun Ce’s reasoning. I was killing it with my one city: it only makes sense that these other cities would flourish under my rule. And despite my previous military accomplishments, I wasn’t having much luck fighting off the nearby bandits that were hassling me. Hell, one of them wounded me so severely, it took a full six months before my strength returned to me. If bandits could take me out of commission for half of a year, did I really have any business putting on a suit of armor and fighting in real skirmishes?
Still, just one look at the map had me raring for action. Guan Yu was now serving under Cao Cao! What other nonsense could I bring about if I was the one out there, changing history with a few swings of the sword? The very foundations of Three Kingdoms-era China were being shaken apart, and it felt disappointing to realize I wouldn’t be doing much of that shaking anymore.
Resigned to my fate, I shifted my focus: if I couldn’t be a famed warrior, I would carve my own, unique path into the history books. I visited the other cities nearby, teaching poetry classes, assisting with new inventions, and getting into endless philosophical debates with generals throughout Eastern Wu. In fact, I got into so many debates that the game’s obtuse dueling system became totally natural to me.
Eventually, I racked up enough Culture points to trigger the “Cultural, Engraved in History” ending. It wasn’t lost on me that I only got that ending through consistently gaming the system, spending every moment outside of parliament barging into other people’s territory, shouting “Does anyone need the help of a CULTURED individual?” The game informed me that my impressive way with words would be passed down as legend, and I couldn’t help imagining that legend describing me as a weirdo who entered and left other heroes’ stories at the strangest of times, yet always had something wise to impart.
I’ll admit, it stung to get left behind by the game’s AI, stuck in a small corner of China where all I could do was scheme, drink and debate. But isn’t it amazing that such an outcome is possible in the first place? Before now, I’ve never played second fiddle to a computer strategist, put on the back bench because it decided it didn’t need me right now. For a moment, it felt like a real human was giving me the short end of the stick. It left me equally annoyed and awestruck: I’d asked the game to put me in a disadvantageous position, and it well and truly followed through.
I’m already brainstorming how I want to approach my next Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake playthrough. The infamous “one more turn” virus, the one that keeps strategy gamers glued to their PCs late into the evening and beyond, finally came for me. And all it took was a turn-based war game that ignored, even denied my whims, in favor of reproducing one of the book’s underappreciated strengths: it made me into a goofball who makes a name for themselves with one or two accomplishments, then leaves the stage of history for good.
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