This game is similar to Total War franchise. The campaing is set in a smaller scale map, where the Han Empire has launched a Expeditionary force to establish a Protectorate in the western Regions of China. Han has to destroy the Steppe kingdom Xiongnu in the north. Alongside the Han empire there are other civilized factions that have some interesting units/bonuses that are "natives" of the area, or some sort of mix between Han and locals. the setting is quite interesting and the ambience the game gives is good. Regarding the campaing mechanics, this game has some interesting takes: -Campaing Camera is very slow, also the campaing map is absurdly high demand ( Im getting 50 fps on a 3060ti and 11600k). Considering there are not mindblowing graphics, the game seems quite unoptimized. -There is a population system based aroun population points. Each pop point allows you to increase resource output of buildings ( up to 4 pop per building), using 1 pop also allow you to expand unused slots. Finally you require 1 pop point to recruit 1 unit, this is the core of the economical/military management of the game, You have to deploy troops to defend/attack, but also keep some pop back at home to maintain your production. -All Armies can reinforce over significan distances, this means as long as you share the regin with other armies they will try to reinforce each other, inclusing nearby cities garrisons and bandits. Bandits are a very chaotic third wheel for most battles, where they will attack both contingents, its funny defeating most of your enemy army and then seeing them running into the bandits and getting killed. -Diplomacy is a bit barebones, and the only relevant diplomatic deal you can do with anyone is free trade, which usually involves you gifting them shit, then they declariong war either way. Interestingly having common enemies is the only reliable source of good relations that unlocks other treaties like NoP or map info sharing. Higher difficulties everyone declares war to you, everyone befriends everyone trying to get rid of you. This happens in a very early point in gameplay. -AI in campaing is a bit dumb, lower difficulties they are clearly overwhelmed by the game systems, recruiting more units that what they can maintain and goingbankrupt in many cases, ending up with a massive chaff army. Higher difficulty they will pump out elites out of thin air you can kind of farm to get high level equipment. -Equipment is the second most interesting mechanic in this game, as pop is very scarce resource and you cant recruit indefenetely, this means you gotta use your already recruited units to the fullest, you can change their weapons, armor and shoes to transform them into other units, you can forge equipment using resources or you can steal equipment from enemies by looting the battlefield for 1 turn after a battle. Now lets talk about battles: -Gameplay is a bit arcade/strange, ranged units are significantly stronger, even against heavyly armored and shielded infantry. There is a clear archer metagame, specially for higher difficulties. -Troop movement is unresponsive at times, combined with the clunky camera controls and clunky unit selection, the combat has a floaty feeling with a very bad pathfinding for units. Its quite bad, and it reminds me of constant reforming archers in Three Kingdoms Total War, for example to disengage you need to doubleclick a location, if you simply try to reform, the unit will try to finish the combat and then follow orders, its very strange. You can eventually master the controls and end up having quite a good control over the battlefield. -Siege battles are quite crap, the defender has a lot of advantage, that is good, but the map is very simple with a single wall. Sometimes there is a massive mountain that towers over the wall, which makes the castle very dumb, as you can set up ranged units in this massive mountain and take a city with ease. AI wont allow you to shoot it down with range and will sally out to fight you if they feel you have ranged superiority. this tends to end up in attacker acting as defender. AI is also atrociously bad at sieging themselves, and will send all troops all in without much though, usually you can cause massive slaughter as long as you have enough anged troops. My evaluation of the game as is currently is 7/10, it has some issues but it will give you a new start position to play around and enjoy. The campaings are short, specially if you are a tw veteran, as you can take lots of land quickly if you play your cards right. The highest points of the game is the pop system and the equipment system. Im skeptical regarding future updates, but if the game gets better over time it will be a great thing. To me the most impressive thing is that most campaing mechanics would work nicely with a total war expirience, in fact this game goes back to some of the wonderful systems of Rome 1 and medieval 2, reason I give this game such a high score. If future updates significantly improve the game I will defenetly increase the score.
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