A campaign for two: play Three Kingdoms Reimagined with a friend

Two players share one campaign as allies or rivals. It is in the free demo now, ahead of Steam Next Fest, October 19 to 26.

Since the demo went up, the request I have heard most often is to play it with someone else. I have spent the last few weeks on exactly that. Two people can now share a whole campaign: the same map, the same year 196, and the same rival houses, with each of you leading your own warlord from your own seat.

You decide how the two of you stand. The host chooses whether you begin as allies, at peace, or at war, and from there it is your own diplomacy that keeps the alliance together or breaks it.

A joint battle: Cao Cao's army in blue, his ally Liu Bei's contingent in green. For this clip one copy of the game stood in for both players, with the AI commanding Liu Bei's army.

Finding each other

Open Multiplayer from the title screen and create a lobby. A lobby can be friends-only or public. Friends can join through a Steam invite, and public lobbies appear in a list in the game. You can also connect by IP address, which works for two PCs on the same network.

In the lobby the host picks the starting stance, each of you picks a historical warlord, and the campaign begins when both players press Ready. The first time you open a campaign lobby, three short cards explain how allies, wars and the shared clock work.

Allies go to war together

Allies share every war. When you form an alliance you enter each other's wars, and a war either of you starts later pulls the other in. A peace either of you makes is made for both.

When one ally's battle begins and the other ally's army is close enough to answer, that army joins the fight. It arrives as its own force on the same side, its player commands it, and it wears that player's faction colours so you can both tell your armies apart. An ally who is further away can answer a call to arms instead. Marching from that distance costs grain, and the army arrives partway through the battle, so the first army has to hold until it gets there.

Allies also see through each other's armies and holdings. At war, each of you sees only what your own scouts and banners can see.

Accepting an alliance puts each player into the other's wars.

Talking without a microphone

The TERMS page in the Diplomacy tab is where the two of you deal with each other. You can offer peace with a truce of 10, 20 or 30 days and gold in either direction, propose an alliance, or send a gift. Breaking a truce or an alliance is announced five days ahead, so nobody is stabbed in the back without warning. Whether they saw it coming is another matter.

There is a set of preset phrases for the moment you need help or want your ally to hold a river crossing. Each player reads them in their own language, so someone playing in English and someone playing in Chinese can share a campaign. Alt+click the map to place a ping that shows on both screens.

A strip at the top of the map shows your partner's portrait, how the two of you stand, and what they are doing: marching, in a town, choosing after a battle, or fighting. The world runs at the slower of the two speeds you have each asked for.

Rivals

At war, the campaign plays out as a race between two warlords. Capture the other player's warlord in battle and the match ends there. While your rival fights an AI house, you keep ruling on the map instead of waiting for their battle to finish, and you can switch to watching it from the pause menu.

The rest of the campaign comes along

I wanted the two-player campaign to be the full game, so most of the single-player campaign is there for both of you. Each player keeps their own court, with audiences, gifts, a marriage and earned oaths, and their own board of commissions. Allies also get commissions written for two, such as relieving an ally under attack. Allies who have helped each other for ten days can swear an oath of brotherhood. When the emperor needs rescuing and both allies answer, you fight one joint battle for him.

When one ally claims the emperor's rescue, the other can join the fight or stand aside.

The later Turning Points (Rising Realm, A Tale of Treason and The Last Coalition) are still single-player only. They are full-game content and will come to the campaign for two after the festival.

How long a match lasts, and saving it

In the demo a campaign for two lasts fifty days, like the single-player demo. Allies share a goal of towns held between them, and the end screen shows both players' scores together. In the full game, a match ends with the single-player victory, and allies who hold most of the great cities between them win together.

The game saves both worlds every five campaign days. Stop and Save in the game menu stops both games on the same moment, and you can continue that campaign later from the lobby. If your partner has to leave, you can carry on alone; their realm becomes an ordinary AI house.

Head to head on the battlefield

If you only have time for a battle, Custom Battle has a multiplayer lobby too. The host sets the field, the weather and a points budget, and each player drafts officers and builds an army within it. Troop counts stay hidden until the battle starts, each army can field up to 500 men, and each player gets three pauses.

One battle on two screens. Each player sees their own army's plate and commands only their own troops.

Both games run the same battle side by side and only the orders travel between them. Before a match starts, the lobby runs a short check to make sure both games calculate the world the same way, so a mismatch shows up on the lobby screen before anyone has spent an hour on a campaign.

Officers who feel larger than life

While cutting the new trailer I noticed something I did not like: in battles of several thousand men, officers disappeared into the crowd. Officers in this era are remembered as larger than life, and they should fight like it. Above 500 troops a side, officers now gain 25% more health and damage for every additional 500 men in the battle.

Officers also carry the battle in other ways now. Each army is split among its officers, and soldiers near their officer's banner fight with more heart. When that officer falls, the men who followed them waver.

Liu Bei raises the standard and his running men gather on it. Shown at 1.5 times speed.

When your men break and run, a prompt appears at the top of the screen. Choose one of your two most charismatic officers to raise the standard, and the running men nearby turn and gather on it. A more charismatic officer reaches further. A standard cannot hold where the enemy crowds around it, so a rally works best a little back from the fighting.

I also fixed a problem that made troop movement look jittery in larger battles. Units now move smoothly between simulation steps.

New music and a Chinese trailer

There are three new pieces of music: a theme for the court, one for the Turning Points, and one for the campaign for two. The new store trailer also has a Chinese version, recorded with the game running in Simplified Chinese.

Try it now

The campaign for two and multiplayer Custom Battle are in the free demo now. Multiplayer is new, and I am still tuning the pacing of a match for two. If a match stops or the two games fall out of step, the Copy diagnostics button on the menu copies a short report you can post in the Steam discussions.

If you have someone in mind for the other banner, download the demo and bring them along.

All captures come from the current development build. The lobby, map and diplomacy screens are from two copies of the game on one PC, played by test bots.

Wishlist Three Kingdoms Reimagined on Steam