Closer to the fight: rebuilt battles, single combat and a character of your own

The last devlog was about the campaign crises that lead to the great battles. Since then I have spent nearly all of my time on the battles themselves. I played through them as a new player would see them and kept running into things that still looked like placeholders: soldiers that could have walked out of a medieval European game, duels you could barely see, and sieges where nobody climbed a ladder. The demo on Steam now has the rebuilt versions, and it still covers the first fifty campaign days.

Eight seconds of a prepared battle at Guandu in the current build, set to clear weather, with both armies under AI command. I placed the camera; nothing else is staged.

Armies that look like the Han

When I lined the soldiers up side by side, most of what read as European came from their equipment: round shields with a boss, conical helmets, knightly plumes, horses in full caparisons and a curved sabre. The bodies and the animation system were fine, so I kept them and changed what the soldiers wear and carry.

Line troops now wear headscarves in their army's colour, and veterans wear a rounded lamellar helm with a red tassel. Armour is lamellar, rows of small plates tied with a knotted sash. The spear line carries the ji, a spear with a side blade, behind tall Han shields, and the sword infantry carry the straight ring-pommel dao. Each commander has a tall standard bearing his surname, so at Guandu you can pick out 曹 and 袁 across the field. The horses traded their caparisons for high saddles and painted mud flaps.

The ground keeps a record of the battle now. Melee grinds the grass down to soil, charges scuff lanes across the field, and the fallen lie where they fell in their army's colours. The blood stays after the bodies fade.

The same battle a few seconds later. The army plaques at the top are part of the new battle interface.

Officers you can find in the press

Officers are the centre of this game, and in a melee of a hundred men they used to disappear. Officers on foot are now drawn at the same size as mounted ones, and every officer has a thin gilt edge inside his outline. At normal zoom that gold edge is usually how I find them.

Their attacks have weight too. An officer winds up, drives through the blow and recovers. Heavy Infantry stands low and planted, the Vanguard lunges long behind a lacquered buckler, and a cavalry officer's horse rears under the overhead cut. The numbers underneath have not changed: timing, damage and reach are exactly what they were.

There is also a fifth kind of officer, the Guardian, a shield-and-halberd bodyguard with the best melee defence of any officer. When a friendly officer standing close to him is struck in melee, he may take the blow himself, and the battle banner names both men when he does. Enemy armies with a fifth officer field one.

Single combat you can watch

A duel used to play out a few pixels tall at the edge of the screen while the camera stayed on your army. Now the camera goes to the champions and follows them until one of them falls. A panel along the bottom shows both fighters with their vitality and how many blows each has landed and turned. A mounted champion's bar is split between horse and rider, so you can see an unhorsing coming.

Landed blows get a brief slowdown, and the blow that unhorses or kills gets a longer one. The slowdown only changes how fast real time feeds the simulation, so the duel ends exactly as it would have without it.

"You let loyalty bind your hands. Raise your blade."

The closing seconds of a prepared duel. Lu Bu has already lost his horse; the result was not forced.

Sieges with ladders, a ram and a city behind the gate

The old sieges were the part of the battles I was least happy with. In my test at Ye nobody died for the first minute. The archers on the wall could not shoot the ram crew beneath them, the ladders were never used, and once the gate broke the whole army pushed through one opening into a small courtyard.

Archers can now shoot to and from the wall walk. The ram is a covered shed, and a full crew breaks a gate in about forty seconds if they can keep working. Garrison archers answer it from covered posts beside the gate. The default attack, Storm the Walls, sends the spears to ram the gate while the swords climb both wings at once. Behind the gate there is now a small Han city with a wall street, a paved avenue, rows of houses and the governor's hall. The plaza in front of the hall is the ground you have to take.

The assault on Ye in a prepared siege, with Cao Cao attacking under the default plan.

Opponents that read the field

The enemy AI now looks at the river before it fights. When a river stands between the armies, one side holds the fords and the other forces a crossing. The attacker picks the ford its enemy guards least, forms up on its own bank and sends its archers to the water's edge before it crosses.

AI armies deploy with the same plans you use: Flying Wing, Crane Wing, Iron Wall or Crescent, chosen from what the army is made of. In field battles its companies stay together, so troops placed on both wings stay on both wings. Enemy cavalry goes after archers and companies already locked in melee, riding round to the flank or rear, and it no longer charges a steady spear block head on.

A campaign map that matches the battles

The campaign map is redrawn in the battlefield's palette. Towns are walled, with gate towers, tiled halls and the owner's banner. Villages are a few houses round a yard, forests are clusters of small tree crowns, and roads are packed-earth tracks. Each host on the map is a few of the battle's own soldiers under its commander's surname standard.

Cao Cao's campaign a few days in.

Raise your own banner

You could already create your own character and found a house in 196. That screen now presents the character as a person about to raise a banner. A plaque on the left shows your portrait over your faction's colour, a house banner with the first character of your name, your five abilities as a shape and your starting stores, and it changes with every choice you make.

Your character also has a voice. You choose one of ten, five men's and five women's, and hear it as you choose. It speaks when your campaign begins, before your battles, when you issue a duel challenge, at a victory or defeat, when your army arrives as reinforcements, at a breached wall, and as a battle cry during your special attacks. Every line is recorded in English and Mandarin.

Each background and set of provisions now starts you with something concrete: troops, armoury gear, a garrison, townspeople, food, grain, gold or goods. A new seat can barely recruit at first, so a background that brings mounts or bows decides which troops you can raise in your first weeks.

The title screen, the warlord picker and Custom Battle were rebuilt in the same style.

Also in this build

The battle interface is new. An army plaque for each side shows the leader, the troops still standing, morale in words and the other officers' faces. The command deck is down to the orders that matter: Move, Attack, Hold and Auto Battle.

I also rewrote a large share of the in-game text in English and Chinese. Help and hints no longer teach controls that were removed. More of the Turning Point dialogue is voiced now, by speakers other than the main cast, and the menus and panels fit properly on 1080p screens.

The Guandu, Baima and Ye captures above are prepared battles set up in the current build, not moments from a campaign. The demo still ends after the first fifty campaign days.

Who would you send out for your first duel?

Wishlist Three Kingdoms Reimagined and follow development on Steam