The 3 Kingdom civs - the conceptional triangle.
They look like made from one single hand, one civ designers “Masterpiece” - a three-part unit with each of them having a clear identity - but none of them is anything like a one-trick pony. As I will point out, that in my opinion this may even be a bit too versatile on some of them almost to the point that they might be played as different identities than intended. But the general design concepts are great and this can and will surely be fixed with upcoming patches.
Wei
They seem to me the weakest of the Three Kingdom civs. Their eco bonus imo is just worse than Bengals. Which is a solid Bonus especially for slower maps. And this Bonus is even slower. But this migh be intentional as the cavalry (archer) specialisation basically cries for open maps. The strongest is the civ probably in early castle age with their empowered Hei Guang Rush. Similar to Franks. Though I analysed a bit that even with 15 % more HP the Hei Guang without upgrades will actually be minimally inferior to Knights. Only with the upgrades they become stronger, but then the timing advantage can’t be used as effectively anymore.
A lot of the civs tools and Bonusses feel undertuned - they need to pay a lot to get to the sheer strength of their favorite units and then they don’t get Plate Barding Armor. Which means you pay a lot to in the end don’t get the most powerful cavalry upgrade with the best value. It looks almost a bit trolly.
Ofc they get their 30 % HP boost as “compensation” amd the Imp tech to make it more resistant to generic melee units. But this isn’t even nearly as good as the 2 Pierce Armor from Plate Barding, cause it means they actually take 67 % more Damage from Arbalests. And Halbs still eat them almost like Cavaliers. It would only help in pure Cav wars or I guess against Champs. But how often do we see this at that stage? I guess the idea was to make it a specialised cav for this Matchup, but for me it sees it will just fall flat when the Halbs are involved.
In my opinion a cav civ needs Plate Barding or a way, way stronger compensation for missing this tech. Even the Tiger Cavalry only gets to Paladin level of Pierce Armor when needing to be produced from Castles. And initially it has quite low HP - so only when you get the snowball rolling they perform to their full strength.
In total I see way to be a bit too slow going for aggressive open maps and then missing out on essential lategame techs. Even an their strongest in early castle age they need to invest in techs to make the Hei Guang stronger than standard Knights. So all in all just undertuned.
Which becomes even more clear when you look at their UT. Tuntian gives you the equivalent of 3 Farmers whith 60 army . And you pay 250 F 300 G for it. A total troll, only potentially worth picking up when you are pop capped and then you need to consider if it’s actually worth spending Gold on this. If this is supposed to empower full castle age plays it needs to be tuned up massively. Both in terms of effect but also with cost reduction.
Ming Guang Armor seems to be fine - considering that xianbei don’t scale very well and Hussar miss the last Armor upgrade. I would much rather prefer having just the basic Plate Barding here to be honest. Imo having 2 Pierce Armor is way stronger than 3 more Melee armor… Even if they tune it up… I think losing 2 Pierce armor is almost not to compensate here. 1 would be ok, but 2 is just too much, considering that Hei Guang will take 2 and Hussars even 3 Damage from Bracer elite Skirms even. And against Halbs the melee armor also doesn’t do a lot actually.
I think there needs to be something more like adding 1 Pierce Armor to Ming Guang or increasing the HP Bonus to 20 % / 50 % or something like this.
Also missing Heresy for a cav civ seems to me like a big mistake. Especially when they rely so heavily on the expensive Tiger Cavalry. Maybe it felt essential for the design of Wei, but then there needs some form of anti-Monk compensation here, cause this will be a targeted weak point in a lot of matchups - especially with missing Atoomenemt and Redemption aswell.
It also would be nice if the Civ had Arbalest just so it has one other option to go for than the pure Cavalry. The other civs in Shu and Wu also have different Options in Imp whilst having way less glaring weaknesses that could be targeted. Arbs seem to me the perfect strategic fit for the Wei.
The alternative ofc can be to go even more into the cavalry focus. If they get in the end amazing Hussars or so, they can find alternative ways to win games. But then they need way more than the current Bonusses / UTs.
Shu
The Shu are for me the hardest to analyse. The eco bonus seems ok-ish, coming online really in the midgame where you have a lot of lumberjacks and want to turn that into food. Then this Bonus will be amazing. But it will take a while to come on. It’s in general also a slower civ - and seems to scale very well. But it’s hard to estimate how storng it will be really. I think it will still be behind to known lategame powerhouses like Mongols or Byzantines. One key factor ofc will be the performance of the White Feather Guards. The Interesting thing I observed with them is that despite having 3 Pierce Armor they don’t seem to have good matchups vs Archery type units. Probably because they hit so weak. But the snare might make it super annoying to micro against them. Their comparably slow train Speed might become an issue and is probably part of the civ design.
Missing out on Bloodlines will make their Hei Guang almost unusable. Even against Skirms you probably will most likely opt more often for mangos or even White Feather Guards. But it’s at least an option and can surprise opponents potetnially.
The War Chariots look undertuned to me. The main selling point of Scorps is to damage multiple units at once. But maybe I’m underestimating their power.. Ofc it’s a unit when ammassed and the unit doesn’t has enough army it can easily completely snowball. And I seen that in some uncientific testing. Need to be shown in real games without bug abusing. I would like if it had a more specific role like getting bonus Damage against Cavalry (but less base Pierce).
The UTs this time seem fine, maybe a bit too high cost for the Castle Age Tech.
The biggest weakness will probably be BBCs in the lategame - i don’t see a realistic answer, though their Arbs may have better chances to snipe them. We need to see if they will be the first real Archer Civ that gets away with not having BBC themselves.
Wu
They look amazing to me. May be a bit too amazing. They have basically all options, which I really like. Yes they are Infantry focussed, but I think they won’t be played that way a lot of times. And probably show why Infantry sees so little play currently.
Their military Eco Bonus seems to be the strongest of the three civs. Ofc it’s only something you can effectively utilize when you go for army (and on water maps). But getting 195 F for free when you smash down a barracks, Range and Stable is amazing. Maybe a bit too much actually. Also the team eco bonus could be the best in the game actually, as there are currently a lot of civs which only need just a little bit to be able to go up 1 vill earlier.
This strong eco in addition to having basically every important line (escept skirms) playable will be massive and the applications plenty.
The Jian Swordsman is really strong in the Castle Age, even the “weak” version without the shield. In Imp it seems to fall off then actually. So let’s see how much the castle age Powerspike will do here. I can even see it being too strong in early castle age, considering that you can open scouts or archers with this civ and then go full jian. I can see a small elite upgrade for them in imp for some less prowess in castle age. The biggest point against Archer civs is that it really needs to micro target them down - and this might make the combo of them plus pikes super almost unbeatable in low elos.
Fire archers look ineresting but the low reload time might be a huge issue for micro nerds. It will probably be more of a addition to the other Armies you do with this civ that just adds a bit of ranged dps to the composition. The anti-building feature need to be figured out. For me it looks that this won’t be as impactuful as many may think as it’s not really working against fortifications, but let’s see. The civ also gets Arbs and I think if you really want to use Archery you will probably opt for them for the better micro and easier Production.
Interestingly the Civ might have the best Hei Guang Cavalry from the three Kingdom civs. You get exactly the Food you need for one when building a stable, you get tehm fully upgraded with even + 2 Attack in Imp. In my opitnio they are better than the ones of Wei. Which is odd. But it adds an interesting flavour to the civ and a good measure of how good their Infantry actually is. Because if the civ is in the aftermath played as a Cav Civ the INfantry, espeiclla the swordsman line might need further improvement.
Which brings me to the specifci Infantry bonus. And it’s imo quite weak on its own. Yes, i like the bonus - i think it’s great for Infantry to have HP regen to revard keeping individual units alive. But for the swordsman line I doubt it will make the line notably stronger so it becomes viable in the midgame. On the other hand it might turn out OP on the Spearman line, especially in Imp.
And I actually would have hoped for the Infantry civ to get one of the strongest Champs in the game. But in my opitnion they will just clearly fall short to something like Armenians.
In general their Imp looks weak even with the possibly best Halbs in the game. And ofc this is the tradeoff of having great early aggression potential AND a super versatile tech tree.
This is from the design here possibly the most interesting Civ ever released. It might be a bit overtuned and possibly the only one of the new civs that might get a nerf. But I don’t think it needs to be tuned down before release. I think there will be very specific nerfs to the eco bonus and potentially in compensation some buffs to their Chamions, like expanding the attack bonus in Imp to them.
Funnily I like the design of the Three Kingdom Civs even more than those of Jurchens / Khitans. They are not bad by any means, but they seem to have glaring weaknesses and I even think they should get buffs pre-release. Cause otherwise people will probably be dissapointed by them in comparison to the Three Kindom civs, which are more appealing design-wise. But that’s to be analysed on a later post.
I’m neutral to the Heroes and Trebs from Siege Workshops. I’m not sure which gameplay implications they will have. Heroes look way too expensive to me - and the effect of trebs from Siege Workshops needs to be figured out. I don’t exactly understand why devs did this, because I think the amount of people who get hyped by this is very small and competitively irrelevant. It’s a very high risk for a very small potential revard.