To say that there are rather a lot of Total War: Three Kingdoms characters would be a major understatement. The game features more than thirty major characters with unique art and many more besides that, ranging from great heroes like Guan Yu and Dian Wei to famous leaders like Liu Bei and Cao Cao. With so many awesome characters, you may wish to see how many you can acquire in your court, and thanks to the design of the game, you can do just that!
How to Steal Almost Any of the Total War: Three Kingdoms Characters
From Ma Teng to Zheng Jiang, Kong Rong to Liu Zhang, there are a lot of different Total War: Three Kingdoms characters. And that’s just counting the ones with unique art! Not every historical character was so lucky, of course. Many figures, such as Guo Jia or Huang Gai, are represented with only the same generic officer art. It’s no surprise, really. After all, Romance of the Three Kingdoms has around 8,000 named characters!
Whether you want to replay history and assemble Liu Bei’s Five Tiger Generals, or do something entirely unusual, like recruiting Xiahou Yuan into the Black Mountain Bandits, very little is impossible in Total War: Three Kingdoms. Indeed, this is the focus of Creative Assembly’s latest video about the game. The first, and best, method to recruit characters is to defeat them in battle. If you defeat their army, there’s a chance that you may capture them, and then a chance that they may be willing to change sides and join your faction. These chances can be improved with certain items and traits. (Avoid defeating characters in duels, however, as this is much more likely to lead to their death.)
However, this first method isn’t reliable on its own; it relies on the character already being unhappy with their faction. Fortunately, with the cunning use of spies, this is something that you can manipulate. By sowing discord among a faction, you can prime characters to defect. Additionally, if you destroy a faction, any of their surviving characters can become available for recruitment; appearing in the global recruitment pool. This is more likely if your faction had positive relations with theirs, however, such as Lu Bu joining Ma Teng after the death of Dong Zhuo. You could also confederate with a faction to acquire all of their characters in one fell swoop! After all, hiring a character’s friends at the same time could make them more likely to be satisfied in your faction.
Indeed, you will have to keep your Total War: Three Kingdoms characters satisfied once they arrive! Use ancillaries, court positions, and other bonuses to keep your new arrivals happy, or else they may seek employment elsewhere.