Hot on the heels of the release of The Shadow and The Blade DLC for Total War: Warhammer 2, Creative Assembly today announced Mandate of Heaven; the next big Total War: Three Kingdoms DLC. Set to be the game’s largest post-launch expansion yet, Mandate of Heaven will be set twelve years before the main game, featuring the events of the Yellow Turban Rebellion and Qiang uprising.
Total War: Three Kingdoms DLC – Mandate of Heaven
Due to release on the 17th of January, Mandate of Heaven will be the second Chapter Pack DLC for Total War: Three Kingdoms. The first, Eight Princes, jumped forward almost a century. However, Mandate of Heaven will focus on the events which set the stage for the game’s main campaign, beginning in 182 BCE. As a result, some of the playable warlords from the core game will also be playable in the Chapter Pack, albeit as younger incarnations of themselves (and a somewhat slimmer incarnation, in the case of Dong Zhuo!).
Described by Creative Assembly as their biggest Three Kingdoms DLC thus far, Mandate of Heaven will feature six new playable warlords, all-new campaign mechanics, and no less than forty new units. Some of the new characters included in the DLC also offer substantially different sorts of campaign, particularly Liu Hong. In fact, the campaign also overlaps with that of the main game; you can start in 182 and keep playing right on through into the events after 194. In fact, your decisions during that first decade may radically change what would normally happen after…
When it comes to existing characters, there will be six playable warlords in Mandate of Heaven; Cao Cao, Dong Zhuo, Liu Bei, Liu Biao, and Sun Jian. In addition, Tao Qian will also be a playable warlord, as he’s coming to the main game as free-LC. However, there are a further six new characters in Mandate of Heaven. Firstly, there are three new Yellow Turban warlords; Zhang Jue, Zhang Bao, and Zhang Liang. Then, there are also three Han Empire warlords; Lu Zhi, Prince Liu Chong, and even Liu Hong – Emperor Ling himself! (The first emperor to be playable in Three Kingdoms.)
As a gameplay video released by Creative Assembly shows, Emperor Ling’s campaign will be dramatically different to a normal Three Kingdoms campaign. Rather than starting small and building up power, the emperor starts with the entire Han Empire under his control. However, he also starts with a multitude of problems and huge faction-wide penalties. (Not to mention the growing Yellow Turban Rebellion to deal with.) As such, his campaign will be less about building an empire as about fighting to prevent an empire from collapsing.