Info about Ancient Warfare: The Han Dynasty: Official game description: HOW TO SWITCH TO ENGLISH ======================== About the Game ============== The Han Dynasty was established by Emperor Gaozu of Han. He commanded the army to attack Xiongnu in the north, set up Frontier Command Headquarter to defend the borders of Western Regions, and ensured people’s peaceful and prosperous life. However, the dregs of Xiongnu attacked Western Regions in force when Central Plains was weakening. They occupied Frontier Command Headquarter and enslaved thousands of people nearby... Now it’s your turn to command Expeditionary Army of Han. Set off from Yumen Pass, collect compatriots’ bodies in sand, and expel invaders of Xiongnu. This journey is bound to be filled with sacrifices, struggles, desires and discomforts. Which kind of strategy will you choose, endless conquest or political art? FIGHT HARD IN WESTERN REGIONS ----------------------------- Countless warriors answered the call of Han. After strict training, they set off to Western Regions from Yumen Pass under the command, vowing to defend the borders of Han. WITNESS GRAND BATTLEFIELDS -------------------------- Thousands of soldiers can be accommodated in one battlefield. Command them in real time, devise strategies, control the game, and defeat enemies finally. MAKE A STRONGER EMPIRE ---------------------- Recover cities and territories once controlled by Frontier Command Headquarter. Establish friendly relations with lords in Western Regions and confront Xiongnu with them. TRAIN SOLDIERS -------------- Collect or produce equipment, train troops and choose the most appropriate arms to respond to complex battlefields. CONFRONT ENEMIES WITH STRATEGIES -------------------------------- Different arms and unstable environments call for a wiser commander. Think twice when developing strategies and commanding operations. ENJOY A STUNNING ART STYLE -------------------------- Enjoy the stunning art style of Chinese Ink Painting while playing this game. EXPERIENCE A GREAT EXPEDITION ----------------------------- Fulfill the unrealized dream of Han. Start on an expedition to the north or Kushan Empire. Rebuild the order in Western Regions and Central Asia. Release date: 26 Sep, 2023 Categories: Real-time Strategy, Strategic Combat, Single-player Story, Resource Management, City Builder, Unit Management, Battle Simulation - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Rich Chinese Historical Theme (weight 0.54): The game is highly praised for its unique focus on less common Chinese historical periods, particularly the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era. Players appreciate its historical accuracy, immersive storytelling, and how it effectively conveys Chinese culture and historical events. - Excellent Art Style & Voice Acting (weight 0.39): The game's art style, particularly its ink wash painting aesthetic and character portraits, receives strong positive feedback. Players also commend the high-quality voice acting and background music, which enhance the immersive historical narrative. - Enjoyable Gameplay & Good Value (weight 0.27): Players generally find the game enjoyable and well-designed, particularly praising its combat system and overall playability. Many consider it a good value for its price, especially when compared to similar titles like Total War. - Consistent Updates & Developer Support (weight 0.2): The development team is consistently praised for their continuous and significant updates, adding new content and features without additional cost. Their responsiveness to player feedback and dedication to improving the game are highly valued. - Innovative Concepts & High Potential (weight 0.14): Players recognize the game's innovative concepts and significant potential for future growth. They appreciate its fresh approach to strategy gameplay and its unique thematic choices. - Grand & Immersive Battles (weight 0.08): The game's battle scenes are described as grand and immersive, effectively depicting ancient army clashes. Players enjoy the strategic depth offered by terrain and the overall atmosphere of the combat. - Effective Story Mode Tutorial (weight 0.04): The story mode is highly effective as a tutorial, guiding new players through game mechanics from simple to complex. It also serves as an engaging narrative experience, particularly for those with nationalistic sentiments. - Strong Domestic Game Support (weight 0.03): Many players express strong support for the game as a domestic Chinese production, viewing it as a significant achievement for local game development. - Impressive Indie Development (weight 0.03): Players are impressed by the high quality of the game, especially considering it was developed by a small independent studio, often noted as a husband and wife team. - Unique Troop Equipment System (weight 0.03): The ability to change troop equipment is highlighted as a significant and positive gameplay feature. - Emotionally Resonant Story (weight 0.03): The game's narrative, particularly the story of Fan Qiang and Geng Gong, evokes strong emotional responses from players, including tears and deep feelings of joy and patriotism. Common complaints: - Poor optimization and stability (weight 1): Players frequently report severe performance issues, including low frame rates, constant lagging, and frequent crashes, making the game unplayable for many. This indicates a fundamental lack of optimization and stability. - Clunky UI and poor controls (weight 0.87): The game's user interface is consistently criticized for being clunky, unintuitive, and visually unappealing. Controls are also reported as unresponsive and difficult to use, leading to a frustrating player experience. - Insufficient and shallow content (weight 0.76): Many players feel the game is incomplete, lacking sufficient content, strategic depth, and variety in gameplay modes. The story mode is particularly noted as being too short and unengaging. - Weak AI and unit balance (weight 0.61): The AI for both enemy units and friendly troops is often described as unintelligent, leading to bizarre behaviors, poor pathfinding, and a lack of challenge. Unit balance issues, particularly with overpowered ranged units, further detract from combat enjoyment. - Subpar graphics and siege battles (weight 0.46): The visual quality of battlefields, unit models, and overall graphics is considered subpar, especially when compared to similar titles like Total War. Siege battles are particularly criticized for their repetitive maps and lack of strategic elements. - Buggy Kushan invasion event (weight 0.41): The Kushan invasion event, intended as an end-game challenge, is buggy and poorly implemented. Issues include units moving too fast, incorrect kill progress tracking, and a lack of meaningful impact on the game world. Gameplay feedback: - Total War-like Strategic Combat (weight 0.32): The game features a strategic combat system with real-time battles and a strategic map, drawing heavy inspiration from the Total War series. Players manage armies, utilize terrain, and engage in both field and siege battles, though some find it a simplified version of Total War. - Historical Story Mode (weight 0.15): The game includes a story mode, which also serves as a tutorial, based on the historical 'Thirteen Generals Return to Yumen' event. This mode provides a narrative context and introduces players to the game's mechanics and historical setting. - Flexible Unit Equipment System (weight 0.15): A core mechanic is the unit equipment system, allowing players to change unit types and roles by swapping weapons and armor. This provides flexibility in army composition and unit progression, as units can be re-equipped and upgraded quickly. - City Management & Resources (weight 0.09): The game incorporates a city management and internal affairs system, including resource production, building construction, and a population system. This system influences resource output, unit recruitment, and overall city development, mimicking aspects of Total War's internal affairs. - Exploitable Siege Tactics (weight 0.07): The game allows for tactical exploitation of city gates during sieges, enabling players to trap and annihilate enemy units. This can lead to strategic advantages, such as capturing undefended enemy cities after a successful defense. - Ranged Unit Imbalance (weight 0.05): There is a significant imbalance in unit effectiveness, with ranged units (archers and crossbowmen) being overwhelmingly powerful. This makes them the dominant force in battles, often negating the need for diverse army compositions. - Underpowered Cavalry Units (weight 0.05): Cavalry units are present but are often less effective than ranged units, especially in early game defensive battles. Their utility is limited, and they can sometimes be used similarly to infantry. - Weak AI Strategic Management (weight 0.05): The AI exhibits poor strategic management, often besieging cities with minimal forces and failing to properly manage its own towns. This leads to easily captured AI cities with low populations. - Difficult Horse Acquisition (weight 0.03): Obtaining horse resources in conquest mode is challenging, primarily requiring specific horse farms or lucky battlefield loot. This can hinder the development of cavalry-focused armies. Performance notes: - Poor Performance and Optimization (weight 0.15): Many players report significant performance issues, including long loading times, frequent crashes, and low frame rates even on high-end hardware. Specific instances of lag occur during combat, map navigation, and when reinforcements appear, suggesting poor optimization across various game elements. Some users also noted the game defaulting to integrated graphics. - Smooth Performance for Some (weight 0.02): A few players reported that the game runs smoothly on their systems, with one user achieving 50 FPS on a 3060ti and 11600k setup. This indicates that performance issues might not be universal and could be system-dependent or related to specific configurations. - Performance Lags Competitors (weight 0.01): One reviewer compared the game's performance to Total War Three Kingdoms, noting that the latter handles large unit counts without significant lag, only frame drops. This comparison highlights a perceived deficiency in the current game's ability to manage large-scale scenarios efficiently. Recommendations: - High Potential, Total War Alternative (weight 0.38): Players see significant potential for the game to become a strong competitor to the Total War series, especially within the Chinese historical strategy genre. They are eager for continued development, optimization, and content expansion, expressing strong support for the developers. - Mixed Recommendations, Wait for Improvements (weight 0.21): Many players are hesitant to recommend the game in its current state due to various issues, particularly poor optimization and operability. They suggest waiting for improvements before purchasing. - Focus on Core Gameplay Depth (weight 0.04): Players suggest that the game should focus on deepening existing gameplay mechanics rather than adding too many new ones. There's also a specific interest in exploring more simulation management or Paradox-style gameplay elements. - Price-Quality Mismatch (weight 0.03): Some players feel the current price does not align with the game's quality and content. They suggest that the game would be more appealing and worthwhile if purchased at a lower price or during a sale. - Desires Steam Workshop Integration (weight 0.03): There's a desire for more community involvement through features like Steam Workshop integration. Players believe this would allow for custom content and scenarios, significantly enhancing the game's longevity and appeal. Other player notes: - Total War comparisons and differentiation (weight 0.09): Many players compare the game to Total War, both positively and negatively. There's a strong desire for the game to evolve beyond being a mere copy, incorporating unique mechanics and differentiating itself from the Total War series. - New gameplay mechanics suggested (weight 0.06): There are specific suggestions for new gameplay mechanics, such as a more dynamic food supply system, technology trading, and a detailed Great Wall construction and defense system. - Improve factions and UI (weight 0.05): Players suggest improvements for faction diversity, unit card display, and AI behavior, indicating a desire for more strategic depth and better management of in-game entities. - Graphics and combat need polish (weight 0.03): Some players criticize the game's graphics and combat animations, describing them as lacking fluidity and resembling older web games, suggesting a need for visual polish. Emotions: - Frustration (weight 0.27): Players are primarily frustrated by a wide array of technical issues, including constant crashes, poor optimization, long loading times, and numerous bugs that prevent gameplay or hinder progression. Additionally, frustrating gameplay mechanics such as counter-intuitive controls, confusing UI, rigid unit deployment, and unrealistic combat outcomes contribute significantly to this emotion. Resource management and leveling systems, along with poor new player guidance, also add to the frustration. - Disappointment (weight 0.2): Disappointment stems from the game's overall unfinished state, lack of content depth, and unpolished features, especially when compared to similar titles like Total War. Players express dissatisfaction with poor optimization, graphics, controls, and UI, as well as shallow mechanics and missing features. The discrepancy between marketing and the actual game experience, coupled with developer unresponsiveness, further contributes to this feeling. - Satisfaction (weight 0.16): Satisfaction is driven by the game's unique historical content, appealing art style, and immersive storytelling. Players appreciate the continuous updates and developer dedication, which add new content and improve the game's quality. The combat system, resource and equipment management, and overall enjoyment of the gameplay also contribute to a positive experience, especially for those who find value in its current state and future potential. - Hope (weight 0.13): Hope is centered on the game's future potential, with players expressing a strong desire for continued improvements, bug fixes, and new content. There is a particular emphasis on improved AI, more factions, and the full release of promised features. Many players also express hope for the game to become a strong domestic alternative to established titles like Total War. - Excitement (weight 0.05): Excitement is generated by the game's progress, its potential for future development, and the overall quality of its historical narrative. Players are excited by continuous updates, new content, and engaging combat with strategic depth. The unique historical setting and the opportunity to learn history through gameplay also contribute to this positive emotion. - Anger (weight 0.03): Anger arises from severe technical issues that render the game unplayable, leading players to feel scammed. Misleading comparisons to other games, historical inaccuracies, and developer unresponsiveness also fuel this emotion. Persistent bugs causing losses and unfair game mechanics further contribute to player anger. - Confusion (weight 0.03): Confusion is primarily caused by unclear game systems, mechanics, and strategic guidance, including issues with trade and morale systems. Players also express confusion regarding unexpected AI behavior, missing content, and the game's overall logic, particularly in combat outcomes and tutorial design. - Admiration (weight 0.02): Admiration is directed towards the developers for their dedication, persistence, and impressive update speed, especially for an independent studio. Players appreciate the strong development team, sincere update frequency, and the overall achievement of the game given its indie status, along with the quality of voice acting, art, and story. - Support (weight 0.02): Support is primarily driven by a desire to back domestic game development and the developers' efforts. Players are motivated by the game's theme and art style, showing a willingness to support the game and its creators. - Joy (weight 0.01): Joy is experienced through the sheer enjoyment of playing the game, often for extended periods. The quality of the game, its strategic design, and the introduction of new content contribute to this positive emotion, with specific mentions of enjoying overpowered archers. - Appreciation (weight 0.01): Appreciation is expressed for the developers' creativity and efforts, as well as the game's unique historical setting, art, and story. Players value the distinct elements and the work put into creating them. - Interest (weight 0.01): Interest is sparked by the opportunity to learn about Chinese history through gameplay. The unique historical period and specific gameplay features also contribute to players' engagement and desire to explore the game's content. - Concern (weight 0): Concern is raised regarding awkward non-combat gameplay elements, suggesting that these aspects detract from the overall experience and may need improvement. - Mixed feelings (weight 0): Mixed feelings arise from the game's conditional value proposition, often tied to its price, and the perception that while decent, it might disappoint fans of similar titles like Total War. This indicates a nuanced view where positive and negative aspects are weighed against each other. - Pride (weight 0): Pride is felt in relation to the game's focus on national history and Chinese stories. This emotion reflects a sense of cultural connection and satisfaction in seeing one's heritage represented in a video game. - Anticipation (weight 0): Anticipation is focused on the game's future development and the prospect of future gameplay. Players are looking forward to what the game will become and the experiences it will offer down the line. - Engagement (weight 0): Engagement is driven by the game's strategic depth and compelling historical narrative. These elements draw players in and keep them invested in the game world and its challenges. - Relief (weight 0): Relief is experienced due to the game's lack of pressure, suggesting a more relaxed or less demanding gameplay experience compared to other titles. This indicates a positive feeling derived from a less stressful environment. - Fatigue (weight 0): Fatigue is caused by playing the game due to poor design, indicating that certain aspects of the game's mechanics or structure lead to player exhaustion rather than enjoyment. - Annoyance (weight 0): Annoyance is specifically caused by loud fan noise during gameplay, pointing to a technical issue related to hardware performance or optimization that disrupts the player experience.}