I've found that more administrators and more assignments is generally the best way to invest your points. That being said, going for upkeep reduction in the red line reforms and investing prestige points in armies for the upkeep reduction at the end can net you some really big upkeep reductions (-20 percent, at least). This can result in an extra army or two, which really can make the difference in taking more territory quickly.
With Cao Cao especially you can wait on getting spies from rank up and focus on other stuff and maybe upgrade only 1 point if you truly hit a big obstacle when using cover points. I simply love his new faction mechanic and spying.
After winning the game, all those trade agreements and spies become quite useless which is why I really like assignments and administrators, although armies looks pretty good too.
For me it's administrators are best and must have. It is eco bonus as well as additional armies. 2nd is assignments for salary discount and then dependent what you need, more armies or spies. Spies you can get from reforms and administrators ~ armies so they are Lower for me. I find trade lackluster, especially in Late game when whole world is against you. Unless playing as Kong Rong or Shi Xie but i haven't played as them
Personally I just get 2~3 spies and trades and dump the rest in administrators. I know the milestone bonuses are mediocre, but most factions just don't have many other ways to get extra administrators, and administrators are the one thing you can never have too many of (unless you're Liu Biao, I guess).
I like playing vanilla but I always use a 99 turn assignment mod because like u said late game assignment is just too tedious and just end up not bring used properly
I find trade very important and reason for it is because I end up creating huge vassal empire a the mid-end game. Honestly once I figured out all the benefits of vassals in 3k, I realize that this game is pretty much designed in manner that vassalization is must. It keeps your corruption in check, gives you plenty of tributes (which you can boost by getting certain legendary heroes to your faction), trade agreements for income, buffer states and A.I's extra armies being distraction for enemies. In cases where no one wants to be your vassal, then you can turn your administrators into vassals by giving them independence. IF you choose administrators on basis of personality traits they have, you can easily create vassals with underdog personality. Which will guarantee their loyalty to you no matter what. Seriously, no matter which play-through I play. The vassals have made my life super easy in the end game.
I mean vassals have some pitfalls though since they will often recruit some of the legendary characters that you want. You can certainly reach 100% corruption reduction faction wide which makes vassals pointless. They are a great tool when you don’t have corruption reduction but optimally speaking it is much better to own the land then have vassals even if you take trade into consideration
@@SeriousTrivia well in that case you can anex them. I always do so on liu bei ;). However corruption reduction methods usually demand heavy investments in building slots and tech tree. I don't see it worthy. While corruption will make end nightmare if you want to field lot of armies. A.I will upgrade his own provinces and the trade benefit will be more than actually holding the region. So tribute + trade usually even gives more income than actually holding the land.
depends on the land that you are giving away. If you only give a small about of land, the tribute is nothing and you still have to deal with corruption. annex probably a poor choice after playing so many games. Confederate them if you can (build up favor by liberating them then just promise a lot of per turn gold before pushing for confederate). Like in my Dong Zhuo campaign, I started to realize that confederate is much better option than annex (everyone else hates you and you become untrustworthy). The trade income is worth say 1500 per turn per trade route (that is being generous too). Can one commandery even with the most basic build (state workshop, private workshop, and inn) not make you that much? I think if you really crunch the numbers, owning the land comes out ahead. By heavy investment into building slots you mean just one level 4 state workshop building that gives up a small amount of industry income to boost adjacent corruption reduction.
@@SeriousTrivia In my experience there are only couple provinces worthy to keep instead of just giving to vassals. Tribute is big sum if you take into account the numbers. And with bandit queen or Liu Biao you can increase that amount. However half is more than enough when you take into account following facts: 1. A.I cheats with money, thus higher the difficulty the better the income. 2. A.I cheat with army sizes, thus your vassals provide excellent buffer area and extra stack of armies that you normally wouldn't be able to have. 3. Trade income. At late levels when you have high trade influence, you basically get over 1000-2000 per trade deal. In my current Ma Teng Run I get 2000 per trade agreement. 4. A.I upgrades settlements faster than you do. Thus that will also increase your income in passive manner. Where by owning that region you would be using your own money. 5. Liu bei in my campaign has only two settlements. One city and one weapon maker. I gain 965 tribute from him. Kong Rong with 7 commanderies gives me over 4000 + trade agreement if I were right next to him. Would make around 6k. On total i get 30k from triburaties alone. 6. Anex is good answer if you wish to gain some certain legendary heroes with powerful factionwide effects. For combat purpose I never bother with heroes. A.I almost never gives option to confederate in my experience no matter how much I put effort in diplomacy. This is due the fact that A.I has bias against player. 7. My semitypical settlement right now, without lot of special resource nodes only earns 1859. Upgrading that city would mean that I would have to pay more food for it. Trade deal and tribunaries are literally better for me in most provinces. I make few exception on provinces with multiple industry or commerce commandaries. 8. Vassals don't cost food, they just provide you money without you investing food and money to build up infastructure. In all honesty I recommend doing vassal run. In fact my easiest runs have all been with lords specialized in vassals even though game tries insists that it's hard. Build tall and smart and leave the trash provinces for vassals and you will notice the difference fast.
I mean if you are playing as Liu Biao then definitely! I mean it is always situational. Like if you are playing as Kong Rong, Liu Biao, Zheng Jiang, Lu Bu, or someone like them, then huge vassal networks is a must. But it is definitely not the right answer all the time. Say Cao Cao, you have a lot of sources of corruption reduction and a lot of the bad commanderies (farmland) are great for you so you would not want to give them away so it all depends.
@@SeriousTrivia just that you made a video on this, it came out a while ago. Also now with Troy mythology out. Do you plan to keep making 3K videos? However after watching this video makes me want to go back and play 3K now
@@KCkohler ah every Saturday is a guide for 3K (I consider tier list as guides) so given that tier lists are done it’s going back to things like prestige points, espionage on the latest patch, diplomacy etc
I've found that more administrators and more assignments is generally the best way to invest your points. That being said, going for upkeep reduction in the red line reforms and investing prestige points in armies for the upkeep reduction at the end can net you some really big upkeep reductions (-20 percent, at least). This can result in an extra army or two, which really can make the difference in taking more territory quickly.
Nice to see more nuanced parts of the game being covered now, while waiting for the Nanman tier list!
With Cao Cao especially you can wait on getting spies from rank up and focus on other stuff and maybe upgrade only 1 point if you truly hit a big obstacle when using cover points. I simply love his new faction mechanic and spying.
After winning the game, all those trade agreements and spies become quite useless which is why I really like assignments and administrators, although armies looks pretty good too.
8 8 0 0 8 is what I go for. I get the spies and trades from the blue reform tree. Extra trade deal is usually the first reform you get anyway
I always max out on administrators because I like to put as many unique characters on my court as possible
For me it's administrators are best and must have. It is eco bonus as well as additional armies. 2nd is assignments for salary discount and then dependent what you need, more armies or spies. Spies you can get from reforms and administrators ~ armies so they are Lower for me. I find trade lackluster, especially in Late game when whole world is against you. Unless playing as Kong Rong or Shi Xie but i haven't played as them
The retinue upkeep discount is insane. You should defintly max that first
Ive been playing the game a LOT and I never noticed the bonuses!
Personally I just get 2~3 spies and trades and dump the rest in administrators. I know the milestone bonuses are mediocre, but most factions just don't have many other ways to get extra administrators, and administrators are the one thing you can never have too many of (unless you're Liu Biao, I guess).
I like this type of videos
Useful thank you
Thank you ST-sensei
Top 10 exploits and glitches?
Do you plan to make a similar guide video with diplomacy?
Yes next week! Hopefully
Do you need to own the Fates Divided DLC in order to get these in?
No this was part of the free patch and not the dlc
@@SeriousTrivia Is it accesible for all Han Factions or just Yuan Shao?
Is it possible to redistribute the points mid game?
Nope. You pick whenever you level up
I like playing vanilla but I always use a 99 turn assignment mod because like u said late game assignment is just too tedious and just end up not bring used properly
I encountered this mod long time ago but people in comments said it is also affecting AI so you may not see some of their generals on the field ever
I find trade very important and reason for it is because I end up creating huge vassal empire a the mid-end game. Honestly once I figured out all the benefits of vassals in 3k, I realize that this game is pretty much designed in manner that vassalization is must. It keeps your corruption in check, gives you plenty of tributes (which you can boost by getting certain legendary heroes to your faction), trade agreements for income, buffer states and A.I's extra armies being distraction for enemies. In cases where no one wants to be your vassal, then you can turn your administrators into vassals by giving them independence. IF you choose administrators on basis of personality traits they have, you can easily create vassals with underdog personality. Which will guarantee their loyalty to you no matter what.
Seriously, no matter which play-through I play. The vassals have made my life super easy in the end game.
I mean vassals have some pitfalls though since they will often recruit some of the legendary characters that you want. You can certainly reach 100% corruption reduction faction wide which makes vassals pointless. They are a great tool when you don’t have corruption reduction but optimally speaking it is much better to own the land then have vassals even if you take trade into consideration
@@SeriousTrivia well in that case you can anex them. I always do so on liu bei ;).
However corruption reduction methods usually demand heavy investments in building slots and tech tree. I don't see it worthy. While corruption will make end nightmare if you want to field lot of armies. A.I will upgrade his own provinces and the trade benefit will be more than actually holding the region. So tribute + trade usually even gives more income than actually holding the land.
depends on the land that you are giving away. If you only give a small about of land, the tribute is nothing and you still have to deal with corruption. annex probably a poor choice after playing so many games. Confederate them if you can (build up favor by liberating them then just promise a lot of per turn gold before pushing for confederate). Like in my Dong Zhuo campaign, I started to realize that confederate is much better option than annex (everyone else hates you and you become untrustworthy).
The trade income is worth say 1500 per turn per trade route (that is being generous too). Can one commandery even with the most basic build (state workshop, private workshop, and inn) not make you that much? I think if you really crunch the numbers, owning the land comes out ahead. By heavy investment into building slots you mean just one level 4 state workshop building that gives up a small amount of industry income to boost adjacent corruption reduction.
@@SeriousTrivia In my experience there are only couple provinces worthy to keep instead of just giving to vassals. Tribute is big sum if you take into account the numbers. And with bandit queen or Liu Biao you can increase that amount. However half is more than enough when you take into account following facts:
1. A.I cheats with money, thus higher the difficulty the better the income.
2. A.I cheat with army sizes, thus your vassals provide excellent buffer area and extra stack of armies that you normally wouldn't be able to have.
3. Trade income. At late levels when you have high trade influence, you basically get over 1000-2000 per trade deal. In my current Ma Teng Run I get 2000 per trade agreement.
4. A.I upgrades settlements faster than you do. Thus that will also increase your income in passive manner. Where by owning that region you would be using your own money.
5. Liu bei in my campaign has only two settlements. One city and one weapon maker. I gain 965 tribute from him. Kong Rong with 7 commanderies gives me over 4000 + trade agreement if I were right next to him. Would make around 6k. On total i get 30k from triburaties alone.
6. Anex is good answer if you wish to gain some certain legendary heroes with powerful factionwide effects. For combat purpose I never bother with heroes. A.I almost never gives option to confederate in my experience no matter how much I put effort in diplomacy. This is due the fact that A.I has bias against player.
7. My semitypical settlement right now, without lot of special resource nodes only earns 1859. Upgrading that city would mean that I would have to pay more food for it. Trade deal and tribunaries are literally better for me in most provinces. I make few exception on provinces with multiple industry or commerce commandaries.
8. Vassals don't cost food, they just provide you money without you investing food and money to build up infastructure.
In all honesty I recommend doing vassal run. In fact my easiest runs have all been with lords specialized in vassals even though game tries insists that it's hard. Build tall and smart and leave the trash provinces for vassals and you will notice the difference fast.
I mean if you are playing as Liu Biao then definitely! I mean it is always situational. Like if you are playing as Kong Rong, Liu Biao, Zheng Jiang, Lu Bu, or someone like them, then huge vassal networks is a must. But it is definitely not the right answer all the time. Say Cao Cao, you have a lot of sources of corruption reduction and a lot of the bad commanderies (farmland) are great for you so you would not want to give them away so it all depends.
Seems kinda random
what seems kind of random?
@@SeriousTrivia just that you made a video on this, it came out a while ago. Also now with Troy mythology out. Do you plan to keep making 3K videos? However after watching this video makes me want to go back and play 3K now
@@KCkohler ah every Saturday is a guide for 3K (I consider tier list as guides) so given that tier lists are done it’s going back to things like prestige points, espionage on the latest patch, diplomacy etc
@@KCkohler Not on steam though