Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

⚠ Currently in ALPHA — content and balance iterate fast, saves may not survive updates. Feedback welcome.

A total conversion for Hearts of Iron IV based on the classic novel. Timeline 184–280 AD, four starts (184 Yellow Turbans / 200 Girdle Decree / 208 Storm over Jing / 220 Death of the King of Wei) — each with its own historical map, armies and cast, not one map with four dates. Dates run in era names: it's "the fifth year of Jian'an", not "1941".

Player's Handbook

The complete handbook to every mechanic (where each Mandate point comes from, how every gate opens — with the arithmetic): https://hoi4-sanguo.go2run.app

What you get to play

Fifteen playable realms. Wei, Shu, Wu and the Han court run deepest: play Cao Cao from "holding the Son of Heaven" to unifying the north — then watch the Sima clan sharpen knives behind you; play Liu Bei from mat-weaver to the Baidicheng entrustment; play the Sun family's three-generation relay; play the Han court — the biggest realm, the softest fist, and the whole game is the comeback. Every warlord has a story arc or a tree of their own; pick the Yellow Turbans and shout it yourself — "The Azure Sky is dead; the Yellow Sky shall rise."

The Mandate: holding the Emperor, imperial blood and proclamations are capital; regicide and massacre are debt. All tallied into a nine-tier Mandate of Heaven, re-judged monthly, multiplying your political power, stability and war support. At Mandate 90+ any of the fifteen can take the throne — by conquest or abdication.

The chapter engine: nine chapters, thirty-seven acts — set pieces don't fire on calendar dates; an act plays when the world is ready. Pick your pacing at start: Romance Timeline / Fast-Forward / Free-for-All.

Follow Heaven, or defy it: does Guan Yu walk into Maicheng, does the Chancellor fall at Wuzhang Plains — each can go "as the chronicles wrote", or be rewritten at a price. Defiance opens new material: keep the Chancellor alive and "Seven Campaigns from Qishan" awaits; Wu can raid Xudu or send Zhou Yu to take Ba-Shu for real. The historian's chapter cards rewrite themselves after you.

War & peace: equipment splits into infantry / armour / armour-piercing — armour beats infantry, piercing beats armour; all fifteen realms field unique Guard divisions. Wars can end at the table: a white peace needs the other side's consent; "Proclaim and Punish" manufactures your casus belli.

Set pieces are events with real choices; focus trees are written in Classical Chinese with 300+ consistent portraits.

A silenced world

The globe is historicized to 184 AD: Rome under Commodus, Parthia and Kushan between, Yamatai and Goguryeo east. Vanilla WW2 stories and modern decisions are cleaned out; the tech tree locks tanks and planes, renaming what remains for late-Han warfare. One goal: keep you in the Three Kingdoms.

Straight talk

• This is an alpha: core systems are fully playable; polish, balance and bug-hunting are ongoing; old saves aren't guaranteed compatible.

• The 184 (Yellow Turbans) and 220 (Three Kingdoms) starts are the most polished — begin with either. 200/208 are laid out for their years but their stories are still being optimized.

• Ten languages (EN/CN/FR/DE/ES/JA/KO/RU/PL/PT-BR); newly written text may show English until translations land.

• Made by one person. Updates take time; every piece of feedback gets read, and every change goes in the changelog.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the Steel Workshop for providing the tools used in creating the mod and unit models: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3803670545

Lastly

I made this hoping play might lead you into Romance of the Three Kingdoms — and leave you a little curious about Chinese history. If you finish a campaign and go pick up the novel, that's this mod's greatest success.

Supports 1.19. Bugs and suggestions — see you in the comments.