Total War: Three Kingdoms official artwork without the logo

While Total War games have always had diplomacy, in more recent times it has become a nearly meaningless feature. Alliances with the AI rarely result in any sort of coordinated actions, a good portion of the deals are far too basic and easy to break, and most of the time the only way you'll ever be able to get an alliance with someone is by being in a position where you have no benefit from said alliance. Long story short, it's a bit of a mess.

Thankfully, it appears that Total War: Three Kingdoms will be going to great lengths in order to ensure that diplomacy is not only a relevant part of the game, but also one that is fully fleshed out and interesting to toy around with. If you're curious what exactly this entails, allow me to share with you two of the recent previews discussing just that:

Personally, I'm quite excited about all of this. Despite the name of the series being "Total War", I've always had a soft spot for making historically accurate alliances and helping my buddies along, so seeing Total War: Three Kingdoms push for much greater interaction between the factions is a dream come true. I can only hope the AI will be smart enough to actually use diplomacy to its advantage as well, rather than just spam the player with requests for alliances that make little sense.

Whatever the end result may be, I suppose we'll find out soon enough as Total War: Three Kingdoms will be arriving this March 7th. To learn more about it, as well as its approach to diplomacy, you should head on over to the official website.